How to reinvent yourself?

Crises are inevitable throughout life; we all suffer them at some point in time more or less severely. They are related to important changes in our circumstances, which lead us to adapt to a new reality and, therefore, appeal to our capacity for flexibility. Crises can be valuable opportunities to improve, although it is hard to believe it when we are in the middle of the maelstrom. They're a openness to new possibilities, and if we manage to adjust satisfactorily, then we evolve. However, not all crises necessarily lead us to reinvent ourselves. Reinventing yourself supposes a change of course and this is not always necessary to do. It will depend on the combination of several factors.

What does it mean to reinvest yourself?

Faced with the chaos of stimuli that living represents, people orient ourselves through a kind of mental maps what are based on experience. As we live, we go acquiring learnings that guide us, making our reality more predictable and thus gaining personal security. Reinventing yourself means navigating without a map.

Dare to look into the unknown and step forward or get out of it. This means ceasing to be who we were until now and starting to walk a different path, full of uncertainties. Assumes reframe objectives, question beliefs that we had safe until now, different ways of doing things, relating to other people ... Something extremely difficult because live in uncertainty scaresHowever, just as we were able to build an initial map, we can also build a new, more adaptive one.

When do you need to reinvent yourself?

We basically reinvent ourselves under three circumstances (not exclusive):

Steps to reinvest

Along this new path we will meet friends and enemies, referring to states of mind such as fear, pessimism or perseverance and motivation. Let's see what may be the new emotions that we can experience.

Enemies

In order to prevent failure, it is important to know the enemies common changes and put them at bay. In this way we can position ourselves more comfortably and know what to expect in our new process:

If the change you need to adjust to is too overwhelming or you feel like it overwhelms you,

Allies

Specialist in Clinical Psychology

• When you want: For example, when you change your profession or decide to separate.
• When you can: for example, you decide to go around the world.
  • Study your motivations: Why do you want to change? What needs does it respond to?
  • Analyze your resources and strengths and put them to work.
  • Define well your goals. Remember that they always have to be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and organized in Time (S.M.A.R.T, in English).
  • Create an action plan: Break your general objective into small objectives, make successive approximations towards your objective and prioritize by programming in the short term.
  • Socialize your goalFind people who can facilitate your change, or help you train, or network or even inspire you.
  • Reevaluate your achievements on a regular basis, study your change process. Are things going the way you want them to? And if not, what would have to change?
  • The fear: It is an adaptive emotion whose function is to protect us. He comes to tell us something like “watch out, it can go wrong!”. Although it is a necessary emotion (we tend to preservation, otherwise we would lurch without any criteria), in excess it can lead us to inhibit the possibility of transformation.
  • Pessimism or negativity: it comes to discourage us: "why am I going to try it if it will turn out badly?" It can be a masked form of fear, since it also leads us to non-action. It can also function as a self-fulfilling prophecy (if I am sure of failure, I will not try hard enough, therefore it will end up going wrong).
  • Perfectionism: when we try to make it so perfect that we want to have total certainty of success since failure would be too painful. We also end up not acting. Put your inner critic at bay.
  • Constancy and discipline: act, insist on being persistent, Rome was not built in a day.
  • Keep an open mind and an exploratory attitude.
  • Put enthusiasm and motivation.
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  • Self-care: the change process is demanding, take care of your mood and reward yourself; it will make you stronger.
  • Basically we reinvent ourselves under three circumstances (not exclusive): when we owe (divorce ...); when we can (take a trip ...); when we want (change profession ...).
  • Reinventing yourself implies navigating without a map. Dare to look at the unknown and step forward or, as is popularly understood, step out of the comfort zone.
  • The allies of change are: enthusiasm, motivation, perseverance ... and the enemies: fear, pessimism, perfectionism.