Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to be re-born. Tired of where you are? Tired of how you feel? Then here’s how to recreate yourself – how to not just build yourself back up again, but build yourself into the you that you want to be.
See, you can do this, I promise you. It won’t be an instant thing, it will be gradual. Gradual but steady, and in time – significant. So this is what we’re going to do…
“When you’re having a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year, it’s important to remember: things will change. You won’t feel this way forever. And sometimes, the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs the most. I believe you can’t feel real joy unless you’ve felt a real heartache. You can’t have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can’t know what it’s like to feel holy until you’ve seen evil. And you can’t be birthed again until you hit rock bottom.”
How To Recreate Yourself
If you want to know how to recreate yourself, how to create significant change in who you are and how you live, you have to first take a step back. Ask yourself: who am I?
“Who Am I?”
Grab a piece of paper and write down how you see yourself, how you think other people see you, how you live, how you act, what you care about, what you’re all about.
Write everything and anything!
Think of it as if you’re writing a book – a story, with you as the main character. What are all the things you’d need to know about yourself to write it? To be able to work out the plot?
Start here. And start now. Do it now as you’re reading this. Pause. And don’t continue reading until you’ve done it.
It doesn’t need to be perfect. You can change it. You can add to it. But you have to do it now before continuing any further – because this isn’t an article to be just read, but applied, as we go along.
I genuinely want this change for you and I want you to be able to get the ball rolling.
Whatever has led you to read this article now, you’re here for a reason, and this my friends, is going to be the turning point – if you’ll let it.
So get writing. I’m doing it along with you now. Ready, steady, write, write, write!
What’s Real and What’s Not?
As you write things down, you may find yourself getting a bit confused.
- What’s really you, and what’s just how you want to be seen?
- Are there any things that you think don’t quite match up?
- Are there any things that make you feel uncomfortable?
- And which things aren’t you happy with? Which things don’t you like?
Start to circle, highlight, make notes from each point. I also want you to look at each of the things you’ve written and look at what things may not be true.
Are you putting yourself down? Are you being too hard on yourself? Do you think you should think or feel certain ways? But says who? What expectations are you putting on yourself and where are they coming from?
Really build out this picture of who you are, who you’re not, what you stand for, what you like about yourself, what you don’t like about yourself, what you’d like to be more like.
I don’t want to give you too much of a structure here, because I really just want to get your brain thinking and flowing.
So instead – look at the things you most want to explore, look at what could branch off from what, and really analyse yourself, in your own way.
Some More Things To Think About
If you find yourself feeling sad or emotional about something – don’t brush over it.
Feel your emotions properly, look at them deeper, get clearer, understand them. This is going to become your strength. This is going to become your focus for change.
If there’s things you want to change, ask yourself WHY you want to change them. Is it coming from you? Is this what you really want? Or is society making you think it is?
Are you living an identity that’s not really you? Being defined by your success, your career, your family, but losing yourself? Not truly knowing yourself?
How Well Do You Actually Know Yourself?
Are there things that are coming up now that are pretty eye-opening? Surprising even? There should be.
To dig a little deeper, try this – 50 Questions To Get To Know Yourself Better.
Really spend some time on this part, because if you want to know how to recreate yourself, knowing how you see yourself is fundamental.
“Who Do I Want To Be?”
I always remember when I went to Zimbabwe. I was doing a volunteer project and as part of that, we’d go into classes in schools. Each morning started with the same routine…
Each child would take it in turns to stand up at the front of the class and say who they are and what they wanted to do. After each child had done so, the whole class, would chime,
You can be what you want to be.
It stuck with me. And it was drilled into their minds every single day. It was amazing. But it’s so true.
You want to recreate yourself because you’re not happy with who you are, but the good news is – you have the power to change that. Truly you do.
It doesn’t matter what your circumstance, how bad you feel in this moment, how crappy things currently are – you still hold that power.
And sure, maybe you can’t be an astronaut, maybe you’re past becoming a world-champion athlete… But you can still feel the way you want to.
You can still do things that are similar, or things which make you feel exactly the same way you want to. Because that’s what it’s all about – the feeling.
We can’t make everything work out, we can’t make everything go to plan. In fact, more often than not – it doesn’t! But there’s always still ways to feel the way you want to, and be who you want to, because all of that… it comes from within.
So look at your list and look at where the key areas lie between who you are and who you want to be. How big is the distance? What are you not totally happy with?
Look At The Key Areas To Focus On
You can do anything, but not everything. So as you work through identifying how you want to recreate yourself, try to separate it into different areas.
Once you have the key areas you want to work on, the key things you want to change, then look at them in terms of levels of priority.
- Which things should you work on first?
- What are the key areas of self-improvement for you and which are the most important areas to start on for you?
- What would create the biggest impact in your life and the way you feel?
- Are you working on creating your own Happiness Plan in line with this? And which changes can you take from there?
By the way, at this point, you probably won’t have all the answers. You may just have a long list like – “become happy in myself; feel happy on my own; become more confident”, etc.
These are things you want, things that would make you happy.
There may also be things that would complete you or enable you to be who you want to be and live the life you want to live… However at this stage, they’re still a little loose, not totally specific.
They’re just ideas. And that’s okay, because you can build them out as you focus more on them. You may also find there’s some cross-overs, or some “fixes” that come by working on other things. That’s cool.
You don’t need to know every single detail right now or even have a total plan.
You just need to know what you want, what doesn’t align with you, why you want to work on it and where you want to be.
- What would it mean to be there?
- How would you know you were there?
- What would it feel like to have mastered that particular thing?
So once you have the key areas, number them in level of importance. Which is the biggest priority? Which is the most urgent? And understand why.
How To Recreate Yourself
So what’s next on the key steps for how to recreate yourself?
Well, once you’ve done all of this – you’re then ready to get started, beginning first with that first key area identified as the highest importance.
I don’t want you to forget the rest of your list however, so that piece of paper that you were jotting everything down on – stick it on the inside of your wardrobe door, let’s keep it there.
If you want to neaten it up, you can. It will be a reminder of what you’re working on and where you’re going.
You may also like to write next to it some empowering beliefs – some beliefs your ideal you would believe, so you can start to get into the habit of turning them into your morning mantras as you get changed!
Start Mapping Out a Plan
So you have your first area that you want to work on, your biggest priority when it comes to recreating yourself – the most important change.
1) Write this goal at the top of a piece of paper.
2) Below this, brainstorm what you need to do in order to create that change.
Note: for this, there’s going to be things that you need to do, and these vary to different degrees. For example…
- You may need to stop allowing people to walk all over you. If you write that down – you then need to look at, okay, how do I stop doing that? How do I recognise when people are and how will I respond differently? Create some rules.
- There will also be specific tasks. For example, perhaps you’ve identified some particular issues you need to address or work through. Perhaps your Fear of Abandonment for instance. With this, you may not have all the answers for how to do it, but the good thing is, you don’t need to… Get professional help from a coach or therapist and work through it with someone else.
There will also be things that you need to do, that you don’t even know right now. Again, that’s fine. As you grow, you’ll learn and your journey of development will naturally evolve from there.
3) Once you have the base of your brainstorm, it’s then simple… start living by these changes and taking action to apply the things you say you know you need to do.
Get Focused…
If you want this to work, if you really want to recreate yourself – you have to be focused on it, and committed to it.
We can all have the best of intentions, but without that focus, you’ll drift from the goal.
Maybe you start taking action, you notice some positive changes, they make you feel good. This is what we want! But you have to keep pushing forward with it, keep building on it – otherwise you’ll become complacent, think you’re “all good” now, and slip back into old habits.
To keep your focus, I therefore recommend:
- Having these goals pinned up on your wardrobe as mentioned above.
- Allocating set time where you’re going to work on yourself every week / day. Little and often, that’s what it’s all about.
- Have a list of all the things you want / need to do and mapping them into a timeline.
- Journaling so that you can track and monitor your progress. This is a big one. I want you to see how far you’ve come and really start to notice the changes.
- Have your strong reasons “why”. It comes back to the pain-pleasure theory of motivation, but essentially you want to have as many powerful, emotive reasons why you NEED to create this change in yourself, and as many powerful, emotive “consequences” of if you don’t. Because that’s what’s going to keep you on track and drive you forward.
This is going to take you out of your comfort zone. If you truly want to recreate yourself, you’re going to have to do some things that you don’t necessarily want to do, that aren’t easy to do. But it’s worth it…
Every time you do something that is difficult, every time you act in a way you wouldn’t have before – but which you know is right – feel proud.
It’s Going To Take Time
This isn’t an instant thing. You’re not going to do this exercise and BAMN – just like that, you feel amazing and stay feeling amazing!
This may lift you up in the moment, it should do as you start to get more hopeful and excited, but it probably won’t last.
It might. It can do if you really make it. But it probably won’t. And that’s okay…
See, even when you recreate yourself – even when you become this ideal version of you, you’re still going to have times when you don’t feel 100%.
And right now, you don’t feel 100% so you’re not going to go from that, to an absolute constant.
But don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Don’t feel like this has to be groundbreaking and brilliant and just this great big transformation. It’s not about that.
It’s about taking baby steps in the right direction and moving forward more than you move back. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to be happy 24-7. Gee, you wouldn’t even be HUMAN if you was!
You just have to focus on progress, appreciation and take all the pleasure and joy that you can along the way, as you take on this journey.
Good Luck My Friends
So there we go. My three-step formula for how to recreate yourself.
If you got this far, you should have already made a start on it (eek, exciting!) So all that’s left to say now – is good luck. You can do this. You can be who you want to be.
Just know that right now – you’re still loved, you’re still worthy, you’re still more than enough… But you strive to be the best, happiest version of yourself, and that’s amazing.
Take care!
Love,
Ell_xx
