How To Reinvent Yourself In Your 30s

And Live The Life You Want

There are two different reasons you may feel the need to reinvent yourself. The first is when you have to make a change – in other words, when it’s not your choice. If you’re getting divorced, you’ve got to move on. If your company goes under, you’ve got to find another job because you need to make money to survive. The second reason is when you want to make a change. Maybe you feel like you’ve been wasting your life up until now. Or maybe you just think, “You know what? It’s time for something different.”

What I want you to know is that regardless of which of those two categories you fall into, making a change is possible. And your 30s is actually the best time to reinvent yourself. Read on for five steps and five strategies for reinventing yourself so you can improve your life, your finances, your health, your mental health, and, live the life that you want.

What Does It Mean To Reinvent Yourself?

So, what does it actually mean to reinvent yourself? I’ll tell you what I think it means, but first I want to talk about what it’s not. Reinventing yourself is not an escape and it’s not a way to run away from your past. We are products of our own experiences and the choices we’ve made and to reinvent yourself, the key is to take those experiences and those lessons you’ve learned – both the positive and the negative – and use them to improve yourself and to make changes that will allow you to make and live the life that you want.

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Challenges To Reinventing Yourself

Now, if you’ve decided that it’s time to reinvent yourself and you’ve really made that commitment to do it, chances are you’re very excited. You’re looking forward to the change, to all the positive things that will come from it, and all the happiness that you will experience as a result of making this change. But what you need to know is that it’s going to take work.

The best way to overcome the various challenges that come with reinventing yourself, is to really know yourself and your abilities. Ask yourself and be honest with yourself about what you’re good at and also what your limitations or weaknesses are. Be practical and realistic with this up front so you can create the best possible scenario for yourself to succeed.

So for example, let’s say that I wanted to completely change my life right now, and the thing that I really wanted to do was to become a professional basketball player. First of all, I suck at basketball – even when I practice. Second, I’m five feet, nine inches tall. And third, I’m 44 years old. It doesn’t matter how bad I might want to be a professional basketball player because it’s not going to happen. And the fact that I can be honest and realistic with myself about the reasons it would never happen will save me from wasting a lot of time, energy, and ultimately being disappointed in the end.I’m not saying you can’t dream BIG, but just always have that reality check in place.

Another very important thing to think about before you jump into reinventing yourself is to align your goals with what really matters to you and what your specific needs are. If you can tap into that and be motivated by those intrinsic things – that stuff within you – then you will be much more likely to succeed and be happy than if you were motivated by some external force or what someone else wants you to do or thinks that you should do. This is huge, so spend some time really thinking about what exactly it is that you want.

5 Steps To Reinvent Yourself In Your 30s

Now, once you’ve done a little bit of homework and soul searching, it gets exciting because you can start taking those first steps. And next, I’ll take you through five steps and then five specific strategies that you can use to reinvent yourself.

1. Make A Plan

The first step you need to take to reinvent yourself is to make a plan. Not having a plan will almost always lead to failure. I know we sometimes hear stories about people who just sort of wandered into something spontaneously and ended up having massive success. And those are great stories because they don’t happen that often. It’s very unlikely to happen, so it’s not something you should count on.

Along the lines of really knowing yourself, making a plan to reinvent yourself really requires a thorough and honest assessment of your current financial situation, emotions, and mental state. As I mentioned before, it’s important to be practical and realistic to give yourself the best chance of succeeding.

And as you make this plan, have your goal in mind, but don’t get hung up on figuring out every single step you need to take and putting them in the right order. If you do that, it’s very easy to never even get started. Think about it this way. Instead of following a map, you’re using a compass. You know that you’re going in the right direction, but going in the right direction doesn’t always mean following a clear path.

2. Visualize Success

Step number two is to visualize success. Visualizing success is important because what you’re actually doing in the process of visualization is training your subconscious to be aware of the goal that you want to achieve. This works because your subconscious reminds you consistently about that goal. And that then trains your brain to respond as if that outcome were true in the present moment. I know it works because I do it myself.

Understand that it doesn’t have to be a big thing that takes a ton of your time, but you do have to do it consistently. I recommend taking five minutes every single day – maybe right when you get up in the morning. It’s not a lot of time, but it is time well spent setting yourself up for success.

3. Set Realistic Goals

Step number three is to set realistic goals. I’ve already sort of touched on this with my wanting to be a professional basketball player example, so we don’t really need to get too deep into it, but what I want to add is that setting a realistic goal doesn’t mean that you can’t aim high. Please don’t think I’m saying you have to go from one menial thing to another – because that’s not what reinventing yourself is about. Just understand that the higher you aim and the loftier your goal is, the harder you are going to have to work for it.

4. Develop Positive Habits

Step number four is to develop positive habits. If you’ve ever been in a really good routine, you know the type of positive effect that it has on you. When you’re in a groove, you want to stay in that groove because it’s working for you and you’re seeing the benefits first hand.

I always like to use the example of exercise. When you commit yourself to a daily exercise routine, you get to a point where your body craves it – and if you miss a day or two days, you really feel it. And it feels like your body is telling you, “Hey, man, I need to do this thing because it’s making me feel good!” It’s great when you’re in that routine, but getting into it can sometimes be a little difficult. So try to get into any routine that you know you will be able to do consistently.

5. Start Now

Which brings us to perhaps the most important part of this whole process. So what I’ll say is, if you’ve gone through all the previous steps — if you’ve made a plan, visualized your success, set realistic goals, developed some positive routines, none of that matters unless you do something about it! Please keep in mind that things don’t have to be perfect. In fact, thinking too much about perfection is something that will always keep you from taking that first step.

I remember when I was in grad school and I was in this class that I had to write a lot every single week. Now, I’m the kind of person that generally needs to map everything out before I do it – especially if I’m writing something. But I would get so bogged down in making that outline and trying to figure out every single detail that I would just kind of freeze and it became very difficult to write anything. The advice my professor gave me was to just vomit on the page. Just start writing, it will come to you and you will be able to piece it all together. He was right and just starting, is the most important step.

Use These 5 Strategies To Reinvent Yourself

Now that we’ve covered five of the initial steps you should take when reinventing yourself, next, let’s touch on five specific strategies you can use.

1. Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Strategy number one is to step outside of your comfort zone. If you’re planning to make a change as big as reinventing yourself, it is important to be open and willing to break out of the safety zone you have created for yourself. Hey, it’s really easy to just kind of sit back and be where you are, but if you’re ready to reinvent yourself, sitting back and being where you are is not what you want to be doing. If you’re going to completely change things, be prepared to be a little uncomfortable. But use all those situations as learning experiences because you never know where you’re going to end up.

I started my business just under 10 years ago. And before that, I didn’t have photos taken all the time, I never talked to a camera, and to be honest, it felt really weird at first. But I looked at it as a challenge and as something to get better at because in order to achieve the vision I had, which was to help as many guys as possible dress well, gain more confidence, and achieve their goals, it was something that I needed to do in the medium I was working in. It wasn’t easy, it was definitely outside my comfort zone, but I kept at it, I kept working at it, and I’m glad that I did, because it has really helped me create a completely new life for myself.

2. Accept Changes

Strategy number two is to accept changes. Change is one of the only constants in life, right? Things are always going to be changing and how you respond to those changes will ultimately determine your outcome. So accept changes and channel that energy into something positive. It’s a classic glass half empty, glass half full scenario. Optimism will take you a very long way especially when you’re able to turn something negative into a positive.

3. Change Your Style

The third strategy to reinvent yourself is to change your style. Hey, you’re reinventing yourself – new life, new look. It can’t hurt because if there’s one truth about clothes and your appearance, it’s that it has an incredible power to change how you feel about yourself and how people see you. Right? You’ve probably heard before – dress for the job you want, not the job that you have. So when it comes to reinventing yourself, consider some style changes to help put you on the path that you want to be on.

4. Learn Something New

Strategy number four is to learn something new. If you’re really trying to reinvent yourself, you’ve got to make some big changes. Don’t just incrementally tweak something here and there thinking that eventually you’ll get where you want to go. It doesn’t work that way because if you’re just doing little things here and there, it’s going to feel like it always felt.

You need to do, is to turn everything upside down. Try something completely different, something you thought you’d never do before. Or, maybe, reconnect with something that you used to love doing, but you haven’t had time for or haven’t made time for.

The most important thing is that whatever it is that you choose to do, that you enjoy doing it. Reinventing yourself is all about making changes that will lead to a more positive and happier life with a greater sense of purpose and fulfillment. And if you don’t love what you’re doing, none of that’s going to be possible.

5. Don’t Fear Failure

Strategy number five is to not fear failure – and to actually, be ready for it. The one thing that all successful people have in common is that they have failed. And they’ve probably failed multiple times. Now, the thing that sucks is when you look at someone who’s successful, all you’re seeing is that they’re successful. What you’re not seeing is the number of times they’ve failed to get to that point.

But successful people are not afraid to fail. A failure is an opportunity to learn. A failure is an opportunity to get better. A failure is just another step on the path to success. When you’re reinventing yourself, things are going to change, things are going to feel uncomfortable, things are going to be new, and with all that stuff going on, there will be some failures, but if you accept it and use it as a way to go forward, you will be successful.

Reinventing Yourself: Bottom Line

Although we’ve been talking about how to reinvent yourself in your 30s in this post, the truth is that these steps and strategies can be applied no matter what age you are — 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. Always remember to be as honest as possible with yourself and have a clear idea about where you want to end up. And, of course, the most important thing you can do is to get started. So what are you waiting for?!