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Five Steps for Becoming Who You Want To Be
(from Chapter 2 of Reinvent Yourself)
1. Be Honest
What are your personality traits that do you no favours? What characteristics hamper your success in life, in every way? Ask a really good friend to give you an honest appraisal.
All change begins with a decision. Decide to alter direction right now. Steer yourself away from the course you were on to a more attractive place altogether. Be vigilant and get feedback.
2. Aspire Upwards
Identify the most impressive person you know. Make a list of the qualities they embody and the habits they follow. Study them. Make notes. Learn fast and learn well. If possible, spend as much time around them. Capture these qualities for yourself. Adopt each one for yourself.
Begin to wear those characteristics yourself, weave them into your demeanour, character and personality. Weld them onto your persona. Soon enough youčll be impressing yourself!
3. Practise, practise, practise
Take every opportunity to practise your new persona. Get those new habits in place. Be real. Get them booked into your diary. They won't happen automatically or overnight that's not the nature of habits. They need to be adopted and followed. If you want to be "an exerciser", get those classes and runs built into your diary. When you falter, get back into it again. Good habits are for life, not just for now.
If you want to be someone who's more outgoing, friendly and socially composed go do it. Accept a party invitation better still- have your own! Practise your poise. See yourself in action. Don't make it difficult, a short, successful burst is far more productive than an entire evening. You can work up to it.
4. Choose your response
Your response to life is paramount. Get more conscious and conscientious about your choice of response. It's never ever what happens to you that has power over you it's always how you allow it to affect you. You can also review the past from this perspective as well. Your response makes it one thing or another.
Be rigorous with yourself in cultivating this habit. Stuck in a traffic jam choose your response: the wine bar is out of your favourite Chablis- choose your response: it's raining on your wedding day choose your response, and I appreciate that's a difficult one! Build this habit from the smallest challenge and you'll be in possession of it when the big ones come along.
5. Talk yourself up
Reinforce the new you in words as well as deeds. Ensure you are building on your current labels, not the out-of-date ones. It may feel like outright lies at first. Don't worry about that. It'll come true soon enough.
Make your sayings and statements as close to the truth as possible, so turning yourself from dithering to decisive may require you to take the menu at dinner and say after a glance, "I'll have the grilled turbot no point in hanging about."
