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Invention is an ability that separates mankind from the rest of the millions of species on Earth. We have created countless things that have changed the course of our species itself. In the process of doing that, in a way, we have invented ourselves. In fact we are inventing ourselves, or more aptly, reinventing ourselves every day.

There is a popular saying that goes, “We are like the statue that is trying to make itself.” In other words, we are the stone, we are the sculptor and we are making our own selves. This blows my mind every time as I realise how deep that is.

There come times in life however, that we just need to start over with an entirely new block of stone. Life is uncertain and there’s no telling what will happen tomorrow. Your entire life that you think you have control over might change in a blink of an eye forcing you to completely start over. 

In such times, we have no option but to take the detour or even the U-turn provided by life and reinvent ourselves and our whole life into entirely new ones. We’ve all seen spies do this in the movies but you’d be surprised how often this happens in real life too. So, when it does, where do you start?

1. Go Back To The Drawing Board

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After you have mentally dealt with you situation, it is time to go back to the drawing board. Nobody is limited to just one area of expertise or one area of options. Each one of us can concentrate our efforts in various fields depending on our talents, abilities and preferences.

So, the first step is to decide for yourself, in which direction you want your new life to head. Depending on your situation, you may need to change many aspects of your life like work, place where you live, people in your life and even your lifestyle. 

Having a proper vision for the future helps in this regard. If you are not in a dire situation, it may be a very good opportunity for you to try out what you truly love and pursue it. Heck, it might be even the universe’s way of pushing you to do it. Sometimes bad things happen to allow good things to happen in the future. 

On the drawing board of life, decide for yourself who you want to be, what is really important in your life, what things (including people) do you need to get rid of and make sure you’re honest to yourself and very clear about it. It might be scary at first, but what needs to be done, needs to be done.

2. Learn From Your Mistakes

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We all make mistakes. That’s for sure, that is why it is said that to err is human. But, having said that, we must ensure or at least try to the best of our abilities that we should not repeat the same mistake again. 

If you want to reinvent yourself and your life, and if you are doing so because you failed at your last endeavour, you should learn the lessons from those failures and make sure that you don’t make them again on the new one. 

And not only that, we should also try to address our flaws. We all have them and it behooves us to minimise them for our own personal growth. If you are not aware of your flaws, make it your business to know them. How else will you become the best version of yourself with flaws attached to you?

3. Plan Your Future

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The two steps mentioned above lead to this. Once you are set in the mind to do something and you’ve realised what not to do this time, it is time for you to plan out how you’re going to reach your new destination. 

Since your plans have changed, the previous path won’t work. You will have to jump onto an entirely new one and you might have to recalibrate the various aspects of life in the process. 

Depending on your goal, you need to align your activities towards that goal. As always the future is uncertain but you need to have at least a vague idea of the different paths you might need to take to reach the same objective and it is always good sense to prepare for contingencies. 

Personally, I like to set short term and long term goals. You need to have minor milestones along the way before reaching the finish line. This helps you ascertain the correctness of your direction. You should design the short term goals in such a way that they lead to the bigger one. 

4. Re-Examine Your Social Circle

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Since we are social animals, people form the biggest part of our lives. At any given time, you are with your family or spouse or friends and colleagues. It is also a known fact that the people you surround yourself with have a big impact on your life and the way you think.

That is why you need to re-examine your social circle when reinventing yourself. If you want to be a musician and all you do it hang out with your old business friends, suffice it to say, you won’t make new connections in the music world. I’m not saying stop hanging out with your old buddies but rather expand your social circle to include people from this new world. 

What you should do is spend more time with people that are conducive to your growth, in the new direction you have chosen. In doing this, if you have to let some people go, do it! It is not shallow to let those people go who might hold you back.

In the end, you must remember that you are the director of your own destiny and you are the actor too!