“Was it Beethoven’s dream to have the exact career he did? Was it Ray Charles’s or Oprah’s or Hawkings’? I’m guessing that it wasn’t. If you asked any of them what they envisioned their life’s work would be at age 5, 15, 25, 35, 45 and 55, you would hear dramatic changes in desires over each decade, and particularly across multiple decades.” -Roland Frasier
Many people have a small vision about themselves and their future.
They’re stuck in a box.
They think their future is fixed rather than fluid. They’re making overly detailed plans about who they are and where they’re going.
But really, you have no idea about how much your life can truly change. You absolutely can find yourself a year from now living in a reality you never thought imaginable.
You can go from being an Accountant to being a Writer. You can shock yourself and everyone around you with how much your life has changed. However, it will be entirely up to you.
As Benjamin P. Hardy once wrote,
“Your potential isn’t fixed, it’s limitless. However, it is you who determines how far you go. Not your genetics and not society.”
This article will explore a few ideas on how to reimagine yourself and your future.
Here we go.
You Are What You Repeatably Do
Action shapes personality. Thus, what you repeatably do becomes you.
If you want something different, then simply do something different.
The issue? Your context is far more powerful at shaping your behavior than you are.
For example, researchers have found that most people look at their smartphones around 100 times per day. Yet, those same people believe they only look at their phones 30–40 times per day.
Thus, at least half of those times were mindless and unintentional; they didn’t actively decide to pull out their phone and get sucked into a stream of distraction and entertainment, they simply found themselves doing it.
Hence the words Dr. Marshall Goldsmith,
“If you do not create and control your environment, your environment creates and controls you.”
So, where is “free will” now?
The truth is, that unless you actively decide how you’re going to act in each situation, then you will not have free will.
Rather, you will unwittingly act out your bodies learned subconscious patterns or succumb to the social expectations of your environment.
Hence, you can become whoever you intend when you decided your desired behavior and then shape your environment to reflect that commitment.
Changing your outer world absolutely will affect your inner world. Both are connected. You are a product of your environment. Hence why Jim Rohn has said,
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Also, why he echoed that statement with, “Don’t join an easy crowd; you won’t grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform are high.”
Never Stop Re-Inventing Yourself
“If you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.” -Neil Gaiman
Interestingly, when most people succeed in some form or another, they stop being willing to fail.
They become over-attached to their current reality and stop being willing to the very things that drove them there in the first place. They very quickly go from offense to defense.
But this is exactly how you get “frozen time,” which is not a fun way to live. Don’t become overly attached to the role you’re currently playing. Don’t make overly detailed plans.
Instead, constantly be re-inventing yourself and taking on new roles.
This isn’t about not having a vision for your future, instead, it’s about constantly adapting and expanding that vision so you’re not stuck in one place for too long.
As Tony Robbins has said,
“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.”
Of course, this will not be easy. Your subconscious mind will try to keep you stuck. It will conjure up all kinds of fear and doubt to keep you where you are.
But you got yourself here, you can get yourself there. Looking back, it’ll be easy to think that you previously had it all figured out and you’ve now lost your touch.
For example, I often look back on old blog posts and say, “That’s so good, I must have known what I was doing; why can’t I have that clarity all the time?”
But I didn’t know what I was doing. I simply took an idea and ran with it. I embraced the resistance. I put some thoughts on the paper and then hit publish.
Indeed, in order to constantly re-invent yourself, you have to keep facing the void. You have to keep asking the tough questions. You have to be brutally honest with yourself: is this the best you could do?
In Conclusion
What does your context say about you?
Have you decided who you intend to become and then created your environment around that, or does it create and control you?
No matter how much you succeed, don’t get stuck there.
Your future isn’t fixed, but rather highly adaptive and fluid.
Where you go and end up is entirely up to you.