STAGE 1: IDENTIFY THE NEED
OUR DESIRE TO CHANGE IS usually triggered by some type of dissatisfaction we experience within one or more dimensions of well-being. We receive signs that tell us that something about our current situation or way of living isn’t sustainable for the future, isn’t driving us toward greater happiness, or isn’t allowing us to be at our best.
Sometimes the signs are quite obvious, while at other times they may be subtler. And sometimes the signs are there, but it is difficult to decipher their root cause. Learning to identify that change is needed is extremely important, but so is understanding why. This is a crucial first step in constructing the life you want.
Step 1: Understand the Types of Signs. A need for change manifests itself in one of three types of signs: rational, physical, or emotional.
Step 2: Take a High-Level Assessment. Assess the importance and satisfaction you feel within each dimension of well-being to gauge areas for change.
Step 3: Identify the Signs. Identify rational, physical, and emotional signs you have been experiencing within each dimension of well-being.
Step 4: Feel the Impact. Assess the impact of each sign to evaluate if it is a Sign of Significance (SOS).
Step 5: Assess Causes of Rational and Emotional SOS. Assess root causes of rational and emotional Signs of Significance.
Step 6: Assess Causes of Physical SOS: Assess root causes of physical Signs of Significance and to which dimensions of well-being they may be linked.
STAGE 2: DISCOVER YOURSELF
TO SUCCESSFULLY UNDERGO A PERSONAL REINVENTION and be your best, you need to have a deep understanding of yourself: how you’ve become the person you are today, and where your perspectives and thoughts originated. In short, you want to uncover your authentic self.
The self-discovery process is probably the most intense yet rewarding stage of the process. It is likely that you will spend a bit of time going through this stage. Through a variety of self-assessments and activities, you’ll uncover and gain further insight into your values, talents, passions, upbringing, and social and environmental influences, as well as the life experiences that have made you who you are and influence how you think and behave. Essentially, you are building self-awareness.
Step 1: Define Your Values. Defining your values will provide you with the basis from which your reinvention can start.
Step 2: Identify Your Strengths and Acknowledge Your Weaknesses. Identifying your strengths will be important in creating a plan that capitalizes on your talents, while understanding your weaknesses will help you know what to avoid integrating.
Step 3: Identify and Address Your Fears. Identify your fears, both past and current, so you can find ways to overcome them and take more risks to build the life you want.
Step 4: Identify Your Passions. Identifying your passions will be helpful in creating a plan that continues to motivate you.
Step 5: Celebrate Your Accomplishments. Your accomplishments will act as reminders of what you are capable of so that you stay inspired throughout the process.
Step 6: Learn from Your Failures. Failure is inevitable for even the most successful of individuals. It should be seen as a positive experience that affords you an opportunity to learn and grow.
Step 7: Determine Your Motivators. Your motivators will be used to help keep you motivated and inspired throughout your reinvention.
Step 8: Understand Your Upbringing. Understanding your upbringing provides insights into why you are the way you are and how your upbringing has influenced your life. This will help you to evaluate what is truly important to you as an individual rather than what might have been passed down to you or expected of you.
Step 9: Evaluate Other Life Experiences. Life experiences outside of the home have also had a large impact on you and your life. Understanding these will help you to gain a deeper understanding of who you are.
Step 10: Determine What You Want. Define what you want out of life so that you can begin visualizing your ideal future.
Step 11: Write Your Personal Mission Statement. A mission statement provides you with a personal constitution of how you want to live your life and the type of person you want to be.
STAGE 3: DESIGN YOUR VISION
WHEN A COMPANY IS INTERESTED in driving change within its organization, it creates a vision statement. The vision is a declaration of where the company hopes to be in the future and provides the organization with direction and the motivation to make changes that will get it there. Just as vision statements help companies, they can also help individuals reach their goals.
In Stage 3: Design Your Vision, you are going to focus on developing your personal vision statement, which will guide you on your path to personal reinvention. A personal vision is a picture of your future. This picture gives direction to the changes you want to make and can be used as a tool to inspire you to move forward in aligning your actions with specific end goals in mind. Without a vision of the future, efforts toward change lack meaning and purpose, and instead of forging ahead, you might find yourself aimlessly waffling through life. A vision provides the clarity needed so that decisions are easily made and action can be taken that supports reaching future goals
Step 1: Verify Work from Stage 1. Verify your work from Stage 1 to see if it is consistent with your findings from Stage 2. Make revisions if necessary.
Step 2: Map the Gap. Looking at the signs of significance you verified, map the gap between how things are today and how you want them to be in the future.
Step 3: Picture Your Ideal Tomorrow. Tell a story of how you want your future to look.
Step 4: Draft Your Vision Statement. Write your vision statement for the future.
Step 5: Evaluate for Effectiveness. Evaluate your vision statement to see if it adheres to the key qualities of an effective vision stipulated in Step 4. Revise as necessary.
Step 6: Communicate Your Vision. Find ways to outwardly communicate your vision so that it has a more formal and permanent role.
STAGE 4: CREATE THE PLAN
YOU JUST CREATED YOUR VISION for the future, and for a better, more improved you. Now you need to develop a plan that helps you make it happen. A plan is essential to taking your vision from dream to reality. It is the mechanism that provides you with a clear path to take action and to succeed. It involves setting major goals and milestones, and then designing a set of action steps that direct you toward meeting them. In essence, the vision is the what you want to achieve, and the plan is the how you will do it.
Step 1: Find your vision, create end goals that follow the SMARTE framework.
Step 2: Research What Is Required. Do research to understand what will be involved to achieve each of your end goals.
Step 3: Prioritize Your Goals. Based on two qualities—impact and difficulty—prioritize your goals so you know what to focus on first, second, third, etc.
Step 4: Break Goals into Milestones and Action Steps. Based on your findings in Step 2, break your end goals into smaller goals—milestones and action steps.
Step 5: Assign Time Frames to Goals and Milestones. Identify appropriate target dates for the completion of each of your milestones and end goals and, if appropriate, action steps.
Step 6: Build In a Rewards System. Identify appropriate rewards that allow you to acknowledge and appreciate your progress as you go through your process.
Step 7: Build In Regular Checkpoints. So that you can properly do the work in Stage 6, identify regular checkpoints at which you will evaluate your progress.
STAGE 5: MAKE IT HAPPEN
Even the best plans can fail if the execution is faulty. Often, this can be a result of an unforeseen roadblock that seems overwhelmingly difficult to navigate, a lack in dedication or commitment, or a lack in sustained motivation. Regardless, proper action is the precursor to making change successful.
Hopefully, due to all the work you’ve done thus far, you at least have the initial motivation you need to take the first step. To ensure you have long-term follow-through, however, you’ll want to know how to overcome roadblocks when they present themselves, and how to continually fuel your internal motivation and commitment so that you are inspired to constantly make progress.
Step 1: Find the Right Tracking Tool. Choose a tracking tool that will help you keep track of your progress throughout your personal reinvention.
Step 2: Build In Time Required. Ensure that you make time for the changes you want to make and the goals you want to achieve.
Step 3: Remove Negative Obstacles. Find ways to remove obstacles that present themselves along your path. This pertains to negative or unhealthy relationships and environments, or even negativity within yourself.
Step 4: Develop Your Support Network. Lean on friends and family for emotional support, and utilize experts for help and assistance in achieving your goals and vision.
Step 5: Create Your Motivational Toolbox. Develop a personalized toolbox of motivational tools that will continue to inspire you along your path to personal reinvention.
Step 6: Modify Key Habit Loops That Require Change. Modify habits that are obstacles to change or that are producing unhealthy results.
Step 7: Address Inconsistent Behavior. Identify when you are best able to maintain specific healthy and productive behaviors and find ways to encourage consistency.
Step 8: Expect to Fail…A Little. Set the expectation that failure is a healthy and necessary part of the process of change.
STAGE 6: MONITOR YOUR PROGRESS
Regularly monitoring your progress provides numerous benefits. For starters, it keeps you abreast of the positive impacts your changes are making in your life. This will continue to motivate you in making further change. Second, by monitoring your progress, you continue to hold yourself accountable for the results (or lack of results) you see. Finally, it can strengthen your plan for change by giving you an opportunity to evaluate what is working and what isn’t so that you can make appropriate modifications in a timely manner.
Step 1: Evaluate at Each Checkpoint. At each checkpoint, evaluate your progress. Look for opportunities to improve your plan so you can be more effective in achieving your goals.
Step 2: Revise as Necessary. Revise your plan to respond to your findings from Step 1. Also, look at your habits to see if there are any habit loops that should be modified or inconsistent behaviors that need to be addressed.
Step 3: Repeat on a Regular Basis. Throughout your plan, continually monitor your progress.
