Instead Of Finding Yourself, Dare To Reinvent Yourself Every Day

Instead of going far to find yourself, stay close and reinvent yourself. The person you are looking for is already within you and, more importantly, you can allow them to emerge in their best version, the one you choose. To do this, you just have to get rid of attachments, fears and conventions and start little by little a journey of self-discovery, challenges and transformations.

Few topics within the realm of personal growth are as prominent as self-knowledge and personal fulfillment. Hence, most of us are more than familiar with the idea that one of our vital purposes should be, neither more nor less, than to know who we really are. Now, taking this idea at face value can lead us to some contradiction.

To begin with, people are not stable entities. As living beings, we are constantly changing and all progress or variation is intended to promote adaptation and learning. Thus, and as we well know, the person we were ten years ago is not the same person who leaves home every day to face the world, to make it his own, enjoy it and make sense of it.

So you don’t need a trip to Tibet to find yourself. Each one of us finds ourselves daily in every little thing we do, in every achievement, in every mistake, in every passion and assumed learning. Now, to achieve authentic well-being and self-realization you have to reinvent yourself from time to time. Only then can our best version be revealed, the one that tunes in with desires, dreams and needs.

Finding yourself is fine, but dare to take it one step further

Instead of wondering who you are, make a little variation: ask yourself what you want from yourself. Doing so will allow you to clarify your purposes to gain momentum and become stronger. Somehow, much of self-help psychology has reminded us of the importance of finding ourselves overlooking a small aspect: our self is changing and is forced to rebuild itself every so often.

Every experience, every decision made, known person, read book, discovered hobby, visited country, etc., changes us. Every experience leaves an imprint on us. It is therefore not necessary that you go out to find yourself, you are already in everything that you touch, that you see and that you feel. However, you have an even more important responsibility to yourself: to achieve personal fulfillment.

To achieve this,  all of us are required to modify part of our identities as we move through our life cycle. By doing so, we not only mature, but allow ourselves to gain resilience, self-esteem, and happiness. What’s more, no matter how old we are, encouraging changes and reinventing ourselves is an exercise to practice when we think it’s necessary.

Reinventing yourself, a secret for eternal youth according to a study

A few years ago, Dr. Ravenna Helson, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, published one of the most highly valued papers on creative personality. The so-called ‘Mills Study’ followed 120 women over 30 years.

The objective was to analyze what personality changes they evidenced over 3 decades. The data was very revealing. It could be seen that those women who were able to reinvent themselves (take on new goals, start new activities, etc.) showed higher rates of well-being and health. This group, in their own words, managed to ‘become the people they have always wanted’.

Likewise, the ‘Mills Study’ showed that the age cohort with the greatest changes in personality and personal satisfaction was between 50 and 65 years of age.

Don’t worry about finding yourself, look for your best version

Viktor Frankl said that life is not made unbearable by circumstances, but by the lack of meaning and purpose. This is the real secret to finding happiness and personal fulfillment: having goals, objectives, dreams, wishes …

Life is movement and whether we like it or not, it is the changes that help us survive better so that everything continues to make sense. We make these variations in order to leave behind what is no longer useful, what no longer suits us, what smells of stagnant time and takes away our wings. A change in time, a fabulous reinvention, sometimes even allows us to breathe easier.

However, there is one aspect that we must be clear about. The task of reinventing yourself is not easy, it requires a certain challenge and a great deal of courage. What’s more, something that Master Eckhart, a well-known fourteenth-century philosopher and theologian, told us is that people cling excessively to who we are or think we are. In liberation there is fullness, in putting aside materialisms, fears and obsessions.

Reinvention is an act of freedom, it is the expression of one’s own identity, allowing us to go beyond the comfort zone to fulfill ourselves, to achieve well-being. Ask yourself who you want to be and work on that idea, on that purpose.