Reinventing Yourself - Step II. - The Process

The Blueprint for Reinventing Yourself

Become who you are!
-F. Nietzsche

The seed has been planted.

In the last episode we have officially begun the most fulfilling part of the Self-Reinvention.

We went down the rabbit hole to find out what exactly led Nietzsche to this powerful concept of Recreating One’s self and to the above mentioned inspirational signature quote of this series.

Today, we proceed to the Self-Reinvention process itself.

The whole process of Self-Reinvention can be broken down into 4 steps:

1) Foundational Self-Analysis & Concept comprehension

2) Vision creation (painting the overall mental picture)

3) Avatar sculpting (clearly defining the new YOU)

4) Transformation (Identity shift)

If you follow this series since the beginning, you’re already done with both parts of the first step. (If not you can read them here:)

1. Episode I.

2. Episode II.

3. Episode III.

4. Episode IV.

The steps 3 & 4 will be broken down in the upcoming episodes.
Now, without further due, let’s dive deep into step 2.

Vision Creation

Once you’ve analyzed yourself thoroughly and accepted what your First Nature is, you have basically two options. You can either conclude “that’s just who I’m” and continue to live the same life as you have until now - an option most people choose, usually just semi-consciously.

OR

You can choose to live out the Will to Power principle and force life to adjust to your terms. Well, not completely of course. But your personality as well as persona are definitely a subject to your willpower.

Belief - The Starting point

So before you begin to craft your Second Nature, you have to deeply internalize the ROOT TENET OF SELF-CREATION:

WHO YOU ARE IS COMPLETELY AND EXCLUSIVELY UNDER YOUR CONTROL

Without this belief deeply ingrained in your mind & soul no change is possible.
Give this core-belief time to settle. It’s really important for everything that comes later.

Here’s a few tips to let this seed take roots:

- Take it with you on your walks outside

- Incorporate it into your daily journaling for a week

- Debate the conviction with your friends. What do they think about it?

Beware: Intellectual understanding isn’t the same thing as spiritual integration.

Just because something makes sense to you or seems logical doesn’t necessarily mean that you already deeply believe it. It’s rather the case that the former is the prerequisite for the latter. It’s easier to start believing in something when you can wrap your head around it. This process is gradual rather than sudden.

Lasting belief takes time to develop.
So take your time.

The Vision - A mental picture

Whether you have an artistic nature or not - you are the artist now.
A painter now, a sculptor later.

You pull off all your notes (whether they be just mental or physical on the paper) taken during the initial Self-Analysis and start outlining the new version of you. We’ll save calling it a “new person” for a later point.

To put the task really clearly here:

YOU IMAGINE WHAT KIND OF PERSON YOU WOULD LIKE TO BECOME

… as that dictates what your life’s gonna look like.

The “what kind of” is more important here than it might seem at first. You want an idea, a holistic and somewhat vague concept of the best future YOU. Psychologist Dr. Maxwell Maltz calls this in his brilliant book Psycho Cybernetics a Self-Concept. The clarity will be a subject to a later step. For now, “vague” is good enough.

For now let’s focus on the Overall outline of your Second Nature.

This happens on two levels: WHAT & HOW

THE WHATs

When rethinking who you want to become, consider these categories:

1. Attitude
   - Think about it in the terms of “polar opposites” - What’s more typical for you?
   - passive x active
   - negative x positive
   - aggressive x defensive
   - intellectual x sensational (gut feeling)

   - calculated x spontaneous
   

2. Habits

   • What habits would you like to keep and which one to dismiss?

   • What habits do you want to adopt from your close relatives and which one do you want to avoid?
     (We all become our dads and moms to a certain degree later in life, it’s important to what we should try our hardest not to adopt)
     
     

3. Inherited strength & weaknesses
   - Count your curses & blessings - mental and physical ones
   - Abilities, Talents, Genetic predispositions, Mentality
   
   

4. Developed strengths & weaknesses
   - What have you dedicated our life so far to?
   -Don’t ditch a skill if you have developed some, think how to make them useful
   - What is your N.1 weakness and how could you make it irrelevant or less impactful to your goals?
   
   

5. Adopted beliefs
   - your own, from parents and from society
   - Are they true? Are they helping you or sabotaging you?
   
   

6. Limits
   - Are they really where you think they are?

   - What if you imagined “the absurd” for a brief moment?)
   
   
   These are the “WHATs” of developing an overarching vision.
   Let’s see the second part - the HOW’s
   
   

   THE HOWs

At the heart of Self-Reinvention lies the overused but powerful word CHANGE.
Change, however can happen in two dimensions:

1. POLAR OPPOSITES

2. SPECTRUM

POLAR OPPOSITES - This is the “hot shift” or “going cold turkey” kind of change.
You can ask Katy Perry whether you should call it Hot or Cold, but the main thing is that you understand that there is no gradualness in this kind of transition. The nature of this change is abrupt, intense & immediate. The results, however, are not always long lasting.

When dealing with “Polar Opposites” you’re dealing with the “absolutes” of your personality. It can be very effective but also very dangerous. If you choose this way for your own Self-Reinvention, be ready to alienate some people from your life.

SPECTRUM- This is a slower, gradual change. It also rarely reaches the absolutes. It’s the Self-Reinvention in the spirit of “to be more like this” or “less like that”. You fine tune your characteristics. You take baby steps to become a little bit more self-controlled in your manners, a tiny bit more aggressive in your actions and tactics - whatever you want - but you take it slow and steady.

This change is much more natural, sustainable, but takes time and patience.

There is no one fits all approach. It’s hard to say which one of these is better. Some people work better on abrupt changes (diets and quitting smoking are eternal topics in this matter) others like to take it step by step. Revising your attitude and past experiences should give some idea on which route to take. But in general, the people who go for the “polar opposites” and succeed in attaining a lasting change are rather a minority.

YOUR TO DO LIST:

1) Craft a new Self-image in your mind

2) Outline the WHATs of your Second Nature

3) Choose your HOW

4) Write it all down


It’s a lot, I know. But Self-Reinvention is no small task and takes a great deal of work. So if you’re serious about this, block out at least a couple hours, for example on weekend’s afternoon and put it all on paper.

Next time, we’ll bring the CLARITY.

Thank you for reading!

See you soon,
fellow thinker!

YT: Nietzsche Academy