It is December 25, 2015. In just a few days, you have an opportunity to start afresh with New Year resolutions. Maybe it’s the weight you wanted to lose, the new skill you wanted to acquire or the leap you wanted to make to start your own business. Now ask yourself how many times you have honored your resolution in all the years that have passed since you started thinking about some strategy for reinventing yourself.
Who said New Year is the best time to start a new resolution?
Let’s address a basic question first. Why New Year? Why not an alternative proposition? One way to think about reinvention is to understand how the human body does this naturally. Every day, around 50 billion cells are left behind to die and about the same number of new cells replace them. The entire transformation of the human body – all 38 trillion cells – takes place every 6-8 years – but the transformation is not one BIG change. It is instead a multitude of transformations that take place every hour, every day, every week.
So a strategy for a daily/weekly resolution such as “absolutely no processed food tomorrow” or “must get in touch with at least 2 old friends next week” is probably going to work much better and set off a chain reaction of small but many positive successes. If you fail on a particular occasion, start tomorrow again rather than waiting for 2017.
It’s not just about what you want, it is also about what you are willing to ditch
To lighten the load, you need to jettison some stuff – old beliefs, behaviors, baggage. As the human body jettisons old cells to give way to new ones, you need to think about what you are willing to throw off the boat that will make it an easier journey. Watching 2 hours of TV every day, managing an uneasy relationship, eating sugar-laden foods – all of this can be cut out in gradual steps and in a manner you determine.
Every day is ground zero
Reinventing yourself starts every day. Every day starts from ground zero – it does not matter what you gained before or what you lost before. It does not matter how fit you were last year or how successful you are today. Tomorrow is a new day and only you can decide if you step in a positive direction, a negative direction or take no action at all.
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