You Can Always Re-Create Yourself. Here’s How.

Use my personal story as your guide.

Personality is not permanent. Nor is your current situation in life.

I used to be skinny-fat, unconfident, short-tempered, and pretty average in my career. Over the past several years, I’ve been able to change all of those qualities into more positive ones. I’m as fit as ever, confident in myself, can keep my cool, and am moving forward well in my career. I was able to accomplish all of that by re-creating myself.

Why and How to Re-Create Yourself

A lot of people think that their qualities are permanent. If they’re overweight, then they label themselves as fat. If they’ve always been unconfident, they think that it’s a curse for life. I used to have that kind of mindset too.

Unfortunately, these thoughts are further reinforced by those around us. For example, I would sometimes be told by friends and family that I “needed to calm down.” But rather than those words helping me, they reinforced the belief that I was the type of person to have a short temper. People keep saying it, so eventually, you absorb it and start to believe it.

The root of the problem is that most people don’t know that they can change themselves. They either think that society won’t allow them or that they’re not capable of doing so, because of the negative ideas that others have reinforced in their minds.

But this could not be further from the truth.

Your personality is not permanent. You can change the way you live your life at any time. You can re-create yourself at any time.

To be a confident person, all you have to do is start acting like one and you will be one right away. If you want to be successful in your career, start acting like someone who is; work hard and constantly be learning. You’re already successful in taking that action, and eventually, you will be in the eyes of others once you achieve your goals.

It will take time, but I assure you the more you move forward, the faster you will see positive changes. No fit person started out as fit. No confident person started out as confident. No successful entrepreneur started off with a multi-billion dollar business. They started with a clean slate, just like you and me.

As promised, I’m going to share with you a few of the ways I re-created myself over the past several years. You’ll also see how you can apply similar re-creations to your own life. I hope that they can help you see just how realistic re-creating yourself is and the massive life benefits it can bring.

Real Example #1 — From skinny-fat to fit

I used to be what people in the fitness world called “skinny-fat.” I wasn’t strong with big muscles, nor was I shredded with a sick pack; it’s the worst of both worlds. As you can probably guess, I wasn’t the greatest at sports or the coolest dude in school. On top of that, I was always told I was skinny (which frankly I was) by my peers, another reinforcing thought.

I re-created myself by becoming a fit person, through and through. I decided that “from now on, I’m a fit man.” I would have a clean, balanced diet. I would do weight-training, cardio, and the often overlooked mobility work as often as I could. I was going to be strong and healthy.

This wasn’t just for a short time. I wasn’t starting one of those fad diets. I was completely changing who I was as a person, in a good way. I was now a “fit man.” That new title was going to define how I looked after my physical health.

In time, the diet and workouts paid off. I can happily say I’m in great shape now and feeling better than ever about my physical health.

How you can apply it

Define a new way of living for yourself.

A lot of people associate certain qualities or titles to how they see you live your life. You can do the same thing yourself. Don’t just make a quick change for a month, re-define your lifestyle.

Here’s an exercise: pick a new title for yourself. You can say that you’re now a “fit person”, an “entrepreneur”, a “writer”, or “a courageous person.”. Once you do, live life as such a person would. Use the title as an imaginary role model that represents the person you’re going to become.

Real Example #2 — From unconfident to confident

One of the biggest 180s I ever did was boosting my confidence. My lack of confidence got reinforced a lot when I was a kid with phrases like “just be nice,” and “you’re so sensitive,” and the worst one of them all “you suck at that.”

The people who said these things weren’t (usually) saying them out of malice. They weren’t consciously trying to be mean. People just get used to making fun of each other. But at the time, I took those words quite seriously.

The way I re-created myself was by making the decision: “I’m going to do things that I’m no confident in until I’m confident in them. I won’t stop practicing until I’m confident.” It was sort of like confidence practice.

I learned that trick from a great book called The Confidence Gap. The key lesson from the book was that confident people didn’t start out confident. They became confident after becoming really good at what they were practicing. Eventually, you establish natural confidence because, well, you’re good at the thing you’re doing.

I took dance classes at school, Salsa and Bachata. I started cold-messaging people on LinkedIn for networking directly, people who were way above me in their careers. I started randomly striking up conversations with people on the street to practice my conversational skills.

I did these things because I was unconfident in them, with the goal that eventually I would become confident in them. I can now happily say that I’m a damn good dancer, great at networking, and overall just much more confident in my own skin.

How you can apply it

Take action in things you aren’t confident in. Confident people don’t start out as confident. They’re confident because they’ve practiced. If you’re scared of something, the only way to overcome that fear is to face it head-on.

Here’s an exercise: make a list of all the things you’d like to become more confident in. Then, for each list, make a sublist of actions that you can take in those things to practice them. Come up with a concrete schedule for doing them. It can help if there’s some type of commitment to it. For example, signing up for dance classes commits you to practice your dancing since you’ve already paid for it.

Real Example #3 — From short-tempered to stoic

I’ll admit, I used to have a short temper. I’d get angry or annoyed at the littlest things like slight hiccups in my day or things being off schedule (I have huge OCD). Of course, it didn’t help that my thoughts were reinforced by words like “too sensitive.”

My mindset about temper really started to change after I got into stoic philosophy, specifically reading Meditations. Stoic philosophy is all about gaining control over your mind. Its main teaching is that you can choose your opinion and feelings about any situation. All of your thoughts are within your reasoned choice.

To get better at controlling my emotions and temper, I established a small stoic habit. The stoics were big on journaling as a self-reflection exercise and I found great peace in writing out my thoughts. So, each night, I would write in a journal about my day.

Specifically, I would write about situations in which I had to control my temper that day. I’d write a few notes about which situations I did well in and others that had room for improvement. The goal was to eventually get to the point where I barely had anything to write down anymore because I had greater control over my emotions.

This simple habit worked wonders. By documenting my progress, I was able to reflect, and to constantly iterate and improve. I didn’t need an overnight success. With just a small improvement in performance every day, I eventually became a lot better. Stoicism now forms a central theme in how I live my life.

How you can apply it

Habits are a great tool for re-creating yourself. It’s hard to make massive overnight changes in personality. It’s much easier to establish a small, simple habit that supports your overall goal. Eventually, the small improvements will add up to change your life for the better.

Here’s an exercise: Look for just one simple habit that supports your overall goal. If you want to become a writer, start with writing 100 words every day. To read more, start with 5 pages every day. Little by little as you get more into it, you can increase your numbers. Eventually, those small steps will lead you to a great life.

What do you think about re-creating yourself? We’d love to hear about any personal stories you have!

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Recommended Reading

“Re-create yourself” is the 25th law in the 48 Laws of Power book. That law in particular is a great read for learning how to forge your own identity.

I’ve yet to read this one, but the book Personality Isn’t Permanent was written by a writer here on Medium Benjamin Hardy, PhD. It’s on my Goodreads bookshelf and just from the summary alone looks like it contains some great perspectives on how one can change their mindset about personality.