How To Reinvent Yourself

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Every week, I share stories, lessons, encouragement, and practical healing and growth practices from my life and work with others.

Hey Beloved, I'm Nakeia

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“Commit to doing small things differently every day.”

After significant life events such as divorce, job loss, or personal setbacks, most people crave significant change. Going from who you once were to who you want to be can inspire fear and worry, but also excitement and fulfillment.

This week’s episode outlines practical steps to reinvent yourself and create meaningful change in your life. We’re talking new vision, resetting your life, and I share how affirmations support personal change.

Although I view life as a continuum—some circumstances require us to become a brand new version of ourselves if we are going to become who we are meant to be.

Tune in now to start your personal reinvention.

The Difficulty Of Starting Over

At one point, everyone who inquired about working with me came to start over.

Women of all ages from all over with diverse backgrounds filled out a form on my website asking for guidance on starting over after divorce, a breakup, a major setback, like losing a job or battling an addiction. Some were deciding to pivot things like their careers or their lives.

One of my favorite programs I ever developed was inspired by my work as the program director at a domestic violence shelter. We served women who escaped domestic violence, often in the middle of the night. When I met a new client, I would sit, have a conversation with them, and eventually they went through the program I created called How to Reinvent Yourself.

Starting over isn’t necessarily easy at any age or under any circumstance, but if I had to personally start over again, here’s what I would do.

How to Reinvent Yourself

1. Create a new vision for my life.

And if you go to YouTube right now and check out my old channel, Nakeia TV, there is a visualization exercise there that is my most popular video. And I would take myself through that exercise and visualize my ideal day. I would just start with the day, from morning until evening. I would envision every single thing I would do from sunup to sundown. And I wouldn’t miss a detail. How my room looked, smelled, and felt would be included, and eventually, I would take that ideal day and make it an ideal life.

If one day of doing what I experienced in my vision was amazing, I’d want to repeat that every day, and that is how I would create a new vision for my life. That vision wouldn’t have any limits. There wouldn’t be any remnants of my past. It would be the most hopeful version of my life. And I’d start by just creating a new vision.

2. Do a hard reset.

You know how you have to reset your computer when it’s not acting right? I have to do this with the television after my son has been playing his games. I turn it completely off, shut everything down, reset some settings, and make some adjustments to get it back up and running properly.

So to reinvent myself, I would shut down as much of my life as possible. Anything I didn’t have to do, I wouldn’t. Anyone I didn’t have to talk to, I wouldn’t. I would shut most of my life down to get myself prepared for my next step…

3. Readjust to align with the new vision.

I’d reset my system and rewire it to meet the expectations of my new vision.

What am I doing every day?

Who am I with every day?

What is the work that I’m doing in the world?

I’d power my new vision up with a reset and readjustments.

4. Create affirmations to help create new neural pathways.

You know, I love to talk about neuroplasticity. I believe in it. I’ve used it in my own life and seen it work in others. Repetition rewires the brain. When you repeat something over and over again, you are introducing a new perception into your mind. You are introducing and creating new neural pathways that your behaviors can now follow, your mindset can now model, and your life can now reflect. So I’d create affirmations that align with my new vision, and say them every day.

This was my favorite thing to do with my clients at that domestic violence shelter. We create affirmations like:

I am deserving of good love and affection.

I deserve to live a life that is free of abuse and neglect and hardship.

I deserve a life free of struggle.

I will create a new life for myself and my children.

I will be successful in my career. I will love myself into the person I am created to be.

5. Draft a support plan.

I’d ask myself, Who can help? What do I need to learn? Where do I need to start showing up? Who do I need to ask for advice?

I’d create a plan that would support my new vision and my daily actions.

6. Commit to doing small things differently every day to build up for bigger changes.

Starting over and making huge changes is scary. When you’re not used to being somewhere, doing certain things, being around certain people, and showing up a certain way, you can experience some anxiety attempting to do those things for the first time.

So before I jump into any real big change, I’d start by taking a new route to work, changing my hair and makeup, wearing a new perfume, eating new foods, and just doing something small that was different and new every day. And guess what? Those small changes would be inspired by my vision. I’d ask myself other questions like, What would the new version of me wear? How would the new version of me smell? What route would the new version of me take? Am I a city girl or a country girl in my new vision? Do I take the highway or the backroads? Do I commute via train, or am I driving?

Any small thing I could start doing that aligned with that new vision, I choose to do it every single day. So ask yourself, What would the new version of myself do? and make adjustments, small adjustments that align with your new vision, and with the new version of yourself.

You can adjust that question to: What would the healed version of me do? What would the rich version of me do? What would the loved version, or the healthy version of myself, do? Whatever you need to say, just commit to doing something small.

7. Create a new timeline.

Change is not easy. Reinventing yourself takes time and adjustment. And so rather than running that old timeline, that old play, I’d create a new one. And I’d say, this is where I would love to be three months from now, six months from now. I like to even say a year from now. And this was helpful with my clients because

A lot of times you don’t know what the next day is going to look like or the next week is going to look like. So you need some time to sit with that vision, to embody the vision, and then to practice the vision. So give yourself time. Create a new timeline.

Moment Of Reflection

I have personally started over several times in my life.

I switched colleges after my first year. I’ve switched careers. I went from social work to music, back to social work, and then landed on the work that I’m doing right now. I moved 800 miles away from my family and friends… And it has never been easy. But it also doesn’t have to be daunting.

It will take some adjusting, some transitioning, some getting acclimated to the newness, but it is possible. Reinventing yourself is a matter of creating a new vision for your life, setting new intentions, committing to new habits, and supporting yourself every step of the way.

If you want to work with me on reinventing yourself this year, reach out.

Whether you work with me or work with yourself on these steps, you can become the person that you are meant to be. You can start over, pivot, make another choice, change your mind, do what you need to do as many times as you need to do it to align yourself with the highest version that is possible for you in this lifetime. It takes commitment, intention, and daily effort, but you can do it.

I hope that these steps are attainable, and I hope that you choose yourself, and that you choose to become who you are meant to be.

Until next time, beloved, I hope this helps.