Defining the New You

I recently had a conversation with someone very close to me. We were chatting about our life growing up and how much those experiences have affected how we handle various situations in our life today. Just this morning, a post on facebook came up asking me to tell the poster something about myself that they didn’t know. What I shared is the fact that I was kidnapped in 1959 when I was just a very small child.

So that is a very defining experience in my life and the long lasting affect that it has had on me is my fear for my safety. If we look at Freud, he purported that everything that we are as adults, is a direct result of our interactions with our parents, and in particular our mothers. Whilst I have never done enough research into his theories, I’m definitely not of the opinion that my entire life and how I handle my life now as an adult is mostly because of my mother. Of course we know that the person who will affect your life the most, is the same sex parent. Be that as it may, how exactly do you define yourself?

Many years ago, during some training at one of the big corporates that I worked for, we all had to develop an ‘elevator speech’, which if you don’t know what it is, it’s a kind of introduction paragraph whereby you define yourself in a succinct eloquent and unique way. So instead of saying that I’m a painter, you would say, Hi I’m Glynis, and I make people’s homes look amazing through my incredible and talented skill or something along those lines. The purpose of the speech I suppose is to not only make you appear interesting but to also hook someone into wanting to interact with you and find out more about you.

I should imagine that most of you have a way in which you define yourself, based on the sum total of your experiences. And perhaps some of those experiences have had a more profound affect on you than others and so you would use those experiences to define yourself. My conversation with this person who as I say is very close to me, went along the lines of, no matter what has happened in the past, she can’t just leave it there. She is of the total belief that it has defined who she is and that’s her personal truth, I suppose.

I have a very different opinion and whilst I do believe that your past certainly has an impact on your life, it doesn’t necessarily define you, only to the point of how much you allow it to. It’s all about being able to let go of those things that have had a particularly negative affect on your life, being grateful for the lesson and putting the lessons from those difficult experiences into practice so as to not relive those experiences over and over.

Now that we find ourselves in 2020 with Covid-19 on everyone’s lips, every conversation around the lockdown, how many new cases, how many recoveries, how many deaths? There is a chance that we can allow this very difficult time to define who we are. There is also a chance that we are presented with an opportunity to take stock of our life as it currently is, how it has been up to now, and to question whether or not we want to change it. I have no doubt that everyone wants to change something about their life! A starting point will be for you to perhaps redefine your elevator speech or if you’ve never written one, to prepare one for yourself right now and then to look at it and say, wow, do I want this to be how I define myself, or do I want something better?!

The question then arises, how do you define the new you? I should imagine that many people who have lost someone very close to them, have already had to go through this process on some level. Learning to live your life without someone who you thought you would share the rest of your life with, requires that you define a new normal for yourself and in effect, you define a new you.

I would recommend that you do it slowly and gently for yourself. Divide your page into two sections, and on one side write down all those really big events in your life that you believe have contributed to making you who you are. Linking back to those points, on the other side of the page, write down whether or not you would want to change how you feel about that particular event, or if there is something about yourself that has come about as a result of that situation, that you would want to change. Then on the next page, break it down even further. This is where you can start to plan what you can do to bring about those changes. Then setting a timeline for each aspect that you want to change with the particular emphasis on the desired outcome, so what would you want the goal to be – how changing that one aspect would contribute to defining the new you that you want to see.

It is only with conscious intense focus that we can take ourselves from point A to point B. Having it all in our heads is great, but we are all like children in a sweet shop, and our thoughts go from one thing to the next in a matter of a few minutes. How many times have you got into bed and thought something that struck you as an amazing idea, and by tomorrow morning, you’ve already forgotten what it was? One way to help control this is to keep a little notebook and pen with you all the time, and to write your thoughts down. And of course, writing down our plans for our life is a brilliant idea. Taking it that one step further and actually physically planning our life, will keep us on track when we go back each day and read through what we’ve written down. Making notes of how much we have already achieved and what we need to still do. Then keeping a to do list that we go through every morning, making a conscious effort to complete what is on that to do list and not just carrying it over every day.

I know it sounds like work, but when you start to do it and it becomes something that you consciously focus on, you will find it becomes a part of your life. And isn’t that what you want, to become a part of your own life? Instead of just letting yourself move from day to day on auto-pilot, take control and keep yourself focused on who the new you is. It doesn’t have to be a moving target which is why you need to break it down into manageable chunks and as you do so, you will find yourself achieving each milestone and you will see how much being in control of your life, defines the you who you want to be.