part0008

Turning yourself, your life, your mind into the You that you always wanted. It's the guts to be relentless, to take charge of your life, define and fulfil your mission. Become who you truly are. It's having the balls to stand up and say, No. No more will I be less than I can. No more will I accept a living that is less that my vision.

L et's set the context. Who is this book for? It is for You. Are you living the life you wanted? Are you unable to achieve lasting change in your life? Are you constantly failing to start what you know you should be doing?

Are you constantly giving up on yourself in the first yard? Have you lost hope in yourself because every time you try, it seems to end in failure?

Have you given up on your vision or your dreams? Do you wish there was something that could enable you to achieve more happiness, more results in your life, with less pain?

This book is for anyone whose life does not match the blueprint they have in their head. My life does not match the blueprint in my head which is exactly why I am writing this book.

We all have aspects of our life that have not turned out the way we expected. We all have areas of our life we want to work on, yet another year goes by and we are still in the same situation.

Therefore, this book is written for You.

There are ideas in this book that will enable you to re-invent yourself. There are techniques and insights that will enable you to create the best possible blueprint to improve your life.

Stop. Start. Re-Invent is a wake-up call for "Personal Re-Invention". You are as you are right now, but you can be all the things you want to be.

What is it going to take for you to stand up and say:

“No more will I settle for less. No more will I settle for the way I am. No more will I accept this way of living when it's not the living I had dreamed of"?

What level of pain will you have to experience to stand up and take charge of your life?

What will you have to do to become the best version of You that you know you can be?

What are the words you will have to hear to change your thinking and stop quitting on yourself?

What is it that has to happen for you to define your life and live it?

It's true: time is running out to do the things you said you would, and time is running out for you to be the person you know you can be.

Although I feel twenty-eight years old in my head, I feel like I'm running out of time, wrapped up in the problems and aspects of my life that just don't work for me.

Maybe you are in an unhappy relationship or have poor health, living hand to mouth, or suffering from addiction, depression, low self-esteem and fear?

Maybe you are unhappy with your career or your finances?

We all have something that is just not working for us and we all have a story that we tell ourselves. The story that explains all these things. I learned that my current story will not build me a new future unless I change my story and match that with different actions.

There was no promise at the beginning of our life that it would be a walk in the park. Everyone has problems and it's said that problems are life. Seems a bit bleak to me because I think there is more to life than just problems.

I think that once we accept that life can be so much more than problem after problem, it enables us to start looking forward. It's the constant pushing against the resistance that turns us into new people with new insights and new abilities

It's this same pushing which gives us life and in the gaps, we find happiness, peace, love, appreciation and all those things that we expected to land in our laps without any effort.

Whether we like it or not, the changes that we experience are often unconscious, relentless and delivered every second. What if together, we could start ordering the exact changes we want?

This book is written for You as a tool to create the change that you want in your life. Change is inevitable for everyone so why do we let it just happen to us all? By making a conscious decision to invest in yourself you can get the outcomes, the circumstances and the results that you want.

How many times has your inner voice said "I am going to...., I will start to ..., I want to be ..." but you and your life just get in the way and you go bouncing from side to side?

We tell ourselves "I could never..." or "I would but...". It’s time to change that inner dialogue.

I want you to use what’s in this book and apply it to your life. Unlock your inner child’s passion to be alive and move yourself forward in the direction that you want. I always remember the line "Life is not a rehearsal" so just do it anyway.

If we want a different reality, then we must stop bouncing around. There is only one chance. That chance is Your Life. Don't do what so many have done before you - find yourself in your last hours saying, "I could have done so much more, what was I scared of?" You are the only person in the entire universe that was given your dream; your vision of You.

No matter who you are or what your situation, you can re-invent yourself. Personal re-invention is just that - it is personal to you.

People can turn their lives around, their careers, beat depression, illness, overcome dire personal circumstances and abuse, educate themselves, become wealthy, successful or simply commit every day to walking to work.

It's not the size of the change that counts, it's the fact that you made it possible.

The race is only with yourself. Your challenges and desires are personal to you. What is a huge re-invention to one person may be a simple task for another, so resist the temptation to compare You to anyone else whose thoughts you can't read.

I used to be a mind-reader, but I got fired due to translation issues.

The commonality in all personal reinvention is the achievement of the outcomes that we want. It's the achievement and knowing that says:

I am the me I planned for, I am no longer the me that got here as result of random acts of universal change.

So, stop watching mindless TV, drinking endless amounts of coffee, telling yourself "I am too tired".

If you are tired now how much more tired will you be a year from now or in ten years’ time?

This time last year, or even four years ago, was your life mostly the same? Did you have the same vision during those years and yet still find you have not achieved any or all of it?

Let's be clear on one thing. Re-inventing yourself is not about pursuing a new life at the expense of the things in your life that are good, that are right, that are precious. You cannot re-invent yourself by discarding the critical assets you already have.

You cannot discard important aspects such as your family, love, kindness, giving time to your children or your partner. Those assets that do match perfectly with your blueprint should be held on to and remain integral to who you are.

We won't be turning at a right angle away from all the things that you have built in your life, which are in alignment with what you want. We will be learning to work with them, to knit them into your new reality.

Remember that you are not alone in your personal re-invention. This book documents my own personal re-invention.

This is a journey. It is simple but it won't be easy and that's exactly why you haven't re-invented yourself yet. It's tough, it requires resilience, determination, passion and fun in the process.

This is my blueprint, this is how I am re-inventing myself, this is how I have done it in the past.

One of the gifts this book will give you is a wider mindset.

Experts are only experts in what they know and that concludes they do not know everything. This statement certainly includes me.

I am going to expose you to other people who have inspired me, other people I have learned from. There will be parts of this book where the message is not original. There will be plenty of references to the people who inspire me. I will share with you who they are and where to find their best material.

We will do this together.

You are already amazing. Now let's smash it.

Remember that this is the first book in the STOP. START. RE-INVENT series. The other two books cover the START and the RE-INVENT aspects of personal re-invention.