Feeling Stuck? 10 Ways to Re-Invent Your Life by Danuta Pfeiffer
Everyone is Chiseled. We emerge as the people we are by the sharp-edged tools of a sculpted life –the close calls, the sharp pains, the tricks and cheats that make life unfair, the highs and lows–we become formed by these inevitable forces. But that does not mean we are doomed to live at the mercy of those pressures.
If you are living a life that is unsatisfying, unhappy, unfulfilling or just feeling stuck–you have the ability to redefine your life and to reinvent it.
You can be the sculptor of your own Chiseled life!
If you’ve read my book, Chiseled, you saw me rise from the child of a dysfunctional immigrant family, to an unwed mother, to an idealistic journalist who gets caught up in the world of a television evangelist who is running for president, to a woman seeking her identity in the deep pockets of the Carpathian Mountains, eventually, finding my way to Oregon as a wife, a mother and a winemaker. If I can surf through these identities, so can you.
You don’t have to be stuck!
Here are 10 ways to reinvent and redefine your life beginning today:
1.) Change your relationships. You are defined by your relationships to people, places and behaviors. If you love gambling, but you’ve lost everything to it, change your relationship to that risky behavior. If you love painting landscapes, but you work in a concrete factory on the overnight shift, change your relationship to your job. If you are surrounded by nay-sayers and negative people, change your friends. Take control of your relationships and you control the definitions of who you are.
2.) Don’t be afraid to lose. Sometimes losing something makes way for gaining everything. It is impossible to fill a cup with new wine if it is overflowing with vinegar. If your possessions are holding you down, let them go. If you find yourself to clinging to old ideas, free yourself of them. Make room for the new you by shedding the old you.
3.) Lose your expectations. You don’t always have to know what’s going to happen next. Freeing yourself of expectations allows spontaneity and opportunity to bloom, offering pathways you could never have imagined.
4.) Clear the clutter. Have a garage sale. Letting go of “stuff” you don’t need lends physical support to an emotional and psychological need for uncluttered thinking, You’ll be surprised how you feel things “lighten up” as you clear the way for your new life.
5.) Start an exercise routine. Sure, it’s good for your health, but it rushes blood to the brain, releases the “good feelings” of endorphins and allows for creative thinking. You will begin not only to see you life differently, but you will actually feel the change coming on.
6.) Don’t get rattled by emotions. Fear, anxiety, lust, grief, uncertainty, hatred, loneliness, whatever has you in its grip, remember that those emotions come from a bunch of neurons and hormones in your body. Do not give your emotions permission to rule your life. Push them aside and clear your head for change with a cool, calm attitude. Breathing, meditation and physical exercise helps!
7.) Have a goal. You may not know how to get there yet, but have a general picture of what it is you want in your life. Do you want to lose wieght? Do you want to move to some place warm? Do you want a new job? Notice, I didn’t say, “Do you want to move to Hawaii,” or, “Do you want to lose 50 pounds.” Keep your goal in general terms–in front of you. Pin a picture of your goal on your morning mirror or your refrigerator. Make it real–in your head. The details will come to you unexpectedly. (We’ll discuss how that happens in a subsequent blog,)
8.) Don’t make detailed plans. Plans get messy. If you plan too much, you may fill your map with paths that may not be the most direct way to your goal. Keep your heart and mind open to opportunity. Spontaneity will bring you to your dream without effort. It takes a little faith, but those opportunities arise almost magically when you can picture your goal.
9.) Say your goal out loud. Sounds a bit hairy-fairy, but there is something about verbalizing what you want. You create energy with words. Words have vibration and make connections. Words build the goal from the world of your head to the pragamatic world of actuality. Think of them as the foundations building your goal.
10.) Get moving! Don’t just wait–but put your life in motion. It is difficult to drive a dream without an engine. Take a trip. Join a gym. Have that garage sale. Move to another city. Get a new job. Take golf lessons. Take a class at your community college. Learn a new language. But begin changing little things and be ready to jump when opportunity appears. And it will!
Danuta Pfeiffer now lives in a vineyard in Oregon, making fine wine with her husband Robin Pfeiffer.
