Reinvention at 2 Months: Warrior in Hiding

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As Spring began, I took on the task of reinvention--of seeing if I could consciously change from the inside out and operate out of a new identity more in alignment with the life of creative purpose I want to live.

I created a new identity to embrace--that of a Warrior of Aliveness--and set out to activate that Warrior within. I sought out power sources and consciously adjusted my inner dialogue to think differently and then act out of that new thinking.

From the start I met with an internal saboteur, what Stephen Pressfield calls "resistance," somehow infusing me with unwarrior-like complaints and excuses. Each time I thought I was making progress, a part of me revolted and went into hiding. Each time I attempted to gird my Warrior loins I looked to see my fly open on my couch potato's boxer shorts. I avoided my blog. I avoided life more often than usual. I felt stalled, stuck.

Yes, I admit it, after two months I just have not made the reinvention progress I had hoped for. I'm not proud. But I am also not done. I'm not giving up the battle. I may not yet be that Warrior I want to be but I am in small steps getting to know him better. I will talk to him directly in the next blog entry. For now, I am left with this from Pressfield's new book, Do the Work, as he describes "resistance," the force that stops us from doing the creative work and making changes in habits that we want:

Resistance is Insidious. Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that's what it takes to deceive you.
Resistance will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned.
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

Reinvention, Week 3: Seeking the Power Source

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Since continuous "reinvention" has emerged as a hallmark of innovation in the 21st century (and I'm overdue for one), I'm in the process of attempting an actual reinvention. It's Week 3 with a new identity--which I'm calling the Warrior of Aliveness--and I've quickly realized that to think differently and be guided by a real shift of belief from within, I need fuel. I need to plug into some kind of power source befitting a Warrior to keep the process on track.

In my 20s, I remember reading the 20th century spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, which introduced many westerners to eastern enlightenment through the life of Paramahansa Yogananda, the first yoga master of India to take up permanent residence in the West. Maybe, I thought, I needed to revisit Yogananda's wisdom to find a renewable power source.

I started by going to several yoga classes, which have generally revealed that I am pretty fat and lazy, with an unfocused mind that tends to drift and fall into its default, un-warrior-like patterns of distraction and complaints.

So to up the ante, I visited the local Kriya Yoga center here in Chicago to get some inspiration from Swami Kriyananda, the foremost living disciple of Yogananda. I was witness to a live feed via Skype of the old bearded man himself, who has many thousands of followers throughout the world. I listened intently to him for a message that could fuel me or at least steer me in the right direction. The Warrior within awoke as Kriyananda suggested that a life worth living is one in which you discover and pursue a mission worth dying for. You can't let yourself be limited by the "web of words," he said, referring to the cultural mindset around us. "Instead, create your own mantra."

Create my own mantras. Yes.

My inner guidance flickers and changes its message too often. Becoming a warrior is in large part mental, I know, and right now the natural "mantras" of my monkey mind are not empowering me. They change, they doubt. They point out how ridiculous I am. They sabotage with excuses and grievances that sound legitimate but do nothing to improve the quality of my life.

I know that to be equipped to battle for my own aliveness and the aliveness of others, I must think differently and be fueled by a different mindset. But, as Kriyananda reminded me, I have to create it. I have to choose this mindset. I have to rewrite my mental script in such a way that loose wiring becomes hard, and doubt insists on clarity. My power source must, at least in part, come from newly created mantras of my own design.

All right, Warrior, time to create.

Reinvention, Week 2: Identity Shift

Last week I discussed "reinvention"--a popular buzzword and new imperative for ongoing success in business and life in a culture of constant change--and decided it's time for me to take it on myself. What will it really take for me to reinvent myself? I ask this question seriously and with an actual lump in my throat.

Lately my ongoing attempts to live a creative life and spark creativity in others have not led to enough satisfaction or sense of purpose for me. I seek sustained changes and new results that only full reinvention can spark. My typical back door methods--perhaps a splash of charm or a well-placed creative quip--are no longer cutting it.

It's time for me to jump into the cold water of reinvention and learn how to swim, even if my flesh has to wrinkle and age and prune and peel.

Okay, so let me repeat from last week: Reinvention cannot happen unless there is a fundamental change in belief about myself. I can't just wear purple clothes and say I have been reinvented. I have to change something within--something that shifts my guiding mindset--and let it work its way out. Maybe it's possible to do that instantly but I've never discovered how. Coming up with new ideas is not my problem. But they lead only to occasional reinvigoration. Not real reinvention.

So I've decided to change a fundamental belief--the belief about my identity itself. I've been stuck in whoever I thought I was and not able to bring about changes I wanted in my life. So forget whatever my identity was two weeks ago. As of last week, I took on another, may the flags be unfurled and words now capitalized.

I am a Warrior of Aliveness.

Yes, you heard me. Warrior. Of Aliveness. That's the new identity I have been working from in order to realize reinvention that sticks. Warrior of Aliveness. WOA.

If you know me, you know that I am not a particularly warmongering man. Yet there is something about the uncompromising mission of a warrior that appeals to me right now. And generally I believe in language grounded in specific, concrete reality. "Aliveness" doesn't really do that. But it works for me. I will explain more in the future.

For now, as I've been settling into this new identity, I've realized that I need an ongoing power source to survive in this world. It's not easy to be a Warrior of Aliveness in the thought-mind I currently own or in the 21st century Chicago culture I am surrounded by. So I must find certain kinds of fuel that enable my warrior-fire to burn within. I now go off to seek it.