As we enter a new year and our timelines become flooded with messages of "ease," "new year, new me," "ins and outs," and "resolutions," reinvention, specifically how to reinvent yourself, is another frequently discussed topic during this time of year. While I am all for self-improvement and define myself as a personal development girlie (shout-out to my Virgo Moon), I also must admit that being inundated with the cornucopia of self-development content that is at its peak during this time of year can feel a little overwhelming, even to me.
The desire to transform and start fresh that often comes with the beginning of the new year and the subsequent shedding of old skin can also have you questioning where exactly to begin in your attempts to reinvent yourself. According to Dr. Kim Foster, M.D., the journey to reinvention and changing your life starts with the very foundational shift of changing your identity.
"The secret to true transformation isn’t in setting more goals or working harder or even changing your environment. Those things can help, but they are not the core of what actually drives change. The real key is your identity. It’s who you believe you are at your core," Dr. Foster said in a video uploaded to YouTube entitled "The Ultimate Guide to Reinventing Yourself in 2025." To her, "behavior follows identity," and the most important work in reinvention lies not in what you do but in who you become.
With Dr. Foster's insights in mind, the following list of reinvention micro tips is designed to cut through the online noise and focus on actionable steps that align with the deeper work of becoming the person you need to be to truly reinvent yourself.
1.Define and visualize:
Delmaine Donson/Getty ImagesReprogramming your mindset starts with seeing yourself differently and visualization is a powerful tool to usher in that transformation. By defining your future self in vivid detail, you create a blueprint for the person you are becoming. Visualization techniques allow you to practice embodying that version of yourself before the external shifts happen, bridging the gap between who you are now and who you want to be. Some visualization techniques include:
The understanding here is that the more you see it, the more you’ll believe it, and with time, the more you’ll become it.
2.Create an identity board:
If you want to know want to know what an identity board is, it's like a vision board, but better. While vision boards are known for their ability to help you focus on external aspirations and goals, identity boards are great tools to use that help you delve deeper than what's outside of yourself. Instead, it helps you better align with the values, traits, and mindset of the dream identity you are working toward.
As Peace Immam shared in her YouTube video, an identity board can be a transformative tool for reprogramming your subconscious beliefs and shifting away from limiting patterns that keep you playing small. According to Peace, identity boards can be very specific to you, including images or symbols that represent the mindset, lifestyle, and habits you desire to become versus what you want to achieve outside of you.
By focusing on the habits, traits, and lifestyle of that reinvented version of you through an identity board, you place yourself on the path to embodying the identity, aligning with the energy and behaviors of your present self with the reinvented self you are becoming.
3.Write a personal mission statement:
ShutterstockIf creating an identity board isn’t your thing, crafting a personal mission statement is another powerful way to gain clarity, vision, and focus. A personal mission statement helps you align your values with your goals. This simple yet impactful exercise anchors you in your journey of reinvention, aligning you with the energy of your dream self while shaping your decisions and daily habits.
When you define who you want to be and the life you want to create, you give yourself a roadmap to move through life with intention. Whether it’s a paragraph or a single sentence, your personal statement keeps you grounded in your purpose and future vision.
4.Pay attention to your thoughts and change your inner dialogue:
Whether you realize it or not, your inner dialogue influences how you see yourself and what you believe is possible at your core. Negative self-talk and limiting beliefs can keep you tethered to a version of yourself you've outgrown, making it difficult to step into your fullest potential. Similarly to what Dr. Foster touched on at the start, a big part of reprogramming your identity lies in observing these thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve you and consciously choosing to rewrite them.
You can begin by paying attention to what you think about yourself, i.e., your strengths, your worth, and your abilities. When you catch yourself thinking limiting beliefs, challenge them by replacing them with self-affirmations that reflect the version of yourself you are becoming. This practice helps align your inner dialogue with the energy and mindset needed to match that of your future self.
True transformation happens when your beliefs about yourself are in harmony with the person you need to be to achieve your goals.
5.Thoughtfully build your circle:
Vladimir Vladimirov/Getty ImagesThe relationships and connections you surround yourself with play a vital role in your journey of reinvention. Evaluating your circle isn’t just about letting go of toxic friendships or relationships that no longer serve you, it’s also about intentionally creating a support system that aligns with your values, goals, and the person you’re becoming. Thoughtfully curating your circle ensures you have the foundation you need to thrive.
Nurture friendships and connections that are healthy, uplifting, and reciprocal. Look for bonds that foster your growth and provide mutual encouragement, and don’t overlook the importance of community care. Building networks outside of romantic relationships, be it through mentors, colleagues, online groups, or hobby-based communities, creates a web of support that can inspire, guide, and uplift you as you evolve.
6.Carve out space for God and meditation:
A recurring theme across the reinvention is the importance of nurturing a spiritual life. In the videos I watched specifically, some creators shared that they meditate daily for grounding and clarity, while others emphasized the importance of carving out time for God at the start of their day by watering their relationship with Him through prayer, focus, and connection.
Prioritizing this spiritual time helps center you, providing the clarity, peace, and strength to rise to your fullest potential and stay aligned with your purpose. A daily spiritual practice helps center you, giving you the clarity and focus to rise to your fullest potential.
7.Invest in yourself:
Rocka/Getty ImagesReinvention requires intentional investment in your growth, confidence, and well-being. Start by refreshing your wardrobe to reflect the elevated version of yourself you’re stepping into or developing a signature scent that embodies your essence. Cultivate different routines (morning, night, self-care, skincare, etc.) that support this transformation and help you feel aligned with your new identity daily. Beyond the physical upgrades, invest in your personal development through courses and classes that support your talents, teach new skills, and refine your strengths.
If you have the means, consider working with life coaches or therapists, even temporarily, as they can act as guides and accountability partners on your journey. These professionals provide tools to help you hone in on your life vision, stay aligned with your goals, and navigate the challenges of growth with clarity and intention.
When you pour into yourself, you create fertile ground to flourish in your reinvention.
8.Leave your comfort zone:
You know what they say, growth begins where your comfort zone ends. Trying something outside of your usual routine, like attending an event alone, starting a new hobby, or exploring a new city, helps you build confidence and expand your perspective, which is why leaving your comfort zone is a powerful cheat code to reinvention. Want to know another cheat code for stepping out of your comfort zone? Making regular solo dates a practice.
Take yourself to a new restaurant, explore a museum, or try an activity you’ve always been curious about, all in the name of cultivating independence and deepening your connection with yourself. And, of course, entering into the realm of your fullest potential.
Pushing past your limits allows you to discover strengths and qualities you didn’t know you had, which is essential for reinventing yourself. Each step outside your comfort zone helps reshape your identity, aligning you with the confident and capable version of yourself you’re striving to become.
9.Celebrate your wins, both big and small:
miniseries/Getty Images
When you’re in the process of making shifts, inviting big change, and growing into a new version of yourself, it’s easy to overlook the importance of celebrating the wins you collect along the way. The journey of reinventing yourself can be challenging, and acknowledging the big wins (and the small wins) helps to keep you motivated and grounded. Small celebrations create moments of joy and gratitude that give you the momentum to continue stepping into your higher self.
Also, an important note to remember: what feels like a win to you might not be important to someone else, and that’s okay. You don’t need external validation from the people around you to celebrate yourself. Whether it’s buying a cake to celebrate hitting 5,000 followers, treating yourself to something special for sticking to Dry January or having a photoshoot for your birthday, these milestones matter because they reflect your growth and commitment to self.
10.Prioritize fitness:
Prioritizing your fitness is a game-changer when it comes to reinvention and shifting your identity. Moving your body daily not only enhances your physical health but also builds discipline, confidence, and mental clarity, all of which are essential if reinvention is the goal. The benefits of regular fitness are unmatched, from improved mood and energy levels to a stronger sense of self-worth and accomplishment.
Starting your day with fitness, especially before work, is a powerful way to pour into yourself first. This practice reinforces the idea that you are a priority and sets the tone for showing up as your best self throughout the day. Whether it’s a mental health walk, yoga, Pilates, or an intense workout, finding sustainable forms of movement you enjoy helps you stay consistent with the future self you’re working to become.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by StockRocket/Getty Images
- Cynthia Bailey Talks Starting Over In Her Career And In Love: ‘I Don’t Think You’re Ever Too Old To Reinvent Yourself’ ›
- Keke Palmer Says The Key To Having The Game On Lock Is Being Able To Reinvent Yourself ›
- How Scripting Can Help You Reinvent Yourself & Rebrand Your Life ›
RELATED
Ding. Ding. DING.
A life coach by the name of Thomas Leonard once said that “Clarity affords focus” and, believe you me, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, if you don’t get clear on where you stand when it comes to your interactions with them, you can very easily find yourself “focusing too much” on those who don’t deserve it and too little on those who absolutely do. And y’all, this lil’ PSA couldn’t be more relevant than when it comes to what I call “casual friendships.”
Let’s dig — and for some of us, dig our way out of — what it means to have a casual friend, so that you can get clear on if you really need those in your life…and if so…why?
Article continues after the video.
It Can’t Be Said Enough: Always Remember What “Casual” Means
GiphyThere’s a reason why I decided to share two videos by mental health coach Isaiah Frizzle at the top and bottom of this article. It’s because a lot of what he shares in both of them complements a piece that I wrote for the platform last year entitled, “This Is Just What Purposeful Relationships Look Like.”
It’s the author M. Scott Peck who once said, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it” and please believe that the older (and hopefully more mature) you get, the more you tend to see just how valuable — and fleeting — time is; and that is what plays a huge role in motivating you want to only involve yourself with people, places, things and ideas that will honor your time — and when something is casual? In my opinion, it’s highly debatable that it’s worth much of your months, days, hours, or even too many of your minutes.
The main reason why is addressed in an article that I wrote back in the day entitled, “We Should Really Rethink The Term 'Casual Sex.'” The gist? When it comes to relationships, “casual” is certainly not a favorite word of mine because I know what it means. Have mercy — why would you want to invest your time, energy, and emotions into something that is, by definition, apathetic, indifferent, careless, lacking emotional intimacy, and/or is without purpose?
I don’t know about y’all but that sounds like a complete and total crap shoot to me — especially if you are going to go so far as to consider this type of dynamic a true friendship (check out “Ever Wonder If A Friend Is Just...Not That Into You?,” “6 Signs You're About To Make A Huge Mistake In Making Them A Close Friend,” “5 Signs Of A Toxic Friendship That Is Secretly Poisoning Your Life,” “12 Friend Facts That Might Cause You To Rethink (Some Of) Your Own,” and “Less & Less Of Us Have Close Friends These Days. Why Is That?” ).
To me, when you decide to call someone “friend,” it means that they are loyal, reliable, consistent, trustworthy and willing to be there to support you to the very best of their ability — even if it’s inconvenient to do so sometimes (check out “Life Taught Me That True Friendships Are 'Inconvenient'”). How in the world can you expect that from something that has the word “casual” in it?
And you know what? That actually segues into my next point about casual friendships pretty darn well.
Ponder the Purpose “Casual Friends” Serve in Your Life
GiphyA couple of years ago, Verywell Mind published an article entitled, “How the 4 Types of Friendship Fit Into Your Life.” The four that it listed were acquaintances (which I actually don’t consider to be friends; check out “6 Differences Between A Close Acquaintance And An Actual Friend”), casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. After reading the piece, I think they consider casual friends to be the “pleasure” friends that I mentioned in the article, “According To Aristotle, We Need ‘Utility’, ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Good’ Friends.”
And although I certainly get that, I think my “cause for pause” is calling those people “friends” when they probably should be called something like an associate or possibly even a buddy instead. Why do I feel this way? Well, I’ve shared in other articles that I think social media has jacked up vocabulary words and their true meaning on a billion different levels.
Take “friend,” for example. Facebook had us out here calling everyone we connected to on their platform “friends” when some of them, we’ve never even spoken to before — and I personally think that influenced, affected and perhaps even infected our psyche to the point where we will call folks, both online and off, “friend” even when they haven’t earned it and/or who possibly don’t deserve it.
That said, do I think that we all could use lighthearted interactions that don’t go very deep and are filled with not much more than fun? Sure. However, if we were to move this over into a sexual thing — those types of people would probably be called a sneaky link, and there is nothing significant or substantial about ‘em. In fact, if anything pretty much automatically comes with an expiration date, sneaky links would have to be it.
And that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make about a casual friend — so long as you know that the word “casual” is being used to describe them, while you may enjoy the people who fit that bill, they aren’t really anything that you can or even should fully rely on. Instead, take them for what they are and don’t really expect much more than that. Otherwise, you could be in for some profound levels of disappointment. And who wants that?
Final point.
How a Casual Friend Can Become a Huge Red Flag
GiphyI’m telling you, y’all gonna quit clowning Tubi. LOL. To me, the best way to describe it is it’s the Cricket of current streaming apps. What I mean by that is, back when Cricket (the cell phone service) first came out, people, like me, who used it service got incessantly clowned because it was seen as a bootleg provider. Now it’s owned by AT&T, and as someone who has rocked with them since I was in my 20s, I don’t have one regret for doing so. Cricket has always been good to me, chile.
And Tubi? Well, when you get a chance, check out CNBC’s article, “CEO at 33, Tubi’s Anjali Sud on success hacks she learned at Amazon, IAC on way to top of Fox streaming” — take note of the moves the streaming app is making and the quality of programming that is transpiring in real time.
Anyway, I find myself bringing up Tubi more and more in my content because it helps to amplify some of the points that I like to make. This time, it’s a movie that’s (currently) on there calledRight Man, Wrong Woman. If you haven’t seen it before, I don’t want to give too much of the film away. What I will say is that the main female character, she had a casual friend and then she had a close friend.
That casual friend—the one who liked to kick it all of the time—was a lot of fun; however, dealing with her came with a ton of semi-unforeseen consequences. Meanwhile, the close friend? She’s what the Aristotle article (that I mentioned earlier) would call the “good friend” because she tried her best to hold her friend accountable.
And really, it shouldn’t be a shock that the casual friend turned out to be a plum trip because if someone is loads of entertainment and pleasure and yet they are indifferent towards you, they make careless decisions around you and/or they don’t really make known the purpose for you being in their life other than to pass some time — where really do you and that person have to go past drinks after work or dinner on a rooftop restaurant from time to time? And if that is all that the two of you are doing, again, why are they deserving of the word “friend”?
Hmph and don’t get me started on the lack of reciprocity that typically transpires when it comes to dealing with people like this because, while they won’t mind you spending your coins on them, taking their calls in the middle of the night or listening to all of their issues — when it comes time for them to show up for you, they very well may gaslight you into thinking that you are being dramatic, clingy or “doing the most.” Why? Well, it’s mostly because the two of you never really established what the hell the both of you are to one another.
And so, while you’re somewhere taking them seriously, they are out here seeing you casually, and as much as it might hurt to hear, that doesn’t automatically or necessarily make them a bad person. You shouldn’t expect much where no clarity is involved. After all, casual is just that: CASUAL.
____
I’m hoping that you can now see why I entitled this piece in the way that I did. It’s because a red flag is pretty much a warning, and to me, a casual friend is about as big of an oxymoron (again, to me) as casual sex is. Friends and sex are both too intimate to be seen or treated casually. Oh, but if you step out and take that risk, you could find yourself getting far more involved than the other individual ever wanted to go, because casual is how things have always been. “Friend” was simply to get you more mentally and emotionally invested. SMDH.
American columnist Walter Winchell once said, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” A wise person once said, “One good friendship will outlive forty average loves." Former President Ulysses S. Grant once said, “The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.” Does any of this sound casual to you? Yeah, me neither.
Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life who aren’t on deep levels. I’m just saying that you might want to consider putting them into another category than friend, because what friends do for people? There ain’t nothin’ even remotely casual about it, sis. Not even a lil’ bit.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by Shutterstock