How to Reinvent Yourself Out of Darkness
When I was in the 11th grade, I was really skinny.
I wanted to get big.
But I didn’t know how.
Roughly around then, YouTube was becoming a thing.
One of the first YouTubers I was introduced to was a guy named Vince Del Monte.
He was also known as Skinny Vinny.
But why was he called Skinny Vinny?
He was swole!
Swole enough to be one of the first fitness YouTubers.
The reason he was called Skinny Vinny was because he used to be skinny.
And he found a way to fix that.
Vince’s tips and tricks were specifically designed for skinny people to get big.
Wait, this was a thing?
Do you mean that I can get bigger?
Wow!
I immediately became hooked on Skinny Vinny’s content.
His insights allowed me to go from a 135-pound twig to growing into 186 pounds.
The Future of Vince Del Monte
After my transformation, I didn’t watch Skinny Vinny’s content for 10 years.
Then one day, I went to check up on him.
How has Vince been?
I checked out Vince’s content and saw a flood of dislikes.
Plus, a lot of disapproving messages.
What gives?
As I looked through the content, I noticed he had a drastic shift in message.
He was no longer talking about fitness alone.
Nowadays, he was talking about business.
Why Vince Was Getting Disliked
Vince had dared to reinvent himself.
As I watched his latest videos, he mentioned how his desire for only talking about fitness faded.
There’s only so much you can say about bulking.
But nowadays, Vince’s voice echoed with enthusiasm as he talked about business.
This was his newfound love.
Rather than teaching skinny guys to get big.
He wanted to teach naive fitness YouTubers to build a business around their skillset.
However, Vince’s audience was not following him to hear about business advice.
They wanted more fitness content!
Vince could have forced himself to talk only about fitness.
But he made up his mind to refocus.
What Vince’s Story Has to Do With Reinventing Yourself
Whether you agree with Vince’s story or not is beside the point.
The point of the story was to share that reinventing yourself is not always a tension-free process.
The naive person thinks they are going to wake up one morning and be like:
‘You know what? Today, I am going to reinvent myself!!
Then there is jovial background music playing with accommodating faces stepping at your door.
No sir.
That’s not how it works at all.
Instead, reinventing yourself is born from pain, confusion, and doubt.
The tension is what causes a flux of feelings in the internal world.
These feelings can cause the human to devolve into darkness.
Or, these feelings can allow the human to evolve into the phoenix who willingly burns itself into ashes to rise once more.
To reinvent yourself, chapter 1 is dark.
Learning Your Way Out of Darkness
Ed Catmull was one of the founders of the animation company, Pixar.
In his book, Creativity Inc, he shared something that I found very insightful.
For the first 10 years, Pixar was inventing its way into the future.
There were not many other companies using computers for animation and storytelling.
Whenever you are a pioneer in a field, you are dealing with a lot of roadblocks.
Roadbooks that lead to doubt.
Ed had a simple way to deal with doubt:
- Get smarter.
When something breaks, get smarter.
When others tell you it cannot be done, get smarter.
When you think it cannot be done, get smarter.
This simple philosophy is what allows Pixar to constantly reinvent itself into the future.
And likewise, this simple philosophy is what it’s like to reinvent yourself.
You need to keep getting smarter.
Whatever predicament you’re in, I’m sure someone in the past found themselves in the same exact predicament.
If they survived, so can you.
Learn.
Get smarter.
Applying Knowledge
Knowledge alone does not mean much.
It opens up possibilities, sure.
But action is what turns the possibilities into reality.
The more you know, the more you expand possibilities.
But the more you act, the more the quantum wave turns into a particle.
Knowing a lot gives clarity.
Clarity leads to purposeful action.
Not the type of action where you’re moving like a sissy.
Instead, the type of action where you move like the next rep will outweigh all the prior failures.
In school, we are often taught:
- Learn what works and implement it.
But in the real world, it’s more like:
- Learn what doesn’t work and eliminate it.
When reinventing yourself, it’s a process of collecting a lot of data (failing, succeeding, experimenting).
And then letting the dead wood fall off (turning your blob of experiences into crystal clear insights).
The more the dead wood burns off, the more different you are today than 5 years ago.
Not just a bit different.
But unrecognizable.
Why Complex Systems Are Made for Change
A complex system cannot stay stagnant for long.
It’s bound to change.
The type of change depends on you.
- Will it be purposeful change or the type of change that is left up to chance?
The more variables that are introduced to a system, the more maintenance becomes an illusion.
- Things are either going up or down.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that:
A closed system requires energy and knowledge from the outside world to fight off entropy (disorder).
Therefore, bring in energy and knowledge from the outside world.
Fight the entropy.
Grow yourself towards profitability.
Not everyone will agree with how you reinvent yourself.
But proceed forward anyways…
Turn the dark uncertainty into BLAZING conviction.
For more practical tips to improve your self-image, be sure to check out:
- Level Up Mentality: A Guide to Re-engineer your Mindset for Confidence
This book will teach you more about:
- Creating gargantuan goals.
- Reinventing yourself with purpose.
- Using strategic discipline.
- Chronicling your journey.
- Creating an alter ego.
- And much more!