Why Entrepreneurs Must Learn to Re-Invent Themselves Re-invention can be triggered externally, but must take place internally.
By Daniel DiPiazza Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Entrepreneurs must develop the power to create the impossible in order to realize their highest potential.
No entrepreneur is happy with maintaining the status quo, even if they've achieved success, accolades and comfort from their accomplishments. The "zone of genius" can become a golden anchor.
Most entrepreneurs have a huge vision for themselves that they've broken apart and watered down over the years because they are scared of the scope of their dreams. In doing so, they are settling for the smaller incentives that are within reach rather than striving for the bigger prizes on the highest shelves. They stop stretching.
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The power to create the impossible is the ability to first acknowledge these huge dreams that feel completely "unrealistic," declare them possible and then create the circumstances in your life that move those dreams from unreality to reality.
In order to create the impossible, the entrepreneur must undergo a period of complete re-invention in business, life and self — counterintuitively shedding themselves of old beliefs and habits in order to make room for the ideas that will actually help them succeed.
Re-inventing yourself is not about changing what you are "doing" — it's about changing who you are being.
Re-invention is not a simple as a "pivot" or a new position in the market. It's not just about doing better work. It's about changing your relationship to the past, present and future so that you become capable of accomplishing anything you declare possible, regardless of your past or current experiences.
An entrepreneur cannot re-invent their products, company or culture without first re-inventing themselves. It takes courage.
Related: 7 Powerful Tools for Reinventing You and Your Business
As author Tracy Goss would say, "Re-invention is putting at stake the success you've become for the power of making the impossible happen."
Anybody who seeks the power to create the impossible through re-invention can follow the guideposts until the road ends, but each re-invention is unique. Great CEOs, athletes, artists and world leaders have always endured the fires of change as they re-invented themselves.
You can study great leaders and icons to understand how and why their re-inventions happened -- but you'll never be able to copy the process. Re-invention can be triggered externally, but must take place internally.
Your re-invention will happen through a series of transformations that fundamentally change your understanding of who you are and what you're capable of, creating quite literally a different person on the other side who has no recollection of the limitations of the past.
