Monday Inspiration: Upgrade to Version YOU 2.0

How close are you to becoming Version 2.0 of yourself?

Have you successfully crossed the line or are you still grappling with your Version 1.0 self?

If you haven’t upgraded your system—installed that update, how close are you to doing so? Can you see it? Feel it? Touch it?

Becoming a better version of yourself isn’t easy, so if you haven’t made it yet, there’s no need to feel bad.

But if you are ready to close the gap and become YOU 2.0, try these four strategies I was offered by three bestselling authors in the area of personal growth. They will help you install your new operating system.

1. Make a NOT-To-Do List

People like to focus on the value and power of to-do lists, but what about your not­-­to-do list—the things you know you should never do, the habits you need to break, the choices you should not make?

Sometimes reaching your better self has nothing to do with identifying what you need to do and everything to do with what you need to avoid doing.

One of my favorite personal growth teachers, Dean Graziosi, author of Totally Fulfilled, recently told me at the Growth Summit: “YES gets you out of Egypt, but NO puts you in the Promised Land.”

The Promised Land, according to Dean, is where you live and breathe your full potential. There you become YOU 2.0.

The NOT-to-do list works just like the guardrails on a highway—they keep on the road and prevent you from driving off the cliff. The NO-list ensures your focus stays on the duties and responsibilities that deserve your time. These activities help you install that new update to yourself.

So instead of asking yourself “What should I be doing to improve myself,” ask yourself “What shouldn’t I be doing to improve myself?”

2. Visualize, Visualize, Visualize

While at the Growth Summit, I also asked Ethan Willis, author of Prosper: Create the Life You Really Want, how to get from YOU 1.0 to YOU 2.o,. His answer was simple: visualize.

If you can’t visualize your better, more evolved self, you’ll never achieve it.

I’m not talking about casually envisioning what a better you might look or feel like. Your visualization needs to be so detailed, so well-thought out, that you can do more than see it—you can feel it, see it, smell it, and touch it. In fact, when you visualize, you need to literally walk a mile in the shoes of YOU 2.0.

And once you start walking in the shoes of YOU 2.0, it’s almost impossible for you to become anything other than YOU 2.0.

(You can learn more about the power of visualization in my book, Creative Visualization for Writers. Or, if you aren’t a writer, get a copy of Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain.)

Claim Your Morning

This last piece of advice comes from Brendon Burchard, author of The Charge and The Motivation Manifesto and creator of High Performance Academy. (I am a Certified High Performance Coach.) When I asked him the same question—how do you cross over from YOU 1.0 to YOU 2.0, he said, “Own your morning.”

Each morning needs to start with priorities and routine. Each day needs to have a plan—a roadmap you can follow toward success.

Will you always follow that map perfectly?—of course not.

But it’s a willingness to embrace the morning and take ownership over it that leads to success.

My morning looks like this: meditation, journaling, and reviewing the day’s priorities, whatever they may be. That’s pretty close to what Brendon does each morning as well, although he also stretches his body. Both of us might exercise in the morning, too.

Give

If this seems obvious it should. Much of what it means to become YOU 2.0 has to do with your willingness to give (your time, money, expertise, etc.) to others in need.

Brendon recommends focusing on service if you want to level up. Oftentimes being the best version of yourself starts and ends with your willingness to give to the immediate world around you

Giving is the easiest way to open the door to YOU 2.0.

What will it Take?

Evaluate what it will take for you to cross the threshold to a 2.0 version of yourself.

…And what will it not take?

What will you do to upgrade your personal system? What habits are you going to eliminate to become the best version of yourself?

When you find the answers to those questions, you’ll discover that YOU 2.0 is a lot closer than you thought.

What does your version 2.0 self look like? And how have you upgraded your personal system from version 1.0 to version. 2.0?

Photo copyright: teetasse /Pixabay.com