How to Rebuild Yourself

Hi, this is Paul Krismer. I’m coming to you again from Las Vegas, and those of you who’ve been following the last couple of videos, I’ve made a temporary move to this city, purely for business reasons. But also, hey, it just feels fun to be in the city with the desert, warm temperatures, blue skies, and all that stuff that I, I’ll tell you, in Canada we’re not getting a whole lot of right now. So, there’s this blank wall behind me. It’s going to get some shelving unit. It’s going to be kind of the studio background for the recordings that I make, whether it’s Zoom calls or things like this, or keynotes that I sometimes videotape for clients, and this blank wall is somewhat of a metaphor for my life. There’s this opportunity to create, and that’s what this video is all about.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So, stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. Yeah, so here I am in Vegas, loving my new place. It’s lots of fun. One day, maybe, I’ll show people around in the new apartment. And it’s providing all this great opportunity to kind of redesign certain aspects of my lives, very physical components of my life, which is fun and exciting in and of itself. And I wonder if that opportunity to create, to redesign one’s own life, is in fact something that we often fail to see the opportunity. You know, for me, having made this move across many thousands of miles, and being in a brand new physical space, there’s an obviousness to this opportunity to redesign things.

But there’s probably a lot of opportunity in all of our lives, all of the time, we just don’t see it. It’s not as obvious as being here with a blank slate in my physical space. And yet, I wonder, if we were to look at the kind of routines that we’re stuck in, the structures of our lives, the social media consumption, the TVs I’m watching, the habits that we have, the people we hang out with, and see the degree to which they fill our lives, such that we have very little opportunity to look around and see the possibility of something new, the possibility to recreate who we want to be. And if we’re not looking at that kind of possibility, if we’re not looking for opportunities to be somehow different, we’re stagnating. And usually, the reason why we stagnate, to some degree, is, yeah, the routine is comfortable, it feels familiar. But often, just as often, if not more often, there’s an element of fear that’s holding us back, a little anxiety, a little concerned. Will I be embarrassed if I do something new? Might I fall on my face and fail at this thing? Could it hurt me financially or socially, or, you know, all those kinds of little fears that mostly are hidden deep in the background of our thinking. But we often have some sense in our guts that there’s something else we want to be doing, and we’re being called to some new approach in our life, whether it’s for health or social part of our lives or spiritual growth, whether it’s for developing new skills, career change, all those kinds of things.

Well, you don’t maybe have it as obvious as I have right here, this blank wall behind me, this new space for me to make change in my life. But look very carefully at your own life. Is there a crowding in of things that give you a sense of stability and familiarity that’s limiting your growth? And if so, what will you do to clear up some space? It takes hard choices, and often we think we need to do some dramatic change. I need to quit my job. I need to drop that friend. I need to get out of this marriage. Um, I need to start going to the gym five days a week. And those are all valid, and sometimes necessary things to do. But I encourage you to do just one thing, coming out of this video, one small thing. Is there a part of your life where you can say, yeah, I’m going to take a different tact on this and shift just one or two degrees?

You know, one of the leading scholars on habit formation talks about this idea of just the tiniest changes. He was a gentleman who works from home, or is a gentleman that works from home, and he said he wanted to get stronger and more fit but wasn’t much of a gym-going guy. And so, he made this deal with himself that every time he goes to the bathroom, he’s going to finish being in the bathroom, and then do push-ups before he washes his hands. And it seems really small and only takes a moment of his time, but every day, of course, he was going increasingly strong, really building this habit by making this tiny shift in our lives. And that may be what you’re looking for in your life. A little less social media time, a little bit more fitness, a little bit of development, personal and professional development, so that that new career becomes more possible. Or some new change in your home, maybe it’s doing a thorough cleaning out, decluttering of one tiny space, so that you can create this blank wall behind you, in which you can start rewriting the things that you particularly want in your life.

That’s what I have for this week. Thanks for watching. If you like this content, please click the like button and subscribe to my channel, and get a new video every Sunday morning. Bye for now.