So many people tell me that the hardest part of going to an event is leaving it. The reason why is because when you return to your everyday life, that’s when the real work begins... the work being the process of integrating your new personality into your old past-present personal reality. With that said, here are some practical tips on how to do just that—although, these tips apply to any time when you want to make real, lasting changes in your life.

• Most importantly, do the work and do it every day. Don’t make excuses to not do the work. If you keep reminding yourself of who you want to be, while at the same time staying conscious of who you no longer want to be, eventually your personal reality will transform to match your new personality.
• Never stop learning. Fill your brain with knowledge and review the information you’ve learned regularly so you can continue to assign meaning as to what you’re doing and why.
• View your life as an initiation/test. This way you won’t be a victim to any of your life’s circumstances. When you view life as an initiation, you are challenged to bring a greater level of mind to the obstacles in your life. Remember—you can’t overcome a challenge with the same level of mind that created it.
• Find time each day to reflect. Think about how you feel doing the work (or not doing the work), the voices that may be holding you back, the knowledge you are gaining, and the challenges you need to rise to in order to overcome yourself. Then ask yourself:

How did I do today?
How could I have handled some situations better?
What elevated level of emotion and consciousness do I have to move into or access, to be greater than my former consciousness (the consciousness that has repeatedly created my unconscious patterns of thought, behavior, and emotional reactions)?

• Once you have identified these things, take a moment to mentally rehearse how you desire to be in these situations where you may have struggled. Perhaps you can even keep a journal next to your bed and spend five minutes addressing these questions before you go to sleep. The more you reflect on these situations, so that they do not slip by unconsciously, the better equipped you will be to make different choices the next day (and thus create different outcomes). In your meditation the following day/morning, add that new component into your meditation by mentally rehearsing it. This will make you more prepared for the next challenge.

When you do decide to make these different choices, don’t try to explain yourself to others. Just understand that everyone has to make choices for themselves, including you. By doing this properly, you will show up to yourself in an unpredictable way. The beautiful thing about this is that it gives the people in your life permission to do the same, and this, in fact, is one of your greatest gifts to them.

As you go through the change process, there will be periods of time when it seems like nothing is really happening. That’s the biological death of the old self taking place. And it will go down fighting! But if you consistently do the work every day, your efforts will become instrumental in unfolding your new personal reality—and what you’ll find is that it’s always worth the effort.

The bottom line is, when you invest in yourself and invest in a new life, you invest in possibilities. And when you invest in possibility and believe in possibility, you believe in yourself. So try it out. You just may wake up in a whole new future.