Reinventing Yourself After 35

I remember at 34, after having a "life quake ", and my life turned into absolute shit. However, did it? I returned to Australia 20 years ago as a full-time single mum with a 4-year-old and live with my parents (this is another TEDx Talk!). I went for 40 interviews; however, no one wanted a single mother on their team. YIKES! As my courage muscle was building, I decided to reinvent myself at 34 (well, really 35, as it took a year to get my shit together!). And....here I am today, 19 years later, as CEO of LeadershipHQ and?The Leadership Collective,? Author, Global Keynote Speaker, Leadership Coach and Mum - thank goodness the life quake happened, and I reinvented myself, and today I speak at conferences and coach others around how to do this!

So...did you know you can reinvent yourself after 35 (well, anytime, TBH)...

Reinventing yourself after 35 can be empowering and transformative. Whether you're seeking a personal reset or career change or want to feel more aligned with your values and aspirations, here are some practical strategies to guide you.

1. Clarify Your Why

• Identify your purpose: Explore your core values and passions. What drives you now? This can help you align with meaningful goals.
• Reflect on your experiences: Consider what’s worked in your life and hasn’t. Journaling can help identify patterns and where you want to grow next.

Prompt: Explore your “Ikigai” (or Leadgai )—the intersection of what you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at, and what can sustain you financially.

2. Adopt a Growth Mindset

• Reframe failures as learning: Embrace the discomfort of change as part of growth.
• Learn continuously: Explore new skills, hobbies, or knowledge. LeadershipHQ or coaching programs are good places to start.

3. Refresh Your Network

• Engage with new communities: Attend workshops, join clubs, or volunteer to connect with people aligned with your new goals.
• Reach out to old connections: Sometimes, tapping into former networks helps reignite opportunities.

Tip: When reconnecting, ask, “How can I help?” Service strengthens connections and builds credibility.

4. Explore a New Career or Side Hustle

• Audit your transferable skills: You likely have skills that fit new industries or roles.
• Experiment with a side project: A side hustle can provide insights into what you truly enjoy without the full commitment of a career shift.

Idea: If leadership resonates, consider mentoring or coaching others—it leverages your experience while opening new doors.

5. Cultivate Emotional and Physical Wellbeing

• Practice self-compassion: Reinvention takes time, so be kind to yourself.
• Prioritise health: Physical activity, mindfulness, and proper nutrition fuel your transformation journey.

6. Find Joy in Letting Go

• Release limiting beliefs: Embrace a ‘LET THEM’ mindset—don’t hold onto how others think you should evolve.
• Simplify your life: Let go of roles, routines, or possessions that no longer align with who you want to become.

7. Set Bold Goals with Small Steps

• Visualise your future self: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Create a vision board or write down your aspirations.
• Create actionable steps: Start with small, achievable milestones and build momentum.

8. Embrace Vulnerability and Courage

• Show up authentically: Reinvention is about being true to yourself. Authenticity attracts the right opportunities and people.
• Take courageous action: Step outside your comfort zone. Courage isn't the absence of fear, but action despite it.

9. Leverage Your Life Experience

• Embrace your age and wisdom: Use your life experience as a foundation rather than a limitation.
• Tell your story: Reinvention is often an evolution, not a start-from-scratch moment. Own your past and share it as part of your journey.

10. Celebrate the Journey

• Reflect on progress often: Acknowledge even small wins to build confidence.
• Allow fun: Reinvention should feel joyful at times. Lean into spontaneity and keep things playful.

Reinvention after 35 is not about becoming someone entirely new—it's about uncovering and manifesting your next chapter. Start small, trust the process, and embrace the freedom to redefine your life as often as you need. Learn more about an amazing framework to make this happen below! Watch this video from a The Diary Of A CEO

We LOVE Dr. Joe Dispenza

Dr Joe Dispenza offers a transformative approach to reinventing yourself by bridging neuroscience, quantum physics, and meditation practices. His philosophy centres on the idea that by changing your thoughts, emotions, and energy, you can create a new reality for yourself—effectively breaking free from old habits and limiting beliefs.

Key Principles of Reinvention from Dr. Joe Dispenza:

1. Break the Habit of Being Yourself: Dispenza explains how your thoughts and behaviours shape your reality in his book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. By consciously shifting your mindset and emotional responses, you can overcome the influence of past experiences and biological patterns, empowering you to live differently.
2. Meditation and the Quantum Field: Dispenza advocates meditation as a gateway to "the quantum field," where all possibilities exist. His guided meditations help individuals shift from old emotional states and tune into new potentials. This practice aligns your brain and heart, allowing for personal transformation from within.
3. Recondition the Body to a New Mind: His book Becoming Supernatural discusses how emotions and thoughts from the past keep people stuck. Through consistent mental rehearsal and emotional regulation, you can rewire your brain and body to align with your future aspirations, activating new levels of creativity, health, and well-being.
4. Stepping Toward a New Identity: Dispenza encourages people to identify who they want to become and practice embodying that identity daily. Small actions, such as visualizing success or shifting emotional responses, gradually reinforce new neural pathways, leading to sustainable change over time.

This holistic approach helps align your mind and body with your aspirations, making reinvention accessible through science-backed techniques and meditation practices. If you want to learn more, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and Becoming Supernatural provide practical frameworks for creating lasting transformation.

Love to Know More?

Dr. Joe Dispenza offers structured frameworks for personal transformation, emphasising the combination of mental, emotional, and physical practices. Our CEO Sonia McDonald speaks on stage about the Neuroscience of Leadership and uses his work!

Here are some frameworks from his core teachings:

1. Breaking the Habit Framework (from Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself)

This framework helps individuals replace old habits with new, intentional behaviours by focusing on conscious reprogramming:

• Awareness of Habits: Identify repetitive thoughts and emotions keeping you stuck.
• Overcome Your Environment and Body: Shift beyond external triggers and bodily cravings that reinforce old patterns.
• Meditative Practice: Use meditation to access deeper brainwave states (like theta) to recondition the subconscious.
• Week-by-Week Practice: The book guides gradual steps such as recognizing, admitting, surrendering, and redirecting, culminating in creating and rehearsing new mental scripts.

2. Becoming Supernatural Framework (from Becoming Supernatural)

This model emphasises transcending limitations by aligning with the quantum field and tapping into higher states of consciousness:

• Reconditioning the Body to a New Mind: Through visualisation and meditation, emotional states are aligned with future outcomes to condition the body to respond as if the future is happening now.
• Energy Centres Work: Balance the body’s seven energy centres (like chakras) to enhance health and emotional resilience.
• Mind-Heart Coherence: Synchronise the brain and heart through practices like gratitude meditation to improve well-being and increase creative potential.
• Walking Meditation: Bring elevated emotions into daily life by moving meditation, reinforcing change through action.

3. Quantum Creation Process

A recurring framework in Dispenza’s teachings is creating reality from the quantum field, consisting of these stages:

1. Entering the Present Moment: Detach from past or future thoughts.
2. Tuning into Potential: Visualise the desired outcome as it’s already achieved, aligning feelings with that vision.
3. Changing Brain Chemistry: Through repeated practice, shift brainwave patterns from beta (conscious thought) to alpha and theta (intuitive, subconscious states) for deeper change.
4. Manifestation: As thoughts and emotions align, real-world changes become evident through synchronicities and opportunities.

4. Daily Routine for Change

Dr. Joe provides practical steps to anchor the transformation:

• Morning Meditation: Start the day by visualising who you want to become.
• Journaling: Reflect on emotional triggers and celebrate small wins.
• Gratitude Practice: End the day by focusing on what you're grateful for, which will program your subconscious with positive emotions overnight.

These frameworks emphasise consistency and intentionality in behaviour, thought, and emotion. They are designed to help individuals bridge the gap between their current reality and the future self they aspire to be.

These teachings resonate with people aiming to break free from their past, cultivate new habits, and manifest meaningful transformations by leveraging science, meditation, and deliberate practice.

Manifesting your Dream Self

Manifesting your dream self is aligning your thoughts, emotions, and actions toward becoming the person you aspire to be. Dr. Joe Dispenza and other thought leaders suggest that achieving this transformation involves not just setting goals but embodying the identity and mindset of your ideal future self. Here are frameworks and practical steps to help you manifest your dream self.

1. Define and Visualise Your Dream Self

• Clarity of Vision: Write down your aspirations in detail—Who do you want to become? How do you want to feel? How does your dream self think, act, and live? This process connects your mind with your ideal self and establishes a mental target.
• Mental Rehearsal: Visualise this version of yourself every day. Picture how your future self handles challenges, communicates, and makes decisions.

2. Align Emotions with the Desired Future

• Feel It Now: Dr. Joe Dispenza emphasizes the importance of feeling the emotions of your future self in the present. Aligning emotionally with your dream self helps bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
• Heart-Brain Coherence: Use meditation or breathing exercises to create harmony between your emotions and thoughts. This coherence helps focus your energy toward your vision, making change more sustainable.

3. Reprogram the Subconscious through Meditation

• Meditation Practice: Enter meditative states to access the subconscious mind, where deep transformation occurs. Dr. Dispenza recommends using meditation to replace limiting beliefs and habitual thought patterns with empowering new ones.
• Affirmations and Gratitude: Reaffirm your vision with affirmations and gratitude practices. Gratitude shifts your energy to a state of abundance and primes your mind to attract positive experiences.

4. Change Your Identity through Action

• Embodied Identity: Take actions consistent with your dream self—act “as if” you are already that person. This reinforces the new identity through experience and builds neural pathways for sustained behaviour change.
• Walking Meditation: Dispenza suggests integrating elevated emotions into everyday activities through walking meditations. This helps solidify the alignment between your actions and your new identity.

5. Overcome Old Patterns and Triggers

• Awareness and Reconditioning: Identify and dismantle habits or thoughts that no longer serve you. Use journaling or self-reflection to spot triggers and create intentional responses.
• Letting Go of the Past: Manifesting your dream self involves emotionally detaching from past failures or limiting beliefs. A “LET THEM” mindset can further support this shift by focusing your energy on your journey, not external opinions.

6. Embrace Synchronicities and Adapt

• Watch for Opportunities: When your thoughts, emotions, and actions align, you may notice synchronicities—unexpected opportunities or “coincidences” that help you on your path.
• Adapt and Trust the Process: Be open to evolving beyond what you initially envisioned. Manifestation is a dynamic process that invites creativity and flexibility.

Daily Routine for Manifestation

1. Morning Visualisation: Spend 5-10 minutes visualising your dream self and feeling its emotions.
2. Gratitude Practice: Write three things you are grateful for, reinforcing positivity.
3. Small Intentional Actions: Take at least one daily action that aligns with your dream self.
4. Evening Reflection: Journal about your day and reflect on how you showed up aligned with your vision.

Manifesting your dream self is about consistently living in alignment with the vision you’ve set. As Dr. Joe Dispenza teaches, by changing your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, you step into the identity of your future self and attract the reality you desire

How can we help!

Find out more at -

LeadershipHQ —We are deeply committed to our clients' success. You won’t have to deal with the egos of large consulting firms—your success and progression are everything to us. In our work, everyone feels safe and inspired. Our experienced and passionate team provides tailored solutions and continuous support to achieve sustainable, impactful change in your organisation.

Sonia McDonald —Sonia is a leading motivational keynote speaker, award-winning author, podcast host, CEO, and advisor on leadership, neuroscience, and courage. She will rock your next conference, workshop, or event!

The Leadership Collective - Building a community – a collective of leaders from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives coming together to inspire, support, and learn from one another. Membership for individuals, teams and organisations committed to outstanding leadership. Join today and be part of a global community dedicated to outstanding leadership and culture.