I had to change my environment to stop reinforcing my old identity and start reinforcing my new one. So I joined Toastmasters and started attending weekly meetings. I shut down the popular game developer forums I was running and worked to transfer the community to another site, and then I stopped reading those forums completely. I automated my games business as much as possible, so it doesn’t require much maintenance at all. I decided not to renew my Association of Shareware Professionals membership for 2005, even though I’ve been a member since 1996. I declined an invitation to speak at the Game Developers Conference in 2005, even though I moderated a popular roundtable there for several years. I altered my office to reinforce my new role. I cleared out the top drawer of my filing cabinet to make room for speaking and writing files. I removed all programming-related shortcuts from my Windows desktop and rearranged my web browser favorites to add links to speaker sites while cutting game-related links. I stopped reading game and shareware blogs and found new speaking and personal development blogs to subscribe to. I cut back dramatically on the amount of game-related email I handle. I switched around the people I communicate with most frequently, such that now I spend more time talking to people who think of me as a speaker in training vs. a shareware or game publisher. I started going to new seminars and workshops on speaking. I started this blog. I discussed the change at length with my wife, so we’d both be prepared for what to expect. And so on.

Some of these may seem like drastic steps; most are minor adjustments. But the net result has been that I’ve been able to flow through this transition to where I now think of myself 90% as a speaker/writer and only 10% as a game publisher. My environment is now reinforcing my new role instead of my old one. The momentum is building in a new direction to the point where it would be hard for me to go back.

All of these adjustments create new thought affirmations. By removing most of the links to my old identity, I remove those triggers that would cause me to think in the old ways. And on top of that I’ve added new triggers to affirm my new career path. And these new thoughts affect my actions; my daily routine is now very different than it used to be. A year from now things will be even more different as the results begin to accumulate.

I must say it was hard making some of these changes initially. What helped me was to start with the small changes, like rearranging my office. Then after a week or two, I was better able to make the medium changes. And after some time, I was able to commit to bigger changes. Now my sense of identity has shifted so much that when I run into something that would reinforce my old role, it’s a lot easier to say no.