Rewrite Your Story: A Full Guide to Reinventing Your Life (In 6–12 Months)

Four years ago, I had a realization that left me feeling completely empty—it shattered my worldview.

I was screwed.

And honestly, I should’ve seen it coming. I mean, it’s my life. I should’ve been fully aware of what was happening.

But I wasn’t.

I realized there were many things—both external and internal—that I was completely unconscious of.

I was drifting through life.

I had dreams, goals, aspirations. But I wasn’t going anywhere.

Like many others, I was in college—taking classes, passing exams, and waiting to graduate so I could land an engineering job.

Spoiler: I did. But it wasn’t the dream I once had.

Sure, I had a salary. But my days started at 6 a.m. with a long commute, and I didn’t get home until well after 6 p.m.

By then, I was too exhausted to pursue anything else. I’d shower, eat, scroll through social media, maybe read a bit, then sleep.

Repeat. Again and again.

What happened to my dreams?

Were they just that—dreams?

They were slipping away. My potential was fading. Regret was waiting.

I had to do something.

Luckily, I had two leverage points.

In a previous newsletter, I shared how I overcame academic struggles by learning how the human brain actually learns. I discovered techniques to optimize comprehension and retention.

Applying these techniques consistently, my grades improved drastically. I eventually topped exams. But the journey didn’t stop there.

I became fascinated with the brain. That interest expanded into psychology and neuroscience. Before long, I was a productivity nerd.

(Productivity, after all, is just doing more with less effort.)

With this new mindset, I started approaching everything differently. Even in my early entrepreneurial days, I was spotting low-risk opportunities both online and offline.

These skills became invaluable when I was working as an engineer.

That was my first leverage point.

The second was my experience with online business models. By then, I had spent two years testing them.

I knew there were opportunities that would give me location freedom. And that would allow me to invest more time and energy into my own projects.

All I needed now was a clear vision, aligned goals, and systems to reach peak performance.

And I built exactly that.

Today, I work remotely and steadily build my business.

It took me three years to create the systems that support this flexible lifestyle.

But in this newsletter, I’ll show you how to do it in 6–12 months.

After reading—and taking notes—you’ll walk away with a complete framework for identifying what you want in life and how to practically make it real.

Let’s call it the Life Reinvention Process (LRP).

The LRP has 3 pillars:

1. Creating your vision for the future

2. Finding what you need to do

3. Doing what you need to do

The next sections are packed with practical insights you can apply immediately. So grab a pen and notebook.

For full immersion (and a better reading experience), throw on some focus music and dive in.

Let’s get started.

I. Creating Your Vision for the Future

Most people try to change their lives without addressing their underlying motives. They focus on surface-level changes (new goals, new projects) without thinking about the why behind their actions.

That’s the first step: understanding your life purpose.

Here’s a powerful exercise from Adam Leipzig to clarify your purpose:

Answer these five questions:

1. Who do you want to become?

2. What do you want to do?

3. Whom do you want to do it for?

4. What do they need?

5. What will they get out of it?

This exercise is so effective because only two of the five questions are about you. The rest are about other people.

That shift toward helping others is essential for your own fulfillment.

Human beings are wired to live in communities and support one another—it's how we've survived and thrived as a species.

When we help others, we satisfy a deep-rooted need to connect and contribute, which reinforces our sense of identity and self-worth.

Fulfilling this part of our nature brings inner satisfaction and strengthens the bonds that make life meaningful.

Once you understand your purpose, it’s time to craft a vision.

This is how you want your purpose to manifest.

Write down what you want to achieve in:

• 10 years

• 5 years

• 3 years

Do this for 30 minutes each day, for 30 days. Don’t worry about perfection. Just write.

At this point, you should have a rough picture of what you want to accomplish in the world.

Now the question becomes: What needs to be done?

Let’s move to the next step.

II. Finding What You Need to Do

This is the second pillar of the Life Reinvention Process.

Here you’ll clarify what’s required to pursue your goals and uncover the mindset necessary for success.

Scott Dinsmore’s framework is useful here. It involves three components:

1. Become a Self-Expert

Start by defining:

• Your strengths: What do you love doing, even if no one pays you for it? CliftonStrengths is a great tool for this.

• Your values: What do you prioritize when making decisions? Think about what—or who—always comes to mind.

• Your experiences: What have you learned recently, intentionally or not? Reflect monthly on what excites you, frustrates you, or makes you feel alive.

This self-awareness forms the definition of your version of success.

2. Do the Impossible

Why don’t most people pursue their dreams?

• They tell themselves they can’t.

• Others tell them they can’t.

But those so-called impossible goals? They’re often just milestones waiting to be reached.

Challenge the narrative. Prove yourself wrong. Prove others wrong.

The most effective way to do this is to engineer your environment.

3. Surround Yourself with Passionate People

You need people who radiate possibility.

Audit your environment. Invest more time in those striving to grow. If you want to evolve, you need to surround yourself with evolution.

Do this, and taking action toward your goals becomes the norm—not the exception.

III. Doing What You Need to Do

Now that you have clarity on your goals, there’s only one missing piece—systems.

Goals set the direction. Systems drive the motion.

Systems are what help you build habits that move the needle.

Let’s start at the core.

Your identity

Your behaviors are often a reflection of your identity.

The last thing you want is to struggle with habits that feel foreign to who you are.

But you’ve already defined your identity—remember Adam Leipzig’s purpose exercise?

You’ve chosen who you want to become.

So now, it’s time to act like that person.

Purpose, goals, identity—when these align, the right habits naturally follow.

Pick 6–8 habits to build or strengthen. These are the foundations of your future.

With that done, it's time to explore what happens in your body when you try to build habits.

Understanding these processes will help you uncover strategies you can leverage and prepare for potential obstacles along the way.

To do that, we need to touch on some science.

Becoming a better version of yourself boils down to fixing the tiny things—being mindful of the fundamentals.

And that requires a deeper understanding of how your body and mind work.

That’s why a bit of scientific knowledge is essential.

What I love about knowing these inner workings is how it makes me more intentional and conscious about the decisions I make.

Once you've got this, you’ll be prepared to build the habits that shape your future.

Let's start with some notions to keep in mind:

• Your body is controlled by the nervous system, which manages everything from your thoughts and movements to automatic functions like breathing and digestion.

• Habits are behaviors our nervous system acquires through repetition, whether we're aware of it or not.

• This learning process is driven by neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections in response to experiences, learning, or injury.

Essentially, neuroplasticity enables the brain to adapt, making it the foundation for how habits are formed.​

With that in mind, let's get into the juicy stuff.

Limbic Friction

Coined by Dr. Andrew Huberman, "limbic friction" refers to energy required to overcome anxiety, procrastination and/or fatigue.

Limbic friction determines the amount of effort you have to make in order to perform a certain habit.

Overcoming limbic friction requires conscious effort to align our immediate impulses with our long-term goals.

Understanding limbic friction is crucial for habit formation.

By recognizing the type and intensity of resistance we face, we can implement strategies to reduce this friction, such as:

• Procedural Memory Visualization

• Task-Bracketing

We'll learn how to apply these strategies later on.

The goal of habit formation is automaticity, i.e., to reduce the cognitive load required to take action, allowing you to consistently execute behaviors without relying on motivation or willpower.

In other words, it's about engineering your environment and routines so the right actions happen by default.

When a habit becomes automatic, it's no longer a negotiation; it's a reflex.

This is the foundation of sustainable personal growth—making success a system, not a struggle.

A great tool we can use here is Procedural Memory Visualization.

Reducing limbic friction by hacking the procedural memory

Procedural memory is a form of long-term memory responsible for knowing how to perform tasks without conscious awareness, such as riding a bike or typing.

By mentally rehearsing the specific steps of a desired behavior, this method engages the brain's procedural memory systems, making the actual execution of the habit feel more automatic and less effortful.

Here is how you can implement procedural memory visualization:

1. Select a Habit: Choose a specific behavior you wish to adopt (e.g., morning meditation).

2. Mentally Rehearse: Visualize each step involved in the habit, from start to finish. For instance, imagine yourself waking up, walking to your meditation space, sitting down, and beginning your practice.​

3. Include Contextual Cues: Incorporate environmental details and sensory experiences into your visualization to enhance realism.​

4. Repeat Regularly: Consistent mental rehearsal strengthens the neural pathways associated with the habit, making actual execution more effortless over time.

Dopamine: The Motivation Molecule

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter produced in the brain that plays a crucial role in motivation and reward.

In case you’re not familiar, a neurotransmitter is essentially a chemical messenger—your brain’s way of sending signals between nerve cells (neurons) or from neurons to muscles.

Here’s why that matters:

The timing and pattern of dopamine release can actually predict whether or not we’ll stick to a habit—and how quickly that habit takes root.

When dopamine is released at the right moments, it reinforces the behavior that triggered it.

That’s how habits get locked in.

As Dr. Andrew Huberman often reminds us, “Dopamine isn’t about feeling good; it’s about feeling motivated.”

So the goal isn’t to chase pleasure—it’s to understand how to leverage dopamine to stay on track with the things that matter.

One practical approach is to build what Huberman calls “linchpin habits”—things you genuinely enjoy doing that also act as a springboard for other positive behaviors.

These habits not only generate a dopamine hit on their own, but also lower the limbic friction for everything else you want to do.

Let’s say you want to start exercising regularly but find it hard to get started.

A linchpin habit could be as simple as waking up and stretching for 5 minutes each morning.

This isn’t a big workout but it gets your body moving and primes you for the day.

Mastering dopamine isn’t about tricking your brain—it’s about understanding your system well enough to design habits that work with your biology, not against it.

Using Reward Prediction Errors (RPEs) to build habits for goal achievement

Reward Prediction Errors (RPEs) are key to forming habits.

They represent the difference between what you expect to happen and the actual outcome, which the brain uses to adjust future behavior.

Here's how RPEs help build habits:

• The Brain’s Feedback System: When you do something and it leads to an unexpected reward, the brain releases dopamine, reinforcing the behavior. This feedback loop is essential for learning and adapting.

• From Goal-Directed to Automatic: In the early stages, behaviors are goal-directed (you act with a clear intention to achieve a result). Over time, with consistent positive feedback (RPEs), these actions become automatic habits, requiring less thought or effort.

To build a habit effectively, make sure the rewards are either unexpected or stronger than anticipated. This helps reinforce the behavior, speeding up the transition from conscious effort to automatic routine.

Building on our 'regular exercise' example above, let's now say you want to establish a habit of exercising every morning.

Here’s how to use reward prediction error (RPE) to your advantage:

• Set up a reward jar with different treats—small and big, immediate and delayed.

• Randomize when you draw from it (e.g. after 3 workouts one week, 5 the next).

• Because your brain can’t predict when or what the reward will be, each one triggers a dopamine spike, hence strengthening the habit loop.

Even though you’re the one setting the rewards, the unpredictability keeps your brain engaged and reinforces the behavior faster.

Task Bracketing: How to Make Habits Stick—Even When Life Gets Messy

Most people think habits are built during the action.

But neuroscience shows something different: your brain actually locks in habits by paying special attention to what happens right before and right after the task.

This is called task bracketing—a process where specific brain regions (like the dorsolateral striatum) light up at the start and end of a routine, effectively "bookending" the behavior in memory.

These neural brackets create a mental shortcut that helps your brain run the habit on autopilot over time.

Task bracketing makes your habits:

• Automatic – no willpower required once locked in.

• Resilient – habits still run when you're tired, stressed, or overwhelmed.

• Context-independent – they work even when your environment changes.

How to apply task bracketing

1.Define a clear start signal:

It could be as simple as sitting at the same desk, pressing play on a focus playlist, or opening a fresh note.

The goal is to tell your brain, “We’re starting.”

2.Stick to the same time window each day:

Morning, afternoon, or evening—just keep it consistent.

Brains love rhythm.

3.Create a small closing ritual:

This could be logging your progress, saying “done” out loud, or walking away for a glass of water.

This tells your brain, “We finished. Remember that.”

Implementation: Make it real!

Let’s now put everything together to create daily routines that will transform you into the person you need to become in order to bring your dreams to life.

Below are two programs designed by Dr. Andrew Huberman to help you pursue your goals in sync with your mind and body.

Remember: the best habits are those that work with your biology, not against it.

These programs will help you design exactly those kinds of habits.

The first program shows you how to design your days to lower limbic friction and make it easier to take action. The second will guide you in building and testing the habits you want to form.

Get the two programs via these links:

1. Design your days to beat limbic friction

2. Science-based habit building framework

Most people wait for breakthroughs. But breakthroughs come from alignment:

Purpose → Goals → Identity → Habits

The Life Reinvention Process is your blueprint.

It’s not magic. It’s biology, psychology, and consistent execution.

Start designing your life:

• Define your future.

• Structure your days.

• Become the person your dreams need.

Habit by habit, day by day, your new story begins.

Let’s build it together.

—Legrand