Are you ready to reinvent yourself? We are

We've all been there, sitting on the couch, watching some woman who seems lost in her own clutter or weight or outdated wardrobe or financial despair or unraveling marriage as she is swooped up and seemingly saved in a miraculous 48-minute show. Her life is turned around by a team of experts, a debit card with thousands of dollars earmarked for organizational baskets or non-mom jeans, and a tough-talker with a heart like Tim Gunn or maybe even Oprah herself.

I'm sure we've all, at one point or another during the many shows we've seen with this kind of makeover plot, that a camera crew and famed trainers and make-up artists would take our own lives and make them sparkle and shine with only a few commercial breaks in between the before and after transformational fabulousness.

No matter how hard we wish for Stacy and Clinton to show up, real life just does not work like that. Of course.

When the TV's clicked off, we have to sit down and figure out how to make a budget work, how to squeeze in post-baby workouts, how to make space for the kids to really play in the playroom, and even how to start completely over after a big break-up or job loss or illness.

In real life, we have to take charge of our own makeovers. We have to become experts, keep ourselves on task, and find ways to hit goals even if they seem overwhelming or impossible. The real reinventions are up to us, and only us.

As challenging -- and even aggravating -- as this can be, the reward of turning your own life around can be worth more than any debit card or gym membership or hairstyling tips handed over by someone famous. Changing our own lives takes courage, hardcore honesty, cleverness, and commitment, and it can become one of the most empowering journeys of our life.

To capture a bit of that spirit, Yahoo is launching a new program called You. Reinvented. that will live right here on Shine and will highlight the many ways women are taking charge and transforming their own lives in small and signficant ways.

You will see videos, read stories, and get tips from women who have made over their careers, finances, sex lives, bodies, and more. Although their experiences are very different, each of them reinvented themselves in some way that I think we all will relate to.

Welcome to You. Reinvented, where you can come to listen, learn, and support other women and where we invite you to share your own unique reinvention story (we will tell you how soon). Who knows? Just stopping by for a few minutes could inspire you to take one tiny step to a whole new you.


[photo credit: Getty Images]