The Pathway to Personal Reinvention
Trust me on this.
At some point, in your personal or professional life, you will have to pivot. The identity you had, the work you did, will no longer serve you.
It will be time to reinvent yourself. And the timing may not be to your liking.
You Are a Brand
Tom Peters popularized the idea of “Personal Brands” way back in the Internet boom—the “real” one, in the late 90s, with dial-up service, Geocities, and sock-puppet Super Bowl commercials—with an article and cover story in Fast Company Magazine, which, in those days, was about the size of a phone book.
(Note to younger readers: a phone book is … never mind. Just Google it.)
From the classic article “A Brand Called You”:
It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.
This article made a big splash in 1997. It was true then—and, although some of the methods have changed (consultants probably don’t need CEOs to memorize their beeper numbers)—the principles are more relevant than ever:
You don’t “belong to” any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn’t to any particular “function.” You’re not defined by your job title and you’re not confined by your job description.
Brands evolve (if they want to survive). Your brand needs to evolve, too.
Maybe your evolution is a just a nudge, a tiny course alteration.
Or maybe it’s time for something bigger. You’re not quite sure what that change is, but you know you need it.
In that case, welcome to the wilderness. Welcome to …
The Wandering
Dorie Clark wrote a classic piece on personal reinvention in Harvard Business Review. But I strongly disagree with this part:
What’s Your Destination? First, you need to develop a detailed understanding of where you want to go, and the knowledge and skills necessary to get there.
Nope. The “detailed understanding” does not come first.
First is The Wandering.
Wandering is movement, but without clear direction.
You have to reinvent out loud and in motion -- you can’t think your way to reinvention.
That makes it more stressful, of course. You won’t know where you’re going when you start. You have to try things out, start and stop, and listen to your inner compass.
The fits and starts are a necessary toll extracted for finding the path. So let yourself try out some different ideas. Like the legendary Gerry Rafferty said, “If you get it wrong you’ll Get it Right Next Time.”
And it can take a long time to get it right.
More from Tom Peters:
It’s over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That’s not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.
“Reinvention” is often an excavation project. We have to shed the expectations of others, particularly in service of a specific corporate role. We have to shed the expectations of ourselves, often implanted in school or by society.
What do you really want to do? How—and whom—do you really want to serve?
I can’t imagine reinvention without a spiritual foundation.
The danger in proceeding without spiritual belief is you’re more likely to head down the wrong path—one that just serves your ego, or pleases another person or group you may not even consciously realize you’re trying to please.
You run the risk of ending up on the wrong path, unhappier and less fulfilled than ever.
Aim to serve something bigger than yourself.
And then … eventually … you’ll start to know where you’re headed.
You might even have an “Oh, I knew that all along” moment.
You can see the path, and now comes …
The positioning
Your new path might feel far from the person you were and the experiences you’ve had. But it’s probably not as far as you think.
Clark discusses leveraging your past to serve your new positioning:
Develop a Narrative. You used to write award-winning business columns — and now you want to review restaurants?
[...]
It’s unfair, but to protect your brand you need to develop a coherent narrative arc that explains to people — in a nice, simple way so they can’t miss it — exactly how your past fits into the present. “I used to write about the business side of many industries, including food and wine,” you could say. “I realized my big-picture knowledge about agricultural trends and business finance made me uniquely positioned to cover restaurants with a different perspective.” It’s like a job interview — you’re turning what could be perceived as a weakness (he doesn’t know anything about food, because he’s been a business reporter for 20 years) into a compelling strength that people can remember (he’s got a different take on the food industry because he has knowledge most other people don’t).
Change the way you think about your experience and your resume.
A resume doesn’t exist on a stone tablet, an Eternal Truth chiseled in granite to be preserved and handed down for generations.
Instead, your resume is a story that evolves to suit your changing goals and direction.
Career expert Penelope Trunk:
Life is messy and it is not black and white. There is no single, correct story about your life. Because each moment, in each person’s life, has multiple versions, all true.
The biggest problem people have when they are changing careers, or moving up the ladder, or re-entering the workforce, is that they cannot imagine telling a completely different story about themselves than they have been telling for the last ten years.
Did you know that my resume can tell the story of me as a writer or me as an operations genius? I don’t like operations, but if I had to get a job in operations, I could write my resume to indicate that operations has been my focus for the last fifteen years. And I wouldn’t have any lies on my resume. I’d just frame the truth in a different way.
Whatever your new path is, you have related experience that lends credibility to that path. Use it.
Put another way:
Don’t expect to fully “reinvent”: While the concept of “reinvention” is tantalizing (think: “fresh slate” “unrealized dreams” etc.), most people don’t construct a new career from scratch at midlife. The stories you read about the accountant turned cattle rancher – or the doctor turned vineyard owner – make for great press, but they are the exception, not the norm. In reality, most people choose a second-act career that is in some small way, shape or form related to what they did before. They figure out which parts of their old career they most enjoy (skills, people, industry, etc.) and then blend the “old” pieces with “new” interests, hobbies, and passions.
Just Keep Going
(Or, you know, swimming.)
This reinvention thing—it’s exhausting, frustrating, and, hopefully, exhilarating. We only see the “after” stories of triumph and happiness and unicorns, etc.
We don’t see the long slog to get there.
But the world has never been hungrier, or offered more opportunity, for authenticity. If you need to shift, you can. You can find a market to serve. You can find your authenticity and make your way.
There are many examples of this today:
A teacher turned full-time online fitness coach
marketing agency employee turned SEO consultant and teacher:
And an extreme example: Steve Ballmer, maniacal raving CEO of Microsoft …
became Steve Ballmer, maniacal raving owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, where he’s stealing all the buzz and cache from the rival Lakers.
People turn themselves inside out and find unique and authentic ways to impact the world and make a living.
You can, too.If you’re struggling with reinvention, I’ll leave you with something Steven Furtick of Elevation Church conveyed in a sermon called “Trapped in Transition:”
“God is most active in moments of what I perceive to be instability and transition”
So just keep going (swimming).
You’re not alone, and you’re on the right path, even if you can’t see the path yet.
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