Most of us don’t just wake up one morning and decide to reinvent ourselves.
In my experience, life usually issues us an invitation – sometimes multiple invitations – to reinvent ourselves which we may accept or decline.
My first invitation to reinvent myself arrived in the early 90s, on a chilly Halloween night. I was working as an attorney in a big law firm and had arrived home early to take my eight-year-old son, Lance, trick or treating. Imagine my shock when he turned away from me and announced that he preferred to be accompanied by his nanny!
At that moment, I became painfully aware that- because of my 60-hour work weeks, I was living on the fringes of my son’s life.
That wake-up call prompted a major career reinvention. Over the next several months, I re-assessed my priorities, re-imagined my life and career and explored new possibilities.
Ten months later, I left a fifteen-year legal career to reinvent myself as an entrepreneur and sales leader, which eventually led to a second reinvention as coach and speaker.
Have You Received a Wake-Up Call?
Many reinvention invitations arrive – as mine did – as a jarring wake-up call prompting you to question how you’re living your life. It might be a scary medical diagnosis for yourself or a loved one. Or you may be jolted into realizing that a precious relationship, which you’ve always taken for granted, is slipping away.
In that instant, you realize that the life you’re living is no longer aligned with what truly matters to you.
Will you accept the invitation to get back in touch with what matters and redesign your life to reflect your priorities?
Have You Suffered a Setback?
Your invitation may arrive packaged as a setback, loss, or the disintegration of a dream. While this can initially trigger feelings of anger, grief, and fear, it’s important to realize that you have a choice.
You can choose to see yourself as a “victim” which can make you feel helpless and closes your mind to new possibilities.
Or you can choose to view yourself as a reinventor – the CEO of your life – who will treat this setback as an invitation to reinvent yourself and emerge from this challenge stronger, wiser and in a better place.
How will you choose to respond?
Do You Sense There’s Something More for You?
Perhaps you’re being called to reinvent yourself by a little voice asking, “Is that all there is?” Your “successful” career seems meaningless and empty. The business that you’ve worked so hard to build doesn’t excite you anymore.
You sense that life holds something more for you or that you’re being called to make a greater contribution to the world. It might be getting engaged in a cause that touches your heart or starting that business or earning that degree that you’ve talked about for years.
Will you listen to that inner voice or allow your busy schedule to drown it out?
Will You Accept Life’s Invitation?
You can choose to ignore that invitation and miss an opportunity to reshape your life to be more joyful, abundant, and fulfilling.
You can choose to plod on day after day, year after year trying to “fit” into a life that you’ve outgrown.
You can choose to continue living a lifestyle but not living your life.
Or…. you can DARE to accept life’s invitation to reinvent yourself and step into a more joyful, fulfilling, and abundant life – a life of meaningful success.
