Published on: Thursday, August 26, 2010
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Personal Reinvention
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People think about the matter of "reinventing" themselves as some kind of epic event – that it takes great planning, preparation and courage to become something new. But, no matter where you are, and no matter what you're doing now, if you look back over your life you will see that you have reinvented yourself multiple times along the way in order to get where you are right now. In fact, you reinvent yourself every day, every time you do something new. And most of the time you probably don't even realize consciously that you're doing it.
How many times have you been given an assignment from your boss to take on a project you've never done before? Probably often, and yet each time you will have to figure it out for the first time. That means reinventing yourself into that capability.
You can go as far back in your life as you want to see that this is true, but let's start when you graduated high school and applied to college. To begin with, you had no direct or immediate experience as a college student before you became one. But at some point you filled out forms and might have even sat across from an admissions official and told them you could not only BE a college student, but you would in fact be a successful one. You believed it (or at least talked yourself into believing it, despite that fact that you had no evidence of your ability to be successful as a college student). And they believed you. Voila...you have just reinvented yourself.
If you are, or have been, married, you at one point decided you could become a "wife" or "husband." New title. New role. New responsibilities. And regardless of how many times you've made that decision over your life, the first time it was pure reinvention. You didn't know if you could do it. You had no prior experience being a wife or husband. But you wanted it, and you believed you could do it. Same is true as a parent. Suddenly you're a "father" or a "mother," and for the very first time in your life you start using words like "my son" or "my daughter." That's pure personal reinvention.
And then of course there's your career. You didn't get your first job because you didn't believe you could do it. You got it because you believed you COULD do it. And more importantly, somebody else believed you. You looked someone in the eye and told them you could do that job. Be that employee. Deliver those results. Your confidence in your abilities starts with you, and then transfers to someone else. You believe it, and then they believe it.
If you are wanting to make a career change – a new industry, a new company, a new job – but are holding back because of concern that you have to "reinvent" yourself, worry not, because you've been reinventing yourself your entire life. You'll probably even do it in some way, large or small, today. And you'll probably do it even better than you ever thought possible.
David Topus
Lessons learned from and about six-figure leadership and executive career management
