THE ART OF REINVENTION
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The Art of Reinvention
It started on a Monday. I could feel a different energy happening.
Most of my colleagues were humming along fine last week and Mondays, which are usually busy/crazy… seemed to stand still.
It’s called the rut, the midlife crisis, the ‘why am I here’ zone.
And the flood started coming in.
Several of my colleague friends had been laid off.
Some didn’t know what to do with themselves.
A couple others later that week were ‘downsized.’
And after a couple of decades through the school of hard knocks, long hours of endless work and most of my associates griping and complaining about ‘not having a life’ --- it happened. Suddenly they didn’t know what to do with themselves. And a few even hit me up for work.
Being on my own for almost all of my entire marketing career, I was seeing something new. Many people were trying to tread water and ‘find themselves’ and try to make it on their own.
What is the meaning of all this?
Why do we work our fingers to the bone, only to find ourselves having worked for nothing?
While I am self-employed and many may think the grass is greener on this side, it is not. It’s just different. When you’re independent, having to work on your own – sure, it’s great to be your own boss, but sometimes you work three times as much because you’re the one wearing all the hats. You don’t have assistants or a receptionist, you don’t have interns and you don’t have junior committees helping you when times get crazy. You also don’t have anyone looking or prospecting new clients or paying bills or anything – you do it all yourself. You are the administrator, decision-maker, and the actual labor and the creative and everything.
I’m not complaining. I enjoy what I do. But at the end of the day, I can also find myself in the same place as my midlife crisis colleagues who work all these long hours and still end up in the same place…. Why, what for, who for and does it matter?
Enter the art of reinvention. What is that? Well, it’s called shifting gears, changing as the world changes. And while most people in my industry like me, mourn and grieve the loss of the publishing world, the dissolving of newspapers, the transitional phase of graphics and printing and also seeing that half of the people in their rolodex are deceased – it’s also a wakeup call.
Why are we doing this?
Is there a purpose?
Does my life have meaning?
And does the work I do, really matter?
Recently I had found an old trade show bag filled with (laughable) business cards that you collect when you go booth-to-booth. And I had to laugh because I got so busy, I never had the time to ‘log’ all of these contacts in. Here I was stressing over never having time to do this, but through online communications now, I don’t ever have to worry about that. You end up getting ‘found’ by those that actually want to do business with you and you can ‘find’ others you wish to do business with. It’s actually more efficient than entering in the information of someone whom you never come in contact with ever again, after that long-forgotten trade show.
In the process of transformation and in the art of reinvention – one of the greatest things you can discover about yourself and your talents is that there is more to what you can do with the power of exploration.
I highly encourage everyone to do what I call ‘the purge.’ Purging is essential in order for new energy to enter your life and it’s part of reinventing yourself as the world changes.
1) Release. Releasing stuff you’re hanging onto from old projects, clients, jobs, etc. is baggage. Why are you hanging onto this? For what purpose? Yes, you might have achieved something great. But if it’s over and dead now….why clutter your work space with old energy. It’s like having a dead plant on your desk. Do you still water that dead plant? Wouldn’t you like to remove the brown dead leaves so new green ones can grow? Same can be said for business. The only way to reinvent yourself is to release so you can embrace new things.
2) Acceptance. To accept is also part of the purging process. Accept change. Accept that industry shifts. Accept that you know more now than you did 10 years ago. And with this acceptance you must embrace the knowledge which can propel you forward rather than resisting transforming when it is inevitable.
3) Reach out. How in the world will anyone know you are going through a transformation unless you let people know? For all you know, just because your industry or job may be different, doesn’t mean that some of your associates and colleagues aren’t experiencing the same thing. Sometimes camaraderie helps to escalate creativity and innovation. But also sometimes misery likes company (beware of this – so your energy doesn’t get zapped in your own process).
And finally, my advice to all those looking to reinvent… look to what you love. Find your passion. Discover what you’re motivated by. Ask yourself if you can turn a hobby into a new career or look at the things that actually make you happy and excited in the morning.
So many of my friends have been ‘stuck’ for years. And some are looking for their jobs to ‘complete them.’ My answer for that is to look outside that.
Your job can never be all things to you.
It is YOUR JOB to be all things to yourself, or you’ll never enjoy any kind of work at all as you won’t find it to be fulfilling.
Happiness starts with you.
If you are not happy, you have to seek out what pushes those happy buttons of life. Otherwise, there really is no point.
Make your reinvention of yourself begin with who you are inside and find out what makes you tick. Quite often we all get so busy, we don’t even know who we are anymore. Go hiking, play tennis, go commune with nature. Leave your desk and breathe. We often get a clearer perspective of what matters to each of us, when we do that. And from here we can reinvent how we perceive life and how we process it. From here, we can transform our energies into being fulfilled and feeling more productive by what we are doing. And in the end, we’ll be doing something worthwhile, that matters.
This is the art of reinvention.
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