4 Biggest Lessons after Reinventing Myself 5 times in 13 years
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Lesson 1
If you get your identity from what you “do,” it will be 10x harder to reinvent yourself.
Examples:
I’m a teacher vs. I am someone who teaches
I’m a software engineer vs. I’m someone who codes
I'm a founder vs. I am someone who has started a company
When I was considering going from ministry/nonprofit to real estate, I struggled at first because I was defining myself by the NOUN (teacher, speaker, healer etc) rather than the VERB of what I was doing (I teach, I do a lot of speaking).
The result?
I had an internal crisis because it felt like I had to change my sense of "BEING" rather than simply changing what I was DOING.
This is the internal battle I fought using the noun:
“OH NO BUT WHAT HAPPENS IF I’M NOT A TEACHER/SPEAKER ANYMORE? How can I ‘be’ a teacher but not teach anymore?? Wait.. WHO AM I? AHH”
This is what the battle became when I used the verb:
“Oh yeah, before I was doing a lot of teaching and speaking, and now I’m going to do less of that. And more investing, sales, marketing, and real estate.”
Much less scary.
Only until I shifted this, did I feel like it was an easy decision to walk away from the world of ministry to dive into real estate.
If you decouple your sense of self from the NOUN of the thing you do and associate more with the VERB, you’ll skip the 2 months of internal struggle I had before going to flip houses.
I feel like this is something lots of people go through in different phases of their career, but no one really talks about it.
Lesson 2
The longer you stay in a career, the harder it is to reinvent yourself
Why?
The longer you stay, the more familiar you are with:
Industry language
Industry thought leaders
Industry norms
How to figure out who has a good reputation or not
How to distinguish between substance and fluff
And these are all *good* things.
The issue is…when you reinvent yourself, most (if not all) of that goes out the window.
You go from deep familiarity to knowing nobody and nothing.
That’s jarring for most people — even for me!
I think this is one of the core reasons why people don’t do the reinvention thing.
All of a sudden all of your previous knowledge is of no immediate use
All of a sudden you don’t know anyone, don’t know who is legit or isn’t
All of a sudden, no one knows you
You can’t tell up from down, everything looks new
It’s overwhelming.
I’ve done this 5x and it still feels like a lot.
There’s only one way I know how to address this.
Start early.
Get a head start. 🏁
Start getting familiar with the new world *before* you make the leap.
Start getting to know who the players are, the language, the norms *before* you make the switch.
Reinvention doesn’t have to be a sudden move.
It can be calculated, and it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
Too many people only start figuring out their next step *when they're already ready to leave* their current situation.
This is too late.
Ok fine, it's not too late, but it just makes it harder, more stressful, and you might not be happy with where you land.
Lesson 3
The earlier you start prototyping, the smoother your next reinvention will be.
I used to do this accidentally, now I do it purposely.
It’s *possible* to reinvent yourself cold turkey
It’s wiser to start prototyping LONG before you actually decide to take the leap.
The screenshot below is chart of each phase of my career and how much time I spent prototyping BEFORE I made the leap:
2 takeaways from the screenshot:
On average, I dabbled around for a *13 months* before I committed. 13 months
I’m ALREADY prototyping my next career on the side while working on Zone of Genius…?
What?
Some things I’ve been investigating since the beginning of this year:
Politics
Massage Therapy
Company around creating community based off of books people have read
Why am I doing this even though I’m quite content with where I’m at?
Well, first of all, the premise of reinvention is about *finding what energizes you.*
When you find work that energizes you, it *doesn’t feel like work*
Prototyping (done right) shouldn’t feel like work, it should feel like an investigation of what is *already* interesting to you.
Second, in the event that Zone of Genius doesn’t wildly succeed, I won’t have to scramble to figure out what I should do next, cause I’ve already have a decent idea.
In the event that Zone of Genius wildly succeeds, I basically know exactly what I could pursue if my interest wanes.
See? It’s a win-win.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
Lesson 4
The single best way to accelerate your reinvention:
Surround yourself with like-minded people
2 reasons.
Reason 1
I did the math.
100% of my reinventions were introduced to me by a friend (see below) -- highlighted in green:
5 out of 5.
Maybe it’s a fluke.
Maybe I’ve been lucky.
Maybe it just works?
It's just *far* more likely that the people around you know about opportunities you don't that might be aligned with what you’re looking for.
I did a full 11-page breakdown on all my reinvention experiments and how I came across them (this is free, you're welcome):
Reason 2
Imagine trying to keep tea kettle hot while being placed *inside* a fridge.
That tea kettle will have to spend LOT of energy fighting to stay hot.
Reinventing yourself when surrounded by like-minded people is like trying to be a hot tea kettle inside an already-hot oven.
You'll get hot faster in the oven, and spend less energy trying to stay hot.
Practically, this means:
Create distance from doubters
Set boundaries with those who don’t believe what you’re pursuing
Yes, this means you are deliberately creating an echo chamber for the explicit purpose of nurturing a different way of being 🌱
Once your new way of being has more roots, you can bring yourself out of the echo chamber (for me, this took 2-3 years) 🌳
In Summary
1. If you get your identity from what you “do,” it will be 10x harder to reinvent yourself.
Focus on the “verb” of what you do, not the noun
2. The longer you stay in a career, the harder it is to reinvent yourself.
Don’t go cold turkey, do a slow reinvention
3. The earlier you start prototyping, the smoother your next reinvention will be.
Start investigating your curiosities long before you plan to make a career switch
4. Surround yourself with like-minded people
They’ll likely be responsible for pointing you in the right direction
Looking to reinvent yourself?
Get 1-1, personalized support from my reinvention mentoring program here.
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