Reinventing Yourself

How do you keep going when life keeps handing you lemons? Whether you are in your teens or twenties, prime or golden years of your life, I’m sure you’ve felt once or twice that life is just a little too overwhelming and you have no idea what you are going to do next.

• Maybe you’ve been fired from a job or rejected by a college admissions officer.
• Maybe you failed a certification program at work and lost the promotion or were just dumped by the person you thought you should spend the rest of your life loving.
• Maybe you’re dealing with a serious illness or have found yourself thrown into the role of caregiver too early in life.
• Maybe your child just fought with you while reminding you for the millionth time that you are the worst parent ever to have existed, right after the flat tire happened with the car full of frozen groceries on the way home.

Sometimes these things happen one at a time, but other times they happen too close together, too much, too soon. They affect our self-esteem, our self-perception, our self-worth, and our personal equilibrium. And it takes time to get that all back.

So, how do you handle it when life is just too much all at once? Having thought a lot about what I want out of my life, I’ve discovered that I consciously need to take time to step back, take a breath, and figure out a way to reinvent myself so that I can handle whatever is next. In thinking about my different experiences, sometimes that length of time has been a few minutes, others a few hours or months, even a few years.

Reinventing yourself with a new bliss

By reinvent myself, I mean I’ve made a serious effort to find something else to consume my thoughts and energy, maybe even determine another goal. Focus on another passion and find a new bliss.

When I lost a healthcare position early in my career, I didn’t jump right back into healthcare and take the first job I could find. I took a few months to explore other avenues, finally admitting to myself that I did not want to work in that field any longer. I then found a job in the staffing industry helping other people to find positions, using my own job loss as an example to share. When I left that position after 18 months, it was to pursue an independent opportunity in the insurance industry and build my own clientele as a licensed agent. It was while I was working there and had the chance to teach a class or two at the college level that I realized I had found my true passion – teaching and empowering others.

Reinventing yourself through teaching

I believe that true teaching is reinvention at its finest. Every moment I spent in the classroom interacting with my students forced me to find a way to connect with each different personality in order to be effective. Do you know how challenging it is to connect with 30 or more different people simultaneously? I loved every minute of sharing my knowledge because I was discovering ways to show those students how to become life-long learners on their own and to reinvent my own perceptions based on their level of understanding. But when that career ended with someone running a red light and crashing into the driver’s side door while I was in that very seat, I needed to find another way to share knowledge outside of the classroom setting.

My career since then has continued to branch out into different interests and pursuits. Some have made plenty of money; others have been more emotionally rewarding than monetarily enriching. Yet, each time that something has happened to force a change into my life, I’ve taken time to figure out how to eliminate the things that I no longer want to pursue and to focus on those things that truly make me happy. I’m not saying that it has been simple, but it has been essential to my well-being. And since life is not a dress rehearsal, I want to live my life with no regrets. The older I get, the longer the list becomes of the things I don’t want to pursue. I’m learning that it’s okay for me to decide “been there, done that, don’t want to do it again”.

Personal reinvention is a key to growth

This process of reinvention has been important in my personal life, too. As the years continue to contribute more and more experiences to my life, I’ve found myself having to revisit my path ahead based on the cards I’ve been dealt.

After arriving at the conclusion that I was content to marry someone more than a decade my senior who mirrored my religious and political beliefs as well as my intellectual pursuits, the relationship ended and not by my choice. So, I shook things up a little and dated someone completely opposite – different race, different religion, and different political affiliation. When that relationship imploded along with a series of disastrous set-ups engineered by my circle of trusted friends, I finally decided to take time away from all things dating-related and simply learn to hang out by myself or with friends although I was still unattached. It was definitely not easy, but it was the right thing to do. I focused on giving myself quality time to be by myself. It was almost four years before I was introduced to my now husband of eight plus years, and I wouldn’t do a thing to change that!

Recently thrown into the situation of being a caregiver to a cherished loved one, I knew I had entered a new era of my life with added responsibilities I wasn’t ready to tackle and didn’t yet want to have. It was impossible to keep up with the daily demands of my own life while trying to focus on someone else’s fragile health. Once the initial health crisis was over, including a life-flight to another hospital; the emergency surgeries; the discovery that the blockage had not caused complete loss of speech, movement, and memory; the grueling rehabilitation process started and the paperwork nightmare began – hospitals, medical and legal offices, insurance providers, and federal and state offices addressing benefits for a leave of absence.

While all of this was unfolding and my own life was being placed on the back-burner, I realized a few things. I had less time to visit with friends and even less energy to keep in touch. The mundane concerns that had filled my days before this event simply couldn’t play first fiddle because I didn’t have the mental energy to handle them. Only the must-get-done things were getting done.

Although I’ve consistently possessed a strong religious belief that I am being watched and protected, I’ve also had plenty of friends to turn to in times of need. But this was different. I needed to find a new way of dealing with life because it was running me over like a truck. I retreated into my own life and essentially shut everything off.

Right or wrong, I stopped initiating contact with friends and connected only with those that called me first, tackling whatever issues were screaming for attention the loudest. I resorted to taking even better care of myself with as much deep sleep, healthy food, and targeted exercise as I could manage. It is taking me a while to get back to being the happy me, but I am getting there.

Reinventing yourself through writing

All of this now brings me to my website. I’m reinventing myself yet again by sharing with you things that make sense to me. My blog posts here talk about things I have learned in my experiences having worked in many different industries, profit and non-profit, with the poor, the rich and everyone in between that I have been fortunate to encounter. And, of course, there are plenty of non-work ideas here, too. I hope my thoughts and stories give you that missing bit of encouragement to keep going and to discover whatever it is that makes you happy. As for me, I plan to continue living my life while being able to say that I have done my best to be my best. I’m not competing with anyone; I’m simply trying to find what works for me. Have you taken the time to discover what works for you?