While driving to buy groceries, my wife and I were having conversation about how people change their careers. Some either move into an adjacent career, or some move into completely new ones.
Then my wife said to me, “You managed to reinvent yourself though.”
It had me thinking, what does it mean to reinvent yourself. So I looked it up.
The meaning of reinvent
Merriam Webster dictionary defines reinvent as the following:
- to make as if for the first time something already invented
- to remake or redo completely
- to bring into use again
The second definition resonated.
To remake or redo completely….
It had me thinking about my career and what I had done up to this point.
For nearly a decade, I was working in corporate finance, managed multiple promotions in a short time span, collected bonuses and praise, and received options.
But I was never happy.
After working from 7am to 7pm, I would often come home and ask myself, “What am I doing?”.
I was having an existential moment every day I came home.
Then in 2017, I was laid off.
Yes, admittedly I was angry and upset. But a part of me was also relieved and happy. For nearly a decade, I wanted out of this career. And then it happened.
How entrepreneurship enabled me to reinvent myself
After backpacking in 2017 with my wife throughout Southeast Asia, we were having deep conversations about the direction of our lives.
Do we go back to corporate? Do we take another comfy job? Do we do something completely different?
These are hard choices to think about.
But after reading the book “The Everything Store”, a biography on Jeff Bezos and Amazon and one of my favorite books, it gave me the realization that we only have one life–this life.
We have this one life to live and make it our own.
So I decided that entrepreneurship was going to be my path.
Since taking this path, I’ve learned and gained the following skills:
- How to close deals with prospects
- How to build a website
- How to build sales and marketing funnels
- How to create engaging social posts
- How to set up analytics to analyze web performance
- How to project manage using scrum and agile frameworks
- How to manage remote teams and build team culture
- How to create automated workflows using no code
- How to leverage my time for maximum efficiency (i.e. no more 40 hour work weeks)
These are just a few of the things I’ve learned over the past couple of years. But I’ve been so happy. Words can’t describe how much better I feel since taking this path.
I feel like I’m in college all over again.
You can reinvent yourself too
I strongly believe that at some point we become accustom to our lifestyles.
We take that corporate career path, we work our 9-5 shift, we collect our paycheck, then we rinse and repeat.
We don’t think about the possibility that there could be something else.
Fear has overridden us. We take the path of least resistance.
I thought this way for so long. And it wasn’t until being laid off that I realized how big this world is and the opportunities that are out there.
It’s vast.
You can reinvent yourself too. Ask yourself the following:
- Am I happy in this career path I’m in?
- Do I actually like this work that I do?
- Does it align with my values in life?
- What are my values in life?
- If I died in the next 5 years, would I do something different?
These simple questions can help determine if you’re truly happy in the path you’re in.
You may be, you might not be. But it’ll manifest if you take the time to ask. Feel free to use a free tool like XMind to create a mind map, which I found to be extremely valuable.
I did this, and it was the best thing for me personally.
Final thoughts
In the end, this is our only life.
Time is the only commodity we can’t make more of. When the time passes, it’s gone. This alone should make us think about what we truly value with our time.
If there’s this burning desire inside of you that’s begging for a change, consider it. Seriously consider it.
It will be scary, it will be daunting.
But remember this — this is our life. We have a choice.
Reinvent yourself. Become the person you want to be.
Above all else, be happy. Because that’s what matters.
Stay strong, stay healthy and best wishes ?
