Don’t Reinvent Yourself
Years ago, when I was in living in Vienna on our first posting with the Canadian foreign service, I met a friend of a friend for coffee. As we were getting ready to part ways he said to me, “I really envy that you get to just pick up and walk away to a new country and reinvent yourself every few years.”
“Yeah,” I answered pretty breathlessly. Being early on in my career, I agreed wholeheartedly because I had given a performance that I wasn’t proud of right before moving, and I was really glad that I didn’t have to “face the music” of any (albeit self-induced) consequences.
Beautiful reinvention
But the thing was, I had a really important lesson to learn from that performance. And there was no running away from it. In a year, I had another performance like that one in Ottawa, and then a couple of months later, another one. Finally, I sat myself down, instead of avoiding the problem, and I asked and explored and examined what was at the centre of these failures: what I was doing TECHNICALLY that was sabotaging my musical interpretation. And that’s when I finally learnt how to actively prevent this mistake from coming up in future performances.
I’ve since realized that reinventing yourself is very similar type of mistake: you can’t run away from who you are: you need to exam what you are bringing to the table, look at specific skills that you have and see how you can approach your weaknesses using your strengths.
When people talk about “reinventing themselves” they imply that they’re talking about changing one aspect that they perceive of as flawed – their look, their career, their social interactions.
But the term itself suggests that you are reinventing YOURSELF, not an aspect or area that you want to see a transformation in; that, in turn, suggests that there is something wrong with WHO you are at your very core. And that can be potentially very destructive for your self worth.
As someone who moves countries every 2-4 years, I frankly can’t afford the expense to my self-worth that reinventing myself would cost me. In fact, the only thing I really KNOW when I move, what to expect, what to rely on - my stabilizing force - is ME.
For me, leaning into change, embracing it, seeking it out, is not the same thing as reinventing yourself.
But what about transformation: can we change as people? Of course we can! I regularly evolve with my circumstances and my environment. But at the end of the day, I still have the same DNA, the same core principles and my WHY in tact. I’m absolutely convinced that the type of transformations that we wish to see happen in our lifetimes are better, more powerful, and more far reaching once we know who we truly are.
The transformation
It’s from there that we can lean into our evolution, our transformation, with fullness and power, knowing what we NEED to do, and how our unique selves can make that happen.
You, too, can navigate change with all its limitless possibility, being to your own core self: your unique fire, and jump into a new environment with curiosity and creativity!
If you want to know more about my anti-reinvention methods (lol!) send me an email: valerie@valeriedueck.com
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