the smaller ways we reinvent ourselves
Reinventing Ourselves
We hear a lot of people talk about reinventing themselves these days. Yet like most other popular phrases, each of us might have a different idea of what that actually means.
Many people probably imagine reinventing themselves to mean a new job, a new city, or a new apartment. Maybe even a new hairstyle and a total makeover. It’s easy to see why. These are the flashier signs many of us recognize, the big changes that make reinvention easy to see. They’re also the ones we usually associate with positive effort and forethought.
I certainly understand this interpretation, but I’m starting to think it actually happens in smaller ways first, showing up as subtle shifts in the decisions we make in our daily lives. These are the more cumulative and often invisible things, the ones others would hardly notice: the moments when we decide to use a kinder voice with ourselves instead of a harsher one. Acquiring a taste for a slower pace and a gentler rhythm. Getting more comfortable with prioritizing our own needs rather than putting everyone else first, all the time.
Those might just be the kinds of things that make those larger signs of reinvention possible.
Sometimes the change is in how we see things
I belong to a workshop group that spends a lot of time looking at the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences. The focus is how we’ve come to understand what’s happened and what it means to us.
I’ve been thinking about how much reinvention can happen there too. Even if nothing about our circumstances has changed, we can start asking different questions about how we respond to them. We notice an old belief we’ve been carrying around and wonder whether we still believe it. Or we realize that the way we’ve been defining an experience leaves very little room for seeing it any other way.
That kind of change isn’t always going to be visible on the outside. Nobody looking at us would know that anything had happened. But reassessing how we understand something can change what we do next and how we go about it. And then that decision can affect the one after it.
That’s how some of these smaller changes can eventually become much bigger than they first appear.
Sometimes we reinvent ourselves by choice. Sometimes life chooses for us.
I’ve certainly experienced both. There have been times when I’ve chosen what I wanted to do next, and others when I’ve resisted what life put in front of me with everything I had.
And now, I’m starting over, from scratch, with a combination of the two. What’s unique about this particular stage is that there seems to be less margin for error and a bit more pressure to get it right than before.
I think there’s something interesting about reinventing ourselves later in life, when we have all these years behind us and a little more information to work with. We know ourselves better. Or at least I hope we do.
We’ve learned some things the hard way. We’ve figured out a few things we don’t want to do again. We may care less about some of the things we once thought were incredibly important. And maybe we’ve become more willing to pay attention to what actually works for us rather than what we thought our lives were supposed to look like. And this time around, we’re making some rules for ourselves.
That doesn’t necessarily make starting over easier. I’m not sure we’re working entirely “from scratch,” either. Each change we make is built on a lifetime’s worth of choices and experiences that came before it.
None of that guarantees we’ll get the next part right. And frankly, I’m still figuring out how much of what I’ve learned might influence where I go from here.
What do we keep and what do we let go of?
I think that’s part of what interests me most about reinvention. We often talk about it as though we’re just shedding one version of ourselves and creating another. But I don’t know that it necessarily works that way.
We keep things. We reconsider others. It’s not unlike going through our closet and setting the things aside that no longer fit or no longer light us up, while keeping those favorites that feel like trusty companions.
There are plenty of things about myself that I have no interest in reinventing. My interests, my curiosity, the tenacity with which I go about things. These things still work just fine, and changing them for the sake of reinvention would make me unrecognizable to myself.
Then there are other things I’m actively working on. I’m letting go of some of my rigid expectations of myself, along with the belief that my voice isn’t always worth listening to. It’s getting easier to speak up for myself and honor my limitations. None of this has come particularly easily, but I like where it’s taking me.
In my case, reinventing myself comes with rethinking almost everything else in my life. The flashier signs haven’t materialized quite yet, but I’m still hopeful and fairly confident they will.
Some changes come because our circumstances change. Others come because we do. Many are so gradual that we couldn’t tell you when they happened. There isn’t always a clear before and after. Sometimes we just have a feeling that something doesn’t fit anymore. There might even be times when we wonder why we’re still doing something we’ve never really questioned before.
We might wake up one day and ask ourselves, do I actually like this? Do I still want this? Is this really important to me, or has it just been a habit for so long that it never occurred to me to ask?
Which brings me to a question worth asking ourselves:
What would I choose for myself now?
Choosing again
What I like about that question is that it doesn’t assume there’s only one right answer. It leaves space for various options, each of them just as valid as the others.
Maybe you’d choose exactly what you chose before. There’s something fairly reassuring about that possibility, isn’t there? We don’t need to reevaluate everything simply because we’re older or our circumstances have changed.
But then again, you might not. You might take a bolder, more confident route, one that doesn’t need anyone else’s permission.
I’m answering that question with years of experience I didn’t have when I made some of those earlier choices. I know things now that I couldn’t have known then.
I’m noticing some of this in myself already. I’m less likely to speak critically to myself in the name of motivation and productivity. I don’t want to be available to everyone all the time. And I’ve come to appreciate a gentler pace much more than I ever thought I would.
These aren’t necessarily changes anyone else would recognize as reinvention. There won’t be any grand announcement on social media. No new address. No dramatic before-and-after photos.
But I’m not sure reinvention needs proof in the usual sense. I’ve come to believe that part of it is deciding what that word means to us in the first place.
At this stage of my life, I’m less interested in becoming a completely different person than I am in paying attention to what I want to do differently. Some of that might eventually show up in ways other people can see. A lot of it probably won’t.
For now, I’m interested in the smaller choices. The ones I’m making with more information than I had before, a better idea of what matters to me now, and hopefully enough sense to know that I still won’t get all of them right.
Life brings us many opportunities to reinvent ourselves, big and small. How it looks to us will probably depend a lot on where we’re starting from and what brought us here. I’m just grateful I’m getting closer to knowing what it means to me.
With you on the journey,
Julie 💜