Shea is creating an online course called Re-Inventing Yourself. When I first heard about it I thought oh, this will be good for folks who have been laid off and looking for work. Then I started thinking what does it mean to re-invent oneself? Have I done it, if so when and how? When I looked for myself it seems like my re-invention has come from my choices: to leave IBM and go to business school, to leave CSC and strike out on my own or when I insisted my sisters and I go away each year for what is now dubbed “sister vacation.” When Jen and I declared we were Seven Stones, when my husband and I moved to Connecticut, when I gave birth each time, purchased this house, sold that one, took personal development courses . . . ok, a lot of personal development courses, I could go on and on. All of these choices lead to moments of re-invention even if I did not declare it at the time. Each transition each shift reveal another side of me, another step toward something, these moments represented my next most powerful step at the time.

As I write I notice that although I was unaware of it at the time, many of these moves were an answer to an experience of scarcity. These moves followed feelings of either/or, not enough, separateness, comparison or just a vague sense that something was missing. As I look to re-invent myself throughout my journey where does sufficiency belong? I believe that balancing our moves and finding our enough line inside of transition and re-invention is a worthy inquiry.

If you took time this month for re-invention . . . what would you create?

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