Recycle, Retread, and Reinvent

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Recycle, Retread, and Reinvent

July 1, 2001

The View from the Top

It started one day when I looked around my highly coveted corner office. The sun streamed in, warming me and illuminating the piles of memoranda, research, and unanswered telephone messages stacked up on my glistening lacquered desk.

I leaned back in my executive chair, and wondered why I was here . . .

Ten years before, on another bright sunny day, I was walking down the Avenue of the Americas with my lover. We were both running successful businesses and creating a wonderful life together. The whole world seemed to be ahead of us as we strolled along, sharing our dreams. I pointed to the top of a cluster of skyscrapers, the bastion of big business, and proclaimed, “One day I will have an office up there, and I’ll be making a 6-figure income!”

But the view from the top proved to be very different from my original view from the street. I’d gotten what I’d wanted, but at what cost?

I thought of

. . . the abusive, driven bosses I had put up with along the way.

. . . my “real woman” role model—powerful, vulnerable, compassionate—out-maneuvered and crucified by her most trusted allies.

. . .our two “little ones” who would be graduating soon. Custody conflicts had kept me from them when they were small. Now they were home, and I was an “absentee mom.”

. . . my lover and second husband. He was always there for me. He had made my kids his own. Yet I was always at the office, working late, dragging home an enormous briefcase on the weekends.

The sunlight continued to stream through my window, but I felt cold. What had happened to my aliveness, my juicy feminine passions, the freshness I’d had when I’d started out on this path to “fame and fortune”?

I was in a hurry, but where was I going? Where had the time gone? What was I trying to prove, and to whom?

My story is not unique. I hear it repeated again and again, by both women and men, from the hallowed halls of Corporate America to the ivory towers of Academia and the street-fighting world of self-made millionaires. These movers and shakers are CEOs, maverick entrepreneurs, and independent professionals.

Some have achieved tremendous success so quickly that they have fried their circuits in the process, burning out in their twenties. Others have high-income careers but are bored or dissatisfied, trapped by the demands of their voracious lifestyles. Then there are those in senior positions who have invested their all in a company for years, only to be forced out, downsized or retired, written off as casualties of political hit-men or economic downturns. Accustomed to high 6-figure incomes, perks, and deference, they are shocked to find themselves an unsellable commodity in a business environment where youth pulls far more weight than wisdom.

The Good News and the Bad

Professional reinventions go hand in hand with personal reinventions—that’s both the good news and the bad. It’s not an intellectual process but one of mind, body, and soul. Before undertaking a reinvention, assess carefully:

where you are
where you want to go
why you want to go there
what’s really important to you

Then check your underlying assumptions for the emotional fault lines of unmet needs or overridden values:

Are you simply bored?
Does the grass look greener “over there”?
Are you following a societal dictate?
Are you doing what other’s expect?
Are you following your own heartfelt yearning?

You may have so many interests or options that you can’t immediately discern what you want, or you may be so burned out that you can’t answer any of these questions. Reinvention is a process of personal evolution. There’s no magic wand, however, there are some pitfalls to avoid.

Reinvention most often backfires when:

you fail to properly research what you think you want
you are lacking the inner resources required to fuel the change process
you begin following a road that is not on your map

Are you a good candidate for reinvention, or are you a high risk? How can you best prepare yourself for this process?

Delaying Tactics—The Cost of Self-Denial

It’s interesting, but most of us don’t think about what it will cost us if we don’t put our needs and values first. Thinking we can maintain the staus quo, we often ignore the subtle warning signs, setting ourselves up for one or more of the following breakdowns. The longer you resist, the more significantly you’ll be affected by these self-denial symptoms.

Relationship Breakdowns: Expect to burn out a marriage and/or lose people who are very important to you.
Physical Breakdowns: Expect to be hit with chronic fatigue, female issues, back trouble, fibromialgia, or pneumonia. Wherever you’re physically vulnerable, you will be affected.
Spiritual Breakdowns: Expect to experience confusion, internal churnings, disconnections, desperate yearnings, and fruitless seekings.

How Will You Cross the Divide?

Reinvention can be related to traversing a “Grand Canyon” of the Soul. Most people are so focused on what’s happening in the moment, they don’t see the warning signs and drive straight into the void, crashing and burning when they hit bottom. Others take the long route, painstakingly clambering down one side, trekking across the interior plains and scaling the opposite cliff, inch by torturous inch. Some sail in by parachute, a tool that will help them progress quickly through the initial stages of their journey. A few will study the situation, hire an architect to design a bridge for them, contract a builder to create it, and finally, hire a guide to take them across. What option will you choose?

Following are the key tasks and stages that need to be addressed and progressed through as you reinvent yourself. You can choose to undertake this journey alone and backpack it across the divide, or you can choose to light your path with support and guidance. Reinvention is a highly individual, personal process, but you don’t have to go it alone.

Key Tasks of Reinvention

Assess where you are.
Determine what you want—where you’re headed.
Test your goals—research your destination.
Overlay what you’ve learned in #3 against what you think you want—then take it all back to #2 and rework it, preferably with the help of a friend, a therapist, a coach, or a mentor.
Investigate non-work-related options (social, family, etc.) that will also fulfill your evolving values and needs.
Incorporate findings from #5 and overlay the grids again.
Notice how your evolving future map affects you at all levels, emotional, intellectual, spiritual . . .
Choose to either follow this course or continue with your research.
Take action, trusting that this is your path, but don’t trust blindly—stay awake and alert as you move ahead.
Consistently and continuously reassess and reevaluate where you’re going, what you’re doing, and how it feels.