I can’t recall the specific day or moment I finally felt comfortable with who I was. Or when I “found myself,” as they say.
All I remember is how much easier life became to navigate and how the backing of my beliefs and experiences equipped me for handing life on my terms. It was great. It felt good.
We all find ourselves at different times. Some earlier than others and some much later than they should. However, when we do reach this level of peace within ourselves and we’re cocooned in the quilt of our own perspective, if we’re not intentional about transformation in the meanwhile, we’ll risk the chance of stunting our growth.
I get it, adolescence was much too difficult and awkward to simply “change” once we’ve finally gotten comfortable with who we are. But that’s just it, comfort is the enemy.
Your “best,” that thing you’ve been told to strive for since grade school, will always be ahead of you. The the “best you” isn’t a destination, no matter how bad of a person you once were. A better version of yourself is always out there somewhere.
This is why reinvention is incredibly important. If you want to change, see out your heart’s desires and adapt to life’s spontaneity, you must learn how to reinvent yourself.
When we consistently challenge what we can do, we bring out the best in ourselves.
Your life can’t change if you don’t change
Don’t let pride stop you from relearning. If you spent your entire life in one ecosystem where everyone has the same cultural and societal backgrounds, of course your worldview will be cozy as a comforter.
That’s why it’s our responsibility to strive to grow — to want to challenge and hone our beliefs.
A lot of times the opportunity for reinvention comes to us. We’ll find our tires spinning in place or we’ll find ourselves banging our heads against the same wall, and the entire time, all we had to do was change our habits.
If we don’t change anything, how do we expect our lives to change?
The art of being limitless
What’s so cool about reinventing who we are is that it doesn’t mean diminishing any other part of ourselves.
It’s not like you’ll lose your funny if you become a less self-destructive drunk or you’ll be less spontaneous if look up recipes instead of ordering in. Reinventing yourself, if anything, adds to what you already bring to the table.
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Look at Jamie Foxx, Donald Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Janelle Monáe, and plenty other versatile acts. Reinventing ourselves is all about adding to our repertoire, not abandoning who we once were.
Whether it’s a character trait, skill set, or profession, there does not have to be a limit to who you are or what you can do. Reinvention is about pushing yourself to mastery.
Life demands it
Probably the most important reason for mastering reinvention is that life demands it.
It can be a death in the family, a major injury, or any of the million other random things life tends to throws at us. Being able to adapt and change, even when it goes against the fabric of who we are, is pivotal to succeeding at life.
What’s the alternative? Resenting? Blaming the external factors that will never hear our cries?
When we learn to fall in love with the process of starting over and become accustomed to being humbled — two pillars in reinvention — we won’t waiver when life flips everything we know upside-down.
I challenge everyone who’s “found themselves,” who are in love with who they’ve become and who now have the ultimate confidence in the individual they see in the mirror, to go farther; to pick up something new, try and understand someone else or to get lost in another culture. Because what they’ll see is that they have a lot more to find.
