How to Know When It’s Time to Reinvent Yourself

Reinvention. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot—especially in the season of New Year’s resolutions. But what exactly does reinvention mean? What does it look like professionally and personally? What makes it meaningful? And how do you know when the time is right to reinvent yourself?

We spoke with Pamela Mitchell, founder and chief executive officer of The Reinvention Institute and the author of The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy, to find some answers to these questions. According to Mitchell, reinvention isn’t something you do once and never again. Instead, she sees it as a skill that requires lifelong practice.

What Reinvention Actually Means

There are a lot of misconceptions around the idea of reinventing yourself, says Mitchell. Reinvention does not necessarily mean you have to make a major change in your life—like transitioning from a career on Wall Street to being a goat farmer.

In fact, thinking of it that way can potentially set you back—making you fearful of too much effort or too much change, too fast. “People kind of think it’s a big radical change,” she says. “But really, all it is, from a career perspective, is using your skills and talents in a different way.”

Instead, remember that reinvention can happen at different stages and on different levels, and that it’s accessible to anyone, she adds. “Don’t use a pruning saw when pinking shears will do,” she says. “Sometimes it’s just little, bitty things that move you forward. And they all count as reinventions.”

Why People Feel the Need to Reinvent Themselves

Have you ever had a moment of self-reflection where you realize you just don’t feel fulfilled, at work or at home? Maybe you want to spend more time with your children or to have a job that contributes to a larger cause. People often come to Mitchell because there’s a mismatch between the way they’re living and the way they want to be living, she says. These moments might pull you toward a reinvention. But you might also feel pushed by a catalyst event, like getting laid off at work or an unexpected health challenge. In either scenario, expect to feel some strong emotions—like grief and fear—as you work through the process of reinventing yourself, says Mitchell.

Reinvention at Midlife

When are people typically pushed or called to reinvent themselves? In Mitchell’s experience, this transition often happens during midlife. By this point, you understand your own skills and talents, you know what you like (and don’t like) and you have a sense of what really matters to you—all crucial bases for starting a reinvention.” You now are past the phase of ‘this is what I can do,' and you’ve entered the phase of ‘what do I want to do?'” she says.

She adds: “Many people find that because they were just doing what they were told to do, they were doing what was expected; they had things in their lives that just kind of required them to do certain things, that they gave up a certain amount of [their] dreams.”

Midlife provides an opportunity to come back to those dreams again. People also usually have more free time in this phase of life—maybe their kids are out of the house or they’ve achieved a level of success at work. Or, maybe, “they just realize that the clock is ticking,” says Mitchell.

How to Start the Reinvention Process

So, you feel the need for change, but how do you start the reinvention process? A good first step is figuring out your priorities. Ask yourself: What do I want more of in my life? What do I want less of? Both are equally important.

Money shouldn’t necessarily be your main motivator, either, according to Mitchell. But she adds, people who go through a reinvention often do wind up earning more money in the process anyway.

Instead, consider intangible factors like freedom, security, impact, joy and purpose. These are what Mitchell calls “signifiers”—conceptual words that can mean different things to different people. To ensure your reinvention is successful, it’s important to spend some time outlining and defining these signifiers for yourself. “People are afraid that reinvention’s not going to work,” Mitchell says. “And one of the reasons it doesn’t work is that you don’t actually distinguish the signifier.”

Reinvention Is a Skill, Not a One-Time Fix

Here’s something else to consider: Reinvention is not a “one-and-done” event, says Mitchell. Rather, she says, it’s a practical life skill that allows you to navigate through any type of change to achieve a desired outcome. In her opinion, it’s a mistake to look at reinvention as a medical model, where you take a pill, have surgery or do physical therapy “and then you’re healed, and you don’t have to do it again,” she says.

Instead, she likens reinvention to the athletic model, which emphasizes practice and mastery as a lifelong pursuit. She encourages viewing reinvention “as a practice, looking at it as increasing your ability to tolerate ambiguity, increasing your ability to step outside your comfort zone, practicing the skill of managing your fear so that you can keep moving, learning how to reframe things, coming at things from different perspectives.”