Live long enough and you’ll find that a change is necessary.
Not just a “I’ll have the peanut butter and banana sandwich instead of peanut butter and jelly” kind of change.
Big change.
Change your career kind of change. Change your life kind of change.
Change you kind of change.
These moments of crisis come to us unannounced and uninvited.
This means that reinventing ourselves is often initiated by something outside of our control.
We are compelled—forced—into redefining who we are.
This compulsion can throw us either into paralysis where we drag our feet through the whole process learning very little or into manic modes where we throw ourselves into radically high or low emotions.
“This is the best thing ever! Throw out all the old and bring in the new no matter the cost!”
Or
“How could this happen to me?! I’ll never get out of this! Why try to change?
It’s all meaningless.”
I’ve been in both paralysis and manic mode.
Both suck if you ask me.
When I’m like that I can’t move on. I can’t accept what’s happening to me.
Consequently, I cannot gain any believable control that my body and mind feel.
And that only compounds all the anxiety, guilt, frustration, failure, and insecurity under the surface stealing my sleep, moments with my loved ones, and hope.
Several myths I believed caused these unhelpful reactions to my life’s curve balls.
I will give you 5 of them in this post and show you the opposing truth to each.
“The truth shall set you free.” – Jesus
Myth #1: Change is a punishment.
We only correct what is “wrong”. Right?
So, it only follows that if you are changing, then you are correcting what is wrong.
This is good rationale if you are viewing your “wrongness” in a strategic sense.
If you view your change as tweaking who you are and what you do because what was fitting in your life before is unfit or unhelpful for you now, then change is a blessing and a choice.
The problem is that most of us view our “wrongness” in a moral sense all the time.
We think that there is no room for strategic wrongness—only good or bad, right or wrong.
But this view of wrongness is only appropriate when addressing matters of morality.
If we are engaging in immoral behavior (i.e. adultery, lying, cheating, stealing, etc.) we must address our immoral behavior and change to moral, right behavior.
But this view of moral wrongness is wrong—it’s incorrect—when we are in the middle of a life crisis evaluating why we are in a process of reinventing ourselves.
Unplanned life change and your process of rediscovery is not a punishment for moral failures.
It is simply a sign that “what got you here won’t get you there”. (Marshall Goldsmith)
Myth #2: If you had done better, you wouldn’t have to be changing now.
If you buy into myth #1, this myth comes with it like a rider on an insurance policy.
Oh, and shame. So much shame.
This myth is an accusation.
“This is your fault!”
This myth is an indictment.
“You are a failure and reap a failure’s reward.”
This myth is a lie.
While it is true that we can do better, it is not true that we can prevent the need to change.
We must grow. Grow or die. Change or disintegrate.
If you had done better, it would only have led you to some change.
Very possibly, you would have come to the same reinvention process sooner.
Myth #3: You cannot be trusted to reinvent yourself.
Obviously, this myth stems from the first two.
If you perceive change as punishment for failure and it could have been avoided if you had been/done better, then you will not trust yourself.
You’ve simply let yourself down.
And who in their right mind would trust you if you failed them like you failed yourself?
Only problem is, you are the only one responsible for your life.
If you don’t decide on a path forward, depression and despair will overcome you. And if you refuse to create your own path and take someone else’s beliefs, preferences, or dreams as your own, you won’t know if you are loved for who you are because you simply won’t show yourself to anyone.
That leads to intense loneliness.
The truth is that you can be trusted to reinvent yourself if you will learn to listen to yourself and keep your promises to yourself.
Can you be trusted to change yourself into the “right person”?
You may not know who that person is or how to be that person, but you do know the resources you have at your disposal to learn.
Trust yourself to tell you when you are being honest, using your resources, giving it your best, listening to the right people, and sticking to your values.
At the very least, trust yourself to tell you when you are not.
Myth #4: Reinventing yourself is denying God’s sovereignty.
I write this from a Christian perspective because that is the faith I adhere to, but I imagine the same myth could entangle anyone who believes in a higher power, karma, or fate.
I think we all believe in a god of some kind.
Christians believe that God has a purpose for everyone, and we are supposed to discover what that purpose is to fulfill it.
But this purpose is not a step by step guide or a detailed, daily agenda of who to meet, what to do, what to study, what to pursue, or even where to live.
If you read the stories of all the saints in the Bible, you will find that only one man had a super-specific predestined plan for all his days that he was consciously responsible for carrying out.
Jesus.
Everyone else, including Samson and John the Baptist, only had moments of their life or rules for their life spelled out.
Samson could have ruled Israel in a 100 “right” ways and stayed within God’s overall predestined plan for him.
John the Baptist knew his role, but he had autonomy to decide how he was to preach and even who to preach to.
Even Jesus’ predestinated life was flexible in some ways.
He was influenced by His mother, Mary, to make water into wine at a wedding when He wasn’t planning to.
He even told her that His time hadn’t come yet. But He listened to His mother anyway and jump-started His ministry spontaneously and sped up the whole plan of redemption.
And think of how many people He met that wouldn’t have been healed or helped if they wouldn’t have pressed Him to stop and pay attention to them.
Think about it. Normal people had influence over the daily agenda of God!
Why wouldn’t He allow or even welcome that kind of influence from you in your life?
Christians fear the displeasure of God and we think that all our desires, emotions, and intellect are automatically pitted against God.
So we fear that our plans born of these desires, emotions, and intellect will subvert or deny God’s plans.
This is a genuine and admirable fear when it’s the result of a healthy respect for our limits of knowledge, our capricious natures, or God’s importance in our lives.
However, it’s not a good fear when it keeps us from searching our mind and hearts because we are waiting on God to spell things out for us.
It becomes laziness.
The truth is that God’s will cannot be subverted by our sincere plans that get us where we’d like to be when we are obeying His moral code and wise principles.
If you are asking God to show you what to do and aren’t receiving any direct answer, chances are God is asking you what you want to do.
If you’ve received a direct, specific word from God on what to do in a specific decision, then, follow His direction.
Just remember that even if you follow His direction exactly, His instruction will lead you into more scenarios where He won’t tell you what to do, what to say, or who to trust.
Myth #5: You have to reinvent yourself alone.
This is perhaps the most dangerous myth of the five.
When we are beginning again or changing our trajectory, we are vulnerable to poor decisions and destructive perspectives in the chaos of change.
Consistent connection with stable and loving people makes us safer.
Good friends, insightful coaches, knowledgeable counselors, and wise mentors push back on our foolish thinking and provide information we don’t know or aren’t paying enough attention to.
We often avoid this connection with others because it is scary for us to express our difficult thoughts and emotions when we are weak, confused, and unsure.
We are embarrassed when we don’t have answers.
We are afraid of people’s judgment when we announce our thoughts and plans.
We don’t want to be pinned down to a decision that we aren’t 100% sure of.
So we use myth #5 as a reason to avoid healthy relationships.
The truth is that we all need others to change safely and efficiently.
Community is not optional if you want a better life.
You are worth being helped.
You are worth being listened to.
You are worth the cost of a counselor, a coach, or a course.
You are not an unwanted weight on your loved ones if you are going through an unclear phase of life.
They will want to help you if they are healthy people that are good for you.
Are you willing to face your fears, admit your need for community, and connect with good, helpful people?
If you are in a time of transition or unexpected change, life coaching is a powerful tool in the process of reinventing yourself.
Contact me here to see if life coaching is right for you.
I’m rooting for you!
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