Reinvent

I recently heard someone say that life is a series of reinventions.

re·in·vent

V E R B    (used with object)

1. to invent again or anew, especially without knowing that the invention already exists.

2. to remake or make over, as in a different form: At 60, he reinvented himself as a volunteer. We have an opportunity to reinvent government.

Isn’t that true!  My husband and I were out for dinner a few nights ago and I asked him what he would have done differently if he had known “then” what we know now.

How would we reinvent ourselves?

Dave is a re-invention kind of guy and I get bored easily, so we have changed and moved and re-created a number of times in our marriage of 44 years.  I think we have had 17 different addresses. Talking about what we might have done differently took us down memory lane for a bit.

Now in our ThirdThird, we are smarter and wiser, having learned from mistakes and grown as people.

  • Would we have married so quickly if we had been wiser?
  • Would we have chosen different career paths if we had known ourselves better?
  • Would we have aligned ourselves with the same people and organizations had we had deeper discernment?

Interestingly, though we have had our share of challenges and sorrows and difficulties and though we have separated from various organizations and have had relationships change and, occasionally, end, neither of us regrets places or people or choices we made.

Why?

Because we are satisfied with who we have become.

Without some of those difficulties, without the mistakes, without the disappointments, we would not be the same people we are today.

All those lessons learned make us who we are today.

Dave and I have reinvented ourselves a number of times by moving homes, changing careers, starting businesses, following an idea. Sometimes our changes and ideas worked well. Other times, we learned from them and moved on.

Looking back, we see that we have, indeed, lived life as a series of reinventions.

Now that we are smarter and wiser, we can reinvent with fewer mistakes along the way.

Knowing that makes us confident that we can continue to make our ThirdThird the BEST Third!

Need help thinking of how you might reinvent yourself? 

Learning about your wiring is a great place to start.

photo credit: Chiara Cremaschi