Earlier this week I wrote about the Science of Reinvention. I get excited as I think about the upcoming year knowing that I have an intentional plan to live in 2011. I think writing about some of my history, is good to remind myself of the cycles of life that we all go through. In 2004 I was working for a small company in Southern California. I had taken a job that I knew was not something that I would stick with forever, but I knew that I needed a different landscape in which to pursue my certification as a professional coach. In January of 2005 I started a coaching program at the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara. This program is amazing and because of it made some significant changes in my life. The years prior to that, I would describe myself as flat, lacking direction, meaning and purpose. When I drove up to Santa Barbara that first time for classes, I felt like I was on fire. I was blinded by the possibilities in my life, I was grateful, energized and on purpose. Honestly I thought I had arrived, whatever that means. I would say that enthusiasm and focus stayed with me until, well, until it didn’t. Read that sentence and apply it to your own life right now…”you had it until you didn’t”.
That is one of the things that I have learned about life and the journey we all undertake if we stay conscious on the path. It sounds so trite, simple really, but life can be mirrored by the change in seasons. We are guaranteed that we will now cycle out of this cold wintery weather into spring, and then into summer. We might try to fight the cold or the heat wherever we live, but the truth is both of those seasons will return again. Such as is with life. The only difference is our cycles in life may not have the same predictable seasonal trends.
When I finished the coaching certification a year later I was still on fire, sort of the summer of my life, and that carried me until about a year ago. And just like the predictable seasons, my energy and my life changed once again, as it has over all of my life. I must admit this student of behavior and purveyor of life was caught off guard. I have wanted to hibernate because what made sense as the purpose I had identified no longer was an energy force for me. Much happened during that time of course, some of it exciting and some of it reflecting some significant losses and failures. The last year has been hard for me because I had to grieve the loss of what I thought was going to be and allow myself to stay in the question of what is next for me.
As I mentioned I have been living in the question of reinvention. What is different for me this time versus where I was six years ago is that I am much more intentional on the process I will undertake. If there is a science to this metamorphosis I intend to uncover it and hopefully leave some crumbs on the path to others that might be following suit. I read a quote this morning from Warren Bennis “People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.” I don’t’ know that I am interested in standing out at this time of my life, but I do know that I don’t want to live with borrowed postures, or what people think we should be at a certain point in time.
Over the next few months I will be exploring Reinvention through the sciences of; the mind, spirit, emotion, health, and psyche. On Friday morning check back for an exercise that I completed to prepare for 2011, it is a Pre-mortem that I found powerful beyond words to show me the way. Tomorrow I look forward to sharing one of the tools I learned at the Hudson Institute that will help demonstrate the “rightness of it all”.
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