How One Moment Can Change Everything.

Reinvention mostly comes from a need or yearning to realign or align ourselves.

Alignment brings us fulfillment, joy, happiness, love and connection. We all crave these consciously or unconsciously, as humans.

My badge of honor as a child aligned with a couple of things. One of those was being the smartest kid at school, proven by my grades, and the other was that I had internationally traveled by the age of eight. That last one might not seem like much these days, but in 1980 it truly was epic. I knew no one else who had done this.

Travel was embedded in me from a very young age. My parents were Scottish immigrants, who wanted to explore Australia. They met in Bendigo and married excited about their dreams for the future of abundant gardens and travel.

It was my dad who planted the seed for my overseas travel back when I was 16 years old.

The UK had just become part of the EU and my dad revealed to me that I had a British passport. And that British passport was now also an EU passport. Ah Brexit, what did you do!?

This was a revelation to me as a young woman.

There was also this new knowledge that I had TWO passports. I didn't even know you could have 2 passports until this moment in time. And, with the UK joining the EU my 2 passports gave me a larger citizenship of the world. This was quite a huge chunk of information to digest.

Perhaps, it truly was my destiny to travel and the second passport was the sign I needed to propel me forward into the new found destiny of mine?

A young woman stuck in a country town in Central Victoria Australia. A young woman who was already bored with what school had to offer in the 1980s. A pathway in science because I was smart. No support or recommendations around creativity, free thought, innovation or computer science.

Just a pathway in science or stay where you are, get married, get a mortgage and have kids. That was it. That would be your life.

There was nothing about this that was appealing to me at all, let alone it being a life. On one hand there was conversation around this being the best time of your life so enjoy it while you can. Youth that is. And the other conversation was a destiny of entrapment. Well, that's how it seemed to me.

As a woman I felt the path that was expected or laid out in front of me was quite the opposite of doing anything inspiring or even remotely interesting. It was not a great place to be at all.

But on the other hand, there was this new destiny revealed to me, one of an adventurer and explorer and the world traveler. That one moment in time that changed everything for me as a teenager. One simple conversation and revelation. New found knowledge.

I often reflected that perhaps my Dad saw something in me where he knew I should travel the world, discover myself and find my own path. Like he had done in his own teenage years.

Perhaps this is where reinvention came to the forefront for me?

If I could reinvent myself into another time and space then I could change the trajectory of the small minded mentality that was currently on offer to me.

And then my dad planted that seed.

Essentially what he did in that moment was open a doorway. A doorway to infinite global possibilities instead of a house nearby where the rest of my life would be spent. He created the opportunity for me to become someone else. He ignited a spark in me that took me out of my current going nowhere mode into an entirely different universe. A very exciting universe indeed.

In all honesty it felt like a jail sentence to me at the time to stay in the same place I was born and never live anywhere else, never experience anywhere else. I started to mentally plan my escape from the life of boring expectations to the life of a world traveler and global explorer.

And if that sounds dramatic to you, then you will never understand that feeling. Not everyone yearns for freedom, true freedom. And the true rebellion in freedom is choosing yourself.

My imagination was vast and expansive. It was a place where my wildest dreams and fantasies dwelled. Where I could become anyone I wanted to be.

I longed to follow the well known 'hippie trail' from Kathmandu, overland to Europe via Afghanistan, a journey of adventure and self discovery. But by the time I finally set off on my travels in 1994 much of that route had vanished, swallowed by rising tensions in the Middle East. Still my hunger for exploration remained.

And later on in life, I learned that exploring was in fact, what of my personal values. And so to explore is in an authentic alignment with my true self.

I still dream of being able to follow that original pathway one day in this lifetime and travel overlap from Asia to Europe and in my Utopia it's because I live in a world with no borders.

I have started to think more and more that perhaps reinvention is not something we learn as adults but something we have been doing all along. As children our wildest dreams, becoming an astronaut or the first female prime minister, were not just fantasies but proof that we believed in something bigger.

Maybe reinvention is simply remembering that life can be extraordinary.

That we can be remarkable.

Where did your joyful and happy imagination take you as a child?

Lean into this and you might just find the start of your own reinvention in there.

Hi, I'm Kirsty Norton and I am an unapologetic rebel at heart.

I dream of a world where borders don't exist and humans live their most remarkable lives.

Travel is part of my DNA, along with coaching. They are the perfect combination that allow me to underpin and embody my values in the most lived way possible, at this moment in time.

Substack is my new favourite online hangout, let's connect if you're over there on the other side. Or perhaps take this as a sign to join :)

SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@kirstynorton

You can also join my online community over at HeartBeat. I am going to be running FREE group sessions to discuss things like travel and remote work. There'll be a bunch of resources too and courses.

HEARTBEAT: https://app.heartbeat.chat/thedigitalnomadcoach/invitation?code=EGC76C

Thanks for reading this, I am truly very grateful.

Kirsty

PS: Wanna chat? Book 30 minutes with me, here: https://kirsty-norton.as.me/