The Power of Conscious Reinvention

How many times have you reinvented yourself?

And in how many ways have you reinvented yourself?

Was it a new career? A new relationship? Or maybe a change of direction in religious faith?

If you stop and take a look back over your life, you may realise that you reinvented yourself many times over.

For me there was the time I quit my job in local government to retrain as an osteopath, and 20+ years later I reinvented myself as I became a coach.

My father’s generation stayed in the same job all their lives. My Dad worked as a telecomms engineer for nearly 50 years. My mother had a career as a probation officer. I’ve had two jobs as an employee and two businesses.

But while people may notice that you change jobs, or close down one business and start up another, what they don’t see is what happens inside.

It’s the same for our relationships. It’s obvious when we end a relationship and start another. And maybe our friends and family say to themselves “I hope she (or he) has found the right person this time,” or “I hope they make a better job of this relationship than the last one.”

What they may not see is the change that happens on the inside.

Most people think that reinvention is about adding something – learning a new skill, building a habit, or imagining a different future.

They may realise that reinvention also involves letting go.

But real reinvention isn’t just about adding new stuff and it’s not just about letting go either.

True reinvention is change from the inside-out, powered by the core of who you truly are.

It’s rather like the apple tree. We don’t bolt the apples onto the tree. They grow from the inside-out, powered by the life force of the apple tree.

So each of us is rather like that apple tree: we can bolt on new habits or skills, but real transformation happens when we grow those changes from the inside-out. When you decide consciously to reinvent yourself and you make changes in the way you live your life, powered by your own inner wisdom, those changes will be in alignment with who you truly are.

To transform a difficult relationship, we have to reinvent ourselves from the inside-out.

This means reconnecting with your True Self, the spark of divinity within you, and letting that be your inner compass.

You may hear a voice holding you back, telling you that it won’t work or it won’t be worth it. That voice has been called the ‘Ego’, the ‘Inner Critic’ and the ‘Adaptive Child’. I prefer ‘Adaptive Child’ because it tells us that this is a part of you that you created as a child. You created it to keep you safe during childhood. But it may not be serving you anymore.

Learn to listen and you will begin to notice the difference between the voices of your Adaptive Child and your True Self (which may also be called ‘Wise Adult’). The voice of your Adaptive Child may be angry & destructive, distrustful, contemptuous or fearful. It comes with a feeling of contraction.

The voice of your True Self is compassionate, curious, kind and loving, and it’s good at trust. It feels like expansion and love.

When you consciously reinvent yourself, the inner compass of your True Self will guide you towards deeper connection, with healthy boundaries and self-esteem which puts you on a level with others rather than above or below.

There are skills you’ll need to learn and they may not be easy, requiring weeks or months of practice. But that inner compass will keep you on the path towards mastery of those skills.

There may be times (perhaps when you’re tired or stressed) when your Adaptive Child will get the upper hand for a while. But like a kind parent or teacher, your True Self (remember it’s also your Wise Adult) can step in and calm that angry or frightened child and take charge with compassion and kindness.

Reinvention for Reconnection in a Relationship

Take the example of a couple where one partner has been involved in an affair (the names used here are not their real names).

Steve and Jamie had been married for 30 years when Jamie discovered that Steve was involved in an affair. There was a showdown and after some prevarication, Steve came clean about the fact that the affair had been going on for almost two years. Jamie felt hurt and betrayed. But Steve’s honesty and his willingness to end the affair right away gave Jamie hope that the marriage could be saved.

With the support of a couples therapist, Jamie and Steve did the work of reinvention necessary to recreate their marriage in a way which would work for them both. The therapist helped them understand that Jamie’s infidelity was not because he was a bad person, but that he was a good person caught up in a difficult situation who had done some bad things.

They talked about what had been missing in their marriage which had prompted Jamie to look for intimacy elsewhere, and they started to do the work necessary to bring that intimacy back into their own relationship.

But notice, Jamie and Steve had to reinvent themselves in response to a crisis. You might almost say that Steve created the crisis because of his desire to change things in his life.

But it was Jamie’s sister Kate and her partner who did the work of conscious reinvention.

Kate was horrified to learn of Steve’s affair, but it also made her think about her own relationship, and she realised that she could find herself in the same situation as her sister if she didn’t act.

It was Kate who made the decision to consciously reinvent herself. She had spent many hours with her sister, listening to her talking first about the pain she felt about Steve’s betrayal of her trust, and then about what she had learned about her own role in the loss of intimacy within their marriage.

Kate asked some searching questions of herself about what she might be getting wrong. Then she turned to her own inner compass, simply asking ‘what must I become to make this relationship work for both of us?’

From that question flowed a whole new way of being: compassion, acceptance, kindness, forgiveness, calm, curiosity and confidence in her own worth and her boundaries.

Kate’s partner Susie was initially a little perplexed and bewildered by the change in Kate. She kicked back against Kate’s new boundaries and tried to provoke her into the behaviour she had been used to. But it didn’t work, and after a couple of weeks, Susie wanted to know what had changed, why Kate had become so... well… kind.

As Kate explained what she had realised and how she had approached the need to change the way she was in the relationship, Susie herself began to soften and acknowledge the wisdom of Kate’s reinvention.

Conscious Reinvention and Letting Go

Very often the process of reinventing yourself can mean letting go of things which are no longer serving you, or perhaps getting in the way of connecting more deeply with your partner.

When we decide to let go of something in that process of reinvention, we may actually have to mourn the loss.

In a relationship you simply ask yourself the question ‘is it worth giving this up in order to keep and nurture this relationship?’ It could be something small like giving up that extra hour in bed so you can go for a walk together before work. Or it may be something bigger like giving up getting smashed with your mates on a Saturday night, because your partner doesn’t appreciate the hangover that lasts all of Sunday.

And you may have to allow yourself to grieve the loss. For instance if it’s getting smashed with your mates, you may have to grieve the drunken camaraderie. But then you know the reward makes it worth it.

Of course as we let go of things we make space for other things to come into our lives and to grow other aspects of ourselves. And with Conscious Reinvention, the act of letting go is easier, because it forms part of the process of aligning with the wisdom of the True Self.

If like Kate, you’d like to start the process of conscious reinvention, talk to me!