Reinvention Helped Me Take My Power Back, here is how it can help you too!

Reinvention may sound glamourous, fun, and exciting, but it felt like moving backward for me. At 35, I exchanged a fabulous London lifestyle with a slow-paced life in a suburb of Southern Florida. Reinvention was the mindset I developed to help me through the most traumatic time in my life after my father unexpectedly passed away.

The mindset I developed in my transition of starting over was going back to the fundamentals of what I needed to build myself up again. I focused on the simple things that brought me joy in life. This journey led me to my life’s purpose - life coaching. By relearning to connect with myself, I discovered my joy for connecting with others and empowering people to lead their lives with love instead of fear and anxiety.

When we feel out of control and out of touch with our minds and bodies due to unexpected events, we have the power to make the conscious choice to build ourselves up again and rewrite the narrative. This process is the foundation of reinventing ourselves.

After my Dad’s devasting passing, I had to make the quick decision to leave my blooming fashion career to move back home to South Florida and support my mom. I had been out of the country for ten years and felt like a foreigner to normal “everyday” activities.

Not only was I getting swallowed up by the emotional struggle of transitioning back to the states, but I was also getting swallowed up by relearning how to register a car, pump gas, and navigate the health care system. I started from scratch with little to no guidance in navigating the basics of living, finding a new job, and making new friends. I felt like a foreigner in a country I once called home.

It was easy for me to sink into feelings of hopelessness, loss, and confusion. I was grieving my father, a life abroad, and adjusting to a new culture all at once. Trauma is known to affect the way the brain is wired. My multiple layers of trauma-impacted the way I functioned emotionally and logically. I was no longer able to focus on complicated tasks like I use to. My mental state was no longer able to operate at my “normal” level of a once multi-hyphenated lifestyle.

In all this change, I decided to do something that came naturally to me and work  as a sales girl on the shop floor. I had no shame or judgment, most of my peers would look at this as a step back but I was grateful to be able to function at all! 

Working directly with customers is actually what brought me back to life and the values of human connection - empathy & compassion. I look back at this time of with gratitude for showing me a primary human value I had forgotton and restarting a flam that was always inside me.  

I loved to engage with customers as they would feel comfortable telling me about their lives. I worked my way into becoming a fashion stylist and helped people build confidence by dressing them so they could see their worth. It was incredibly rewarding to be able to help another reinvent how they see themselves. This gave me the encouragment and power to reinvent myself. 

Job title and status were now a thing of the past. What I valued in my career was a purpose and the ability to make people feel good about themselves—having to start over forced me to look inwards and ask myself, “what kind of life I wanted to lead?” and “who did I want to become?” You can change this!

Answering these two fundamental questions led me to a nourishing and fulfilling job as a fashion stylist that eventually led me towards a path to life coaching. I now can work one on one with people searching for a reinvention from a monumental life change or transition.

The process of transitioning from uprooting my life showed my strength and resiliency. I felt my mindset shift as I slowly adapted to a new way of life and made peace with what I had. It showed me that I could survive anything, even losing my Dad, who I used to rely on for emotional and financial support. I proved to myself that I was capable of anything. Overcoming the mindset hurdles of challenging myself allowed me to take my power back and learn these powerful life lessons.

Honor the Basics of Life

As I developed full-control again with the help of guidance and direction from a life coach, I was able to see what makes life fulfilling. It was the basics. I realized I did not need anything beyond a place to live, sleep, food to eat, and a way to work. Everything else is a blessing and a privilege that I could never again take for granted.

Work With What You Have

The most significant mindset shift I learned in my reinvention season was to be at peace with where I was and work with what I had. After realizing that an “Instagram perfect” life wasn’t going to happen for me—marriage, kids, a house, I felt shattered and broken…but eventually, through rebuilding a life different than what I thought, I found a way to rearrange the broken pieces and make a mosaic. A new picture with fractures and scars as a proof of my strength and resiliency.

Gratitude

Gratitude was my saving grace. After my father’s death, I fought hard not to let anger or sadness take over my life. Focusing on gratitude allowed me to stay present and thankful for the simple necessities in life. I found ways to be grateful for the ability to think, talk, breathe, and move my body.

The Power of Reinvention

Reinvention starts with canceling any belief about yourself that keeps you in a victim mindset. You are not prisoners to events you can’t control. You must stop the thoughts of revisiting the past and the thought cycle of “I should have,” “ I could have,” or “what if I did..”

By looking at where you are, you can then decide what you can do to positively impacting your life. It could be as simple as making your bed every morning or complimenting yourself.

Do what feels good to you and take it one step at a time as you are slowly building up from your basic needs. Reinvention is the slow learning of what nourishes you to what depletes you. It is the slow journey of returning to yourself. It is worth the process of becoming the person you need to be to have survived the past.

Reinvention is self-care.

Reinvention is self-love.

Reinvention is self-worth.

The process of building, learning, and growing gives you the ability to recognize you always choose to move through life positively or negatively. When you decide to lead a life of positivity, gratitude, compassion, and love—you win every time. 

Even when we feel we are at our lowest, we must remember that pain is temporary. Deciding to change our narrative in a way that turns our pain into moments of growth is when we truly get our power back.

Ready to reinvent for 2021, let me help you get started. Please email me for a complimentary discovery call and see how life coaching can help you reinvent and live your life to the fullest!