Reinventing oneself was something I thought everyone did. A broken romance, a lost job, a significant death, all pivotal moments that had us moving onto the next chapter. It was only sometime later in life that I realized that not everyone moved on the same way.

Some only gave the appearance to moving on while embracing their grief and emerging same as before. Others went to the other extreme of grief and found a crowd of party hearty hangers-on that again suspended them in time, not allowing them to move forward.

I, on the other hand, never looked back. I lived for change. Those pivotal moments were my permission to move on to the next phase, but move with a well-thought out plan.

 I didn’t just jump off of the diving board with eyes closed without first checking to see if there was water in the pool. I had to know to where that water would allow me to swim. So, I gathered all of my information, planned my moves, agreed as to what I would in reality be able to achieve, and then jumped. I was always one for minimizing unwanted surprises.

My latest reinvention took me into retirement from the 9-5 working world. Before jumping in, I put all of my dreams out there and evaluated the ones that would financially work (minimizing risk). Then, I added the ones that would bring me joy (maximizing pleasure). As in earlier reinventions, these two paths found a good mix that that I could live with and leaving me no doubt that my reinvention techniques were still going strong.