Howto reinvent yourself and achieve your dreams
By: Banchiwosen Woldeyesus, Blogger Ethiopia
Tags: Inspiration, Life, Grit, Self, Psychology

In 2016, a 48-year-old woman from Ethiopia wanted to try something new in her life. She had spent 20 years of her career defending clients as a defense lawyer at a law firm she worked. Lately, her heart had been calling out to her to try something new.

She decided to pursue a new career in cooking.

Nobody stood by her decision. In fact, many of her loved ones thought she was crazy to start something new at her age.

This woman is a mother, a daughter, a sister, and had a career in law. A lot of responsibilities and social pressure stood in her way of achieving her new goals in life. People she knew have never done what she intended to do. If you have a secure job, you keep it. You don’t do something stupid like starting from scratch in another new career.

She deafened her ears to the no-sayers. And started doing the work any new pursuit needs.

Four years later…

She makes the tastiest dishes I’ve ever tasted in my life.

You don’t know this woman. In fact, few people know this woman’s name. But she runs a successful traditional restaurant in Addis Ababa (the capital city of Ethiopia).

This woman is my neighbor.

If you taste one dish from this woman’s cooking, you would think she has been cooking all her life. When you taste her signature palate, something tingles in the middle of your spinal cord. Your mouth waters. Nobody would guess her cooking skills are only 4-years old. But that’s the beauty of reinventing your life at any age. If you have the guts to try something new and work at it, you’ll achieve your dreams.

If you’re not inspired by someone you have never heard of, here’s someone famous to inspire you to try something new…

Remember that guy who graduated from Harvard Medical School who abandoned his residency to pursue writing.

The world knows his name…

Michael Crichton.

He had graduated from Harvard Medical School. He had done a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological studies. He had a lucrative career as a doctor and researcher.

And yet…

He ditched everything for the unpredictable life of an author.

Medicine was not the career he wanted. So, he quit. He did not let pride take away his dreams to become a writer. He didn’t want to be doing something he didn’t enjoy to preserve his pride.

He did not think he was too old to reinvent himself.

Result?

Michael Crichton was a best-selling author, a screenwriter, a film director, and a producer. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films.

Bookshelves would not have Crichton’s best-seller books if he had not dared to try something new in his life.

Your startup. Your dream career. Your new business. Whatever your heart calls out to you. It has a decent shot only if you have the guts to try something new and take a risk. Regardless of a secure job the medical industry could have given him, Crichton wanted something else. And he built it from scratch.

What about you, my friend?

Do you want to try something new? A new career path, perhaps? Or you want to move to another country and start all over again? Or maybe you’ve been thinking of pursuing a creative project? Do you have the guts to walk in a new direction? Do you have dreams that keep you awake at night? Do you get a gut feeling in your stomach that makes you restless? Do you yearn to do work that excites you?

For most of us, we buried our dreams for so long because we could not fight the inertia of life. In my case, I have always wanted to be a writer. But I had too many responsibilities to give writing a shot. I had a job where my boss kept even my weekends busy at work. I had a grandfather who was battling cancer for years to take care of. I had a boyfriend who wanted to spend every minute I had left from work and other responsibilities with him.

In all this business, pursuing something new had no chance.

But something more sinister makes us unwilling to fight the inertia of life. It’s not just that we have responsibilities and life gets in the way that we don’t dare to reinvent ourselves. It’s more complicated than that. We’ve an enemy that stands in our way of trying something new. This enemy does not look like an enemy. This enemy feels safe and puts a warm blanket around our shoulders every day.

We know its name.

It’s called comfort.

If you want to reinvent yourself and have the guts to try something new, you need to throw this warm blanket and get ready to get cold.

Think of a turtle pulling its head inside the shell.

As long as the turtle keeps its head inside its shell, it will never get cold. But this warm blanket will never give us the courage to try something new.

We have to fight this warm feeling.

For some of us, a warm blanket around our shoulders kept us from pursuing something new. We snuggled inside this comfort. This feeling felt satiating and kept us warm. Comfort zone is where you have everything you need and this feeling keeps you numb. Comfortably numb. You’re safe. You’re protected. Your high and fortified walls safeguard you from daring to reinvent yourself.

How nice it is to be so comfortable! Hmm! It feels romantically satiating to be inside your comfort zone, dreaming, hoping, wishing, wanting to reinvent yourself someday in your life.

For some of us, we did not dare to fight the inertia of life because our comfort zone kept us numb.

When you have a nice house and enough money in your bank account to take care of your basic needs, comfort whispers to you to snuggle in your warm blanket. No need to try something new. Why bother throwing your warm blanket when you could stay warm? When your job gives you security, comfort whispers to you to cling to this warm feeling. No need to think about changing your job and try something new. You have a secure job that keeps you warm. Keep it.

Most of us do not see the danger that lurks behind a comfort zone.

The danger of this warm feeling…

As long as you cling to comfort, you’ll never dare to try something new.

Comfort is a dangerous euphemism.

As long as you’re unwilling to walk in a new path, you’ll never know what you could achieve in the new path. As long as you’re unwilling to take a chance on what your heart desires, you’ll never know what you could achieve. As long as you’re unwilling to try something you’ve always wanted, you’ll never know how things might turn out.

The willingness to take risks and try something new starts when we start letting go of our comfort zone. To walk in a new direction, you need to throw away the warm blanket and be ready to get cold.

Why?

Because obstacles and challenges will stand in your new path. And you will feel cold. Really cold. Whether your new path is to start eating healthy, a new relationship, building a business or moving to another country, a thousand screaming arrows will be thrown at you.

That’s part of life.

For example: Let us say you have started eating healthy. A few days into your new habit, you find it hard to keep eating healthy. Or maybe you’re in a new relationship and things are going south with your new partner. Or perhaps you’ve started a new business and customers have not started buying your products.

What will you do when thousand screaming arrows are shot at you in your new path? Do you step forward? Or do you fall back on your comfort zone? Will you keep walking in your new direction or stop fighting to reinvent yourself?

The courage to keep walking in reinventing yourself lives in one place only…

You need to brave the boundaries of your comfort zone.

The woman I talked about at the beginning of my story is courageous and my hero.

She could have given in to comfort and forget about working at something new from scratch. Instead, she braved the boundaries of her comfort zone and started a new career at 48. She could have talked herself out of pursuing new dreams. She could have let her age stop her from pursuing a new path.

She didn’t.

When I met this woman in 2018, something in me woke up. I’m 29 years old. Why can’t I reinvent myself? Why can’t I start pursuing writing professionally? What’s stopping me from walking on a new path?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. After talking for hours with my hero, I started writing in my spare time. I started cutting my workday short so I would have more time to write. Eventually, I was writing whenever I could find the time. When my friends wanted to hang out with me on weekends, I told them I was at work. My friends did not take my writing seriously, but I did. I started sending drafts to publishers every week and got rejected many times.

With the rejections came tears. Tears that blinded my eyes and urged me to give up on writing. That’s when I would visit my hero and had tea in her garden. This woman has achieved her new dreams at 48 years of age. I can do the same. I told myself every time I visited her.

The next day, I would get up and get back to work. I wrote for one year before a major publisher accepted one of my drafts.

When people see the success of my blog now, they assume I’ve been writing all my life. Nothing is further from the truth. I’ve only been writing since 2018. But I’ve been seriously honing my skills in this short time.

For most of us, the inertia of life holds us back. This is especially true when we’re living a relatively comfortable life.

A comfortable life can be a secure job where you feel safe. No, don’t talk to me about trying something new. I don’t want to know. I feel safe here. The voice inside your head tells you, you have grown to the maximum level. You have seen it all. Heck, you are the maestro. You are living your dream.

This voice does not want you to brave the boundaries of your comfort zone. It convinces you to put your life in a boundary, and you’re not supposed to brave outside of it.

But the thing is…

We need to brave the boundaries of our comfort zone and step outside.

That’s what the woman in my story did. Even though her husband complained she was spending too much time cooking, she never stopped. Even though some of her friends thought she was in a mid-life crisis, she never stopped. Even though the restaurant she opened did not bring customers in her first year, she did not stop. She took lessons on cooking. She got up early before everybody in her family woke up and practiced new dishes.

Despite the obstacles in her way, she kept learning culinary skills.

Most people in her position would let excuses get in the way.

You’re too old to pursue something new. You don’t have any skills. You’re a woman. You’ll never be successful. Even if you do, it’ll take you years to be successful.

Most people in her position would let life get in the way.

Listen to your loved ones when they tell you to stop pursuing your dreams. Your significant other needs you, how dare you spend time pursuing your dreams? Your family relies on you to do your job, how dare you leave your responsibilities?

Many excuses and life’s inertia kept knocking on her door intending to steal her new dreams. But she kept fighting against any obstacle that stood in her way and kept walking towards reinventing herself.

Braving the boundaries of your comfort zone is not just important. We need hunger to grow and thrive.

Hell, a thousand screaming arrows might shoot at you menacingly. But you have to fight them with everything you have got. How else are you going to achieve your new dreams? How else are you going to wake up every day and walk in your new direction? How else are you going to reinvent yourself?

Do you have the courage to start from scratch and reinvent yourself?

“Once I decided I’m going to pursue a new career in cooking, I got up every day and got to work.” I’ve written this statement from my hero in my notebook to remind myself of the work I need to be doing every day.

It’s easy to look at successful people who’ve reinvented themselves and claim that they are destined for success. But that’s not the truth. These successful people we admire fought the inertia of life and took the first step in a new direction they wanted. Then they got to work the next day. And the next. And the next.

It’s hard to work up the guts to try something new.

Nobody wants to feel stupid and start from the beginning all over again. But that’s how you do work that excites you. Be willing to look silly and make lots of mistakes. That’s how you learn.

Without a willingness to make choices and taking action, talent is meaningless. What matters is you choosing to do something different. To reinvent yourself. To pursue your new dreams. To do the work. To choose yourself.

So is pretty much every other goal worth fighting for.

And one more thing to remember…

Reinventing yourself is inconvenient.

You might have to stay at home and work on your creative projects, instead of hanging out with your friends. You might have to leave work early to learn a new skill you want to master. You might have to tell your loved ones you’re leaving your secure job to pursue a career in photography.

The process is inconvenient.

On top of the inconvenience, nobody is going to praise you for having the guts to try something. The people you’re close to might even call you crazy! No one might understand what you’re trying to do. But that’s okay. The only one who needs to understand why you’re reinventing yourself is you. You can be your own champion.