Reading: Reinventing Yourself In a Time of Change

As we pull into the last few days of the 2024 election, one thing is clear: change is coming. We might have the first female president of the United States, in which case there could be all kinds of amazing new opportunities for women — young and old — and perhaps a new awareness of what a woman can do. Or we might have another kind of change, one that forces women backward into places we worked so hard to escape: where we don’t have dominion over our bodies, where we can’t control the economics of our family planning, where men continue to dominate the workplace. 

In either case, there will be change — because this is a change election.

Truth is, because of the fast pace of our modern life, change impacts our lives today in ways that were unimaginable in the past. Whereas my husband’s father worked one job his whole life and actually retired with the watch and the SUV, today’s millennials will have five jobs before they turn 30. In my lifetime alone, I had seven jobs, eight if you include founding CoveyClub. You and I have watched the cycles in our workplaces speed up, get disrupted, reemerge, and recycle. Anyone in publishing, real estate, advertising, or mom and pop retail can tell you they never expected their work sector to disappear — and yet, it did.

The key thing to know about change is that you can’t prevent it. But you do have a say in how you respond to it. One of the best ways I  know is to reinvent, rethink, reboot, reimagine, reassert, restart (or whatever re-word inspires you!) the portion of your life you feel no longer works. Remember: Reinvention can be as small as losing a few pounds or as big as exploring a new career. 

Here are some facts that explain why you’re likely to have to reinvent this year. (For one thing, we’re just living longer — and we’re healthier doing it. Remember that in 1900 the average lifespan was just 47 years! Today, as a woman, you can expect to live well into your 80s and beyond.)

• Research by AARP and OECD found that nearly 70% of women in their 40s and 50s consider changing their careers at midlife. Why? Because they are looking for more fulfillment and flexibility.

• The notion of a 25-year-old Harvard dropout being the profile of an entrepreneur is dated… 25% of  US entrepreneurs are women ages 45–64. In fact, the Kauffman Index of Startup Activity states that midlife women make up a growing segment of entrepreneurs, with many starting businesses after corporate careers.​

• As a result, 57% of women ages 45–59 are looking to skill up by pursuing further education or professional certifications to prepare for career shifts or starting their own businesses. 

• Not surprisingly, 34% of women 50+ express anxiety about their financial future, especially after facing unemployment or early retirement, prompting them to reimagine themselves through new careers or self-employment.

• And finally, AARP revealed that women in midlife increasingly feel empowered to explore new directions with 80% of women ages 45 and older feeling that midlife is the perfect time for rethinking, citing a combination of personal growth, life experiences, and a desire for self-fulfillment. 

And here’s the good news: Even if your life hasn’t exactly turned out the way you’d hoped or expected, you have extraordinary tools and time to change that. In fact, after running CoveyClub for eight years and watching all kinds of women make small or large changes in their lives, I can tell you that you really do live in a remarkable age of reinvention. You have the power to reboot yourself at any age. 

Many of us in our 40s, 50s, or beyond face life transitions that make us ask, “What’s next for me?” Whether it’s the empty nest, career burnout, or personal setbacks, you get to decide what’s next — and that’s where your reinvention begins​.

Practical Strategies for Reinvention
So now let’s talk about practical strategies for reinvention — it’s something we know intimately here at CoveyClub because we have done the research, created the programs, and watched women just like you change and create every day. 

The biggest obstacle to reinvention, of course, is just getting started. Making changes in your life can seem daunting. Change, no matter how small, can look like a giant mountain you have to scale all by yourself. That’s why at CoveyClub we create three 30-day challenges each year to get you started. Once you get in the habit of creating 5 minutes of daily action toward your goal — yes, I said just 5 minutes a day — you create momentum. Momentum is what allows change to happen. Truly, just 5 minutes a day allows you to kickstart any reboot from a standstill.

To get you started, I love to refer to our 30-Day Reinvent Yourself Checklist as a fantastic starting point. This tool helps you identify small, manageable steps to break through feelings of overwhelm. Reinvention doesn’t happen all at once; it’s about incremental shifts that lead to lasting change. Here are the basic steps:

Step 1: Start with self-assessment. What’s working in your life? What’s not?

Step 2: Create a vision for what your next chapter looks like.

Step 3: Take consistent 5-minute actions that allow you to feel successful from the start. 

Tiny steps begin the process, and eventually you grow them into larger steps. But of course there are many obstacles that get in the way of our reinventions. 

Here are the top 3 reasons why people procrastinate when it comes to reimagining their lives: 

Fear… What if I attempt something and don’t succeed? Will others laugh at me? Will my family think I’m crazy? 

Time… It’s not a good time to reinvent. This is the easiest excuse to manufacture: I’ll wait until my kids graduate high school; I’ll do it if I get let go from this job; I’ll wait until I lose 30 pounds and fit into my old jeans. Or, I’m already exhausted from all I have to do, how can I add something else?

Money… I don’t have enough money to reinvent. Or, I need to keep my current job for income and think that leaves me no time to explore anything new.

I can tell you from experience, that all of these ideas are just excuses. 

Fear, yes, it is real. Not all reinventions work out. Sometimes you have to reinvent your reinvention. And many of us do.

Time, yes, you might be frazzled now and adding a time to think about your future seems daunting, but I promise that thinking about your future now will save you loads of anxiety later so it’s a great investment of a few hours each weekend that you can put toward really reasoning out what is next for you. 

And about money? Frankly, no one has enough money to do anything they want to do. But I will tell you that after interviewing over 300 people for my podcast, Reinvent Yourself with Lesley Jane Seymour, the one thing that holds every reinventor together is mindset. Not money. Not time, not ability. Check any one of these episodes out and see how people without contacts, education, or any money to invest have put their minds to creating change in their lives and done it. Big time. It’s all mindset. If you think you can do it, I promise that you can. 

Plus, you don’t need to wait to start your reinvention. You can even start while you keep your current job. Many people start their reinventions at night (I got my master’s degree in Sustainability Management at night school) and others do it on vacations, weekends, lunch breaks, and after hours.  

Here are a few tips for breaking through when you start procrastinating:

• Chunk your reinvention idea into 4 or 5 steps that you can accomplish over a year.
• Pick one step and chunk that down to 4 or 5 mini steps.
• Look at those 4 or 5 mini steps: Do you need to make any of those even smaller and more doable?

For example, how do I get myself to write an article for an outside publication? I don’t write “create article” in my calendar for the day it’s due. It’s impossible to accomplish it in one day. I start with “do the research for the article,” “create story outline,” “create a draft of the article,” and so forth spread out over two weeks.

Ask yourself: How can you break up your desired accomplishment into doable tasks?

How to Embrace Change
Change can be daunting, but it can also be a catalyst for growth. I always encourage people to adopt the Lobster Theory of Reinvention — a metaphor I love. Lobsters are crustaceans who must shed their hard shells every few months in order to grow. Thus, growth for them is quite dangerous: Without a hard outer shell they are vulnerable to predators as they scurry across the ocean floor. Conversely, people who never shed their old shells never grow. 

This theory explains a lot about CoveyClub. When I first started creating this community of midlife women who would help each other through these difficult stages of reinvention, I worried that a school teacher might be intimidated by working with a VP of marketing from a Fortune 500 company. And I heard that from some of the members. But the magic that revealed itself was that shedding our shells made us all equally vulnerable. Molting is the great equalizer. A highly compensated lawyer is just as insecure and fragile as a stay-at-home mom exploring entrepreneurship for the first time.

How to Face Fear and Uncertainty
It’s natural to feel fear when confronting the unknown. But what if you could turn your obstacles into opportunities? Consider how you can reframe the challenges you see into stepping stones toward your new goal. 

 Reinvention is not just about surviving change but thriving through it. 

Top 3 things you must do to be successful in your reinvention:

• Embrace the beginner mindset. Yes, it’s frustrating to be a newbie after having all the answers in your previous life or job. But being a beginner can also be a joy. Accept the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know. Enjoy the freedom of not being a know-it-all. Be a sponge: soak up all the new information and mix it with the expertise you already have. Know this: You will make cringeworthy mistakes (believe me, I have!). Roll through them and continue on. It’s learning 101 all over again and you can take joy and relief at not having to be a success for a while.

•  Ignore the naysayers. There are people who will tell you you’re too old to start over, you’re too inexperienced, you don’t have the funds or the knowledge. They are all around us. They often mean well. But ignore them and move on. 

•  Find your posse. Don’t try and reinvent alone. When More magazine folded and I wanted to start CoveyClub, I had no entrepreneurial friends. I had to start all over — alone. When I wanted to know what mail service to use, I had no one to ask. I had to Google and research for three weeks to get an answer. That’s why I started CoveyClub — a group of accomplished women who will help you get to where you’re going — fast. And here’s a surprise: You’d think it would be easier to reinvent with close friends. My years of running CoveyClub tell me, Not so fast. The magic is actually in reinventing with strangers who will let you be you — the day you show up. Sometimes friends secretly don’t want you to reinvent. Because then they might have to do some work themselves. But in the company of people you’ve just met…anything is possible.