Theory of Reinvention

In one of my previous entries (http://365daysoflondon.blogspot.com/2009/11/transitions.html) I explored the way people's lives change by moving through possible 'fates' that are defined by our own potential. Potential is meant as the collection of all the things that we can do or become, whether we fulfill those opportunities or not.

For instance, if we are very good at cooking (or we have a cooking qualification) it might be feasible for us to become chefs - i.e. we have got the potential of becoming a chef. This does not mean that we will, but still we could. The sum of all these potential is our destiny.
In a way, I argued that destiny is more or less a board game -like process, where the cells on the board represent the range of opportunities and potential that each of us have.

In the last few days I have been thinking about the process that we follow to move from one cell to the next in this board game. We can call this process transitioning.


It is obvious that moving from one state to the next does not happen within a second. Itself is a process through which we leave behind what we were and kick off our new phase.

If we were to distill the key elements that form this transition process we might be able to aide and accelerate it, in turn helping us moving forward more efficiently in life.

I thought about it in my own context: as we have moved from London to Sydney it has taken  us a few months to fully implement the change, i.e. leave our previous board game cell (life in London) and  fully start our new cell (new life in Sydney). These months were all about setting ourselves up for the future, but also closing a few chapters with the past.

The way people react to change that has been imposed on them has been largely documented in business literature through a 7 phase process.

However, here I am interested in how does one adapt to a voluntary radical change, and are there any ways someone can facilitate and speed up the process?

The first thing I have noticed about transition periods is that we do not know that we are experiencing one until it is over. I am obviously generalizing this to my own experience - but it seems natural that we don't know we are transitioning because we haven't yet experienced what the 'end of the tunnel' looks like or feels like, and hence only when we get there do we see what we have been driving towards. In a way, when we are transitioning we are buying lots of ingredients for a recipe that comes to life only at the very end.

In my own example, David and I have spent quite a lot of time opening bank accounts, finding a flat, figuring out jobs etc etc. Bizarrely, during our first few months here we did not dedicate a great deal of time partying or light heartedly go out there and explore - it almost felt like the time was not quite right yet until we were completely set up. Now that we are set up, I marvel about how little in many ways we have done during our transition period, waiting for the eggs containing our new life to hatch. We have recently done a lot of exploring as a result of having family guests staying on holiday, and it was interesting to see how many things we were doing for the first time ourselves.

You might have a similar feeling after you come out at the other side of life changing times, for instance whilst you try to change jobs,on your way back from a gap year, whilst you are training for a marathon, or dealing with the loss of a loved one.

The other thing about transitions is that it is very easy to lose the long term perspective of things. In my example, you might get overly frustrated about minutia like opening a new bank account. However, it is important to remind ourselves what really matters and what the end goal is. What will you remember of these days in 20 years time: surely not the frustrations in sorting out your electricity bills. Sometimes I find it useful to think how I will be telling this story in 20 years time - what are the things that will matter to me then? Probably the excitement of starting a new life with my dear Patata, of travelling through regions that I do not know very well, making new mates for life etc etc., rather than how upsetting and incompetent Sydney taxi drivers are!

Overall, I realized that often people put off positive changes they crave for because they are afraid or too focussed on that required transition phase, rather than the resulting new state that awaits us at the end of that process. We might become so focussed on the transition that we might lose track of where that transition is taking us - to the point that the transitioning and the end result might become the same thing in our mind. We call it losing weight, moving cities, changing jobs, saving money, etc. We need to remind ourselves that what really matters is a healthier life, enjoying a new city, feeling great about our new job, buying a new house, etc. that comes at the end of the process. So perhaps the most important thing in implementing positive change is having vision - i.e. taking time to fully understand where we are directed and why we want to get there, before putting our heads down and do what it takes to make it happen.