Most people get this wrong before they even start.
They think reinvention means burning something down. Quitting the job, selling the flat, buying a van and heading somewhere new. (It doesn't have to be van life. Though I won't lie, I've spent some time in a few vans. :) )
But even when it does look like that (a new country, a new pace, a fresh start), that's still not what reinvention actually is.
That's a change of scenery. Not a change of story.
Who this is really for
The people I see going through real reinvention rarely look like they are.
From the outside, their lives look fine. Good job, good income, people who respect them. A city they've built a life in. Everything they were aiming for, more or less.
But something has gone quiet inside.
Not unhappiness exactly. More like a flatness. A sense that they're performing a version of themselves that they built a long time ago, for a context that no longer quite fits.
They haven't told many people. Some haven't told anyone.
They just know something needs to change, and they're not sure what.
What reinvention actually is
It's not changing what you do. It's changing how you understand yourself.
And in my experience, it happens in three stages.
Stage one: taking off the suit
At some point in your career, you got good at something. Maybe very good. And the world rewarded you for it, so you kept doing it. More responsibility, bigger title, better money.
Somewhere in that process, the role became the story. And the story became the identity.
You stopped being a person who happened to do this work, and became the work.
The first stage of reinvention is taking that off.
It sounds simple. It isn't. Because the suit fits well in some places and badly in others, and you've been wearing it so long you've forgotten what's the suit and what's you. You peel off one layer, there's another underneath. "Head of Marketing" goes. Then "the person people call when things need fixing." Then the version of you that needs to look like they have it together.
This is uncomfortable work. It's also the most important work.
Because until you know who you actually are underneath all of that, every plan you make will just be another version of the same suit.
What helps here is honest evidence. Not ideas about yourself. Not your LinkedIn summary. The patterns that show up consistently: what you do naturally without being asked, what you've been told by people who had no reason to flatter you, what gives you energy and what quietly drains it.
If you've worked with tools like Ikigai before, this is the same territory... but looking for evidence, not ideas about yourself.
The goal isn't to arrive at a perfect answer. It's to get clear enough to start moving.
Stage two: having a lot of conversations
Here's where most reinvention approaches stop, and where most people get stuck.
They do the internal work. They get clearer on who they are and what they value. And then they wait. For the right idea to arrive. For clarity to descend from somewhere.
It doesn't work that way.
Once you know yourself well enough, you need to take that self out into the world and calibrate it against reality. And that means conversations. Lots of them. With people doing things you're curious about, people who've made similar transitions, people living versions of a life you might want to live.
This was the whole point of 50 Lunches for me. I didn't start the project because I had a podcast strategy. I started it because I was figuring out what comes next, and I knew I couldn't do that alone in a room. I needed to sit across from interesting people and ask them real questions. What did they figure out? What took longer than it should have? What do they know now that they wish they'd known at 40?
What I discovered is that most of us have no idea what's actually possible. We have a mental map of the world built from the industries we've worked in, the people we've spent time with, the paths we've seen people around us take. It's a small map.
Conversations expand the map.
You hear about someone who left a Director role to do something you'd never considered, and it sounds interesting. Not in a fantasy way, but in a "I want to know more about that" way. Or someone describes what their work actually feels like day to day, and something in you either recoils or leans in. That's the signal. That's what you're looking for.
And then there's the stuff you can't plan for at all. The introduction that comes from nowhere. The conversation that opens a door you didn't know existed.
Serendipity only happens when you expose yourself to the world.
You can't think your way to any of this. You have to feel your way to it, in conversation, with real people, over time.
Stage three: building a new narrative
Here's the thing about reinvention that nobody talks about enough.
It's not just an internal process. It has a social dimension.
The people who move through reinvention fastest are the ones who figure out, early, how to tell their new story in a way that other people can understand. Not the old story. Not "I was Head of X for fifteen years and now I'm figuring things out." Something forward-looking. Something that gives the people around them a way to help.
Because your network wants to help you. Your former colleagues, your contacts, the people who've watched your career... they're rooting for you. But they can only help you as clearly as you can describe what you're looking for.
"I'm exploring options" gets you coffee meetings that go nowhere.
"I'm looking for work that combines X and Y, ideally in Z kind of environment, and here's why that makes sense given everything I've done" gets you introductions, referrals, conversations that actually move something.
The same is true with recruiters. A recruiter can do almost nothing for someone who's reinventing, until the person can articulate a coherent story. The moment the story becomes clear, they become genuinely useful.
So the final stage of reinvention is this: take what you've learned about yourself, take what you've discovered through your conversations, and slowly start building a new narrative. Not a finished answer. A story in progress. One that's honest about where you've been, clear about what you've figured out, and open about where you're heading.
It changes how people see you. And more importantly, it changes how you see yourself.
What it looks like on the other side
I won't promise you a mountain sunrise and a morning routine.
What reinvention actually looks like is quieter than that.
It looks like making a decision and not immediately second-guessing it. It looks like work that costs you energy but also gives you some back. It looks like being able to answer, specifically and without hesitation, when someone asks what you're doing and why.
The life you're living starts to feel like yours.
For most people I know who've been through it, that's more than enough.
If you're somewhere in the middle of this, the Life Report is a good place to start. Or learn more about how I work with people going through exactly this.
