When did we learn to introduce ourselves, to present the summary of who we are, or at least offer a label? Kindergarten? ‘Say your name and where you live.’ Others may know us already — ‘he’s one of the Elliott boys, the youngest of five’ — but when we introduce ourselves the agency of identity shifts to what we choose to say. Is that our first reinvention? However impermanent our imprint might be then upon the consciousness of others, that moment of introduction — repeated and elaborated and reconstructed throughout our lives — is when we tell people who we are so they will see us accordingly; e.g., ‘I’m a doctor, a teacher, firefighter, an executive, an opera singer, a punk rocker, a playwright, a mime.’
That last one probably doesn’t come up much.
Our original identity is inherited, not invented — its ‘why’ and ‘what’ are imposed, but we do choose how we share it with others according to motives both conscious and unconscious. That initial identity remains even if subsequently we pave it over. It is the foundation of anything that we might construct; in my extended family, I am still at the age of 67 with white hair — and will always be even to myself — ‘the youngest boy’. Yet early in our childhood, we start to imagine ‘what’ we will be on top of all that: ballet dancer, second baseman, teacher, mother, nuclear physicist, racecar driver. And those all might be the succession of desired identities of one young girl. One of my earliest quests was to be the first Pope/President, but that’s a very different story.
What were the sources of those first desired identities? In other words, why? The stimuli might be books, movies, a particularly influential relative, or even the inspiration of a friend’s or relative’s occupation: I’ve known a number of nurses, doctors, airline pilots, lawyers, and so on who decided upon that identity because someone they knew showed them its value. The kind of reinvention being discussed in this series even might start with this kind of imitation but explicitly relies upon individual exploration. As pointed out in the last installment, that exploration should start with a careful consideration of ‘why’ we are going through the trouble of reinventing.
Rigorously personally examining ‘why’ must precede ‘what’ in any reinvention and we have to do it ourselves or at least with those who are closest to us because it’s impossible for someone at a distance to know our situation. To simply accept the advice of others whether television personalities or self-help authors would be fruitless and perhaps even dangerous. Agnes Caillard discoursed upon this need recently:
“Knowledge of becoming … always involves a particularized grasp of where the aspirant currently stands on the path between total cluelessness and near-perfection. What are her characteristic weaknesses; where does she already excel; what nudges could she use? Only someone who knows her knows this. An aspirational history is full of minute corrections, dead ends, backtracking, re-orientation and random noise. It is as idiosyncratic, odd and particular as the human being herself.”[i]
There is that word ‘idiosyncratic’ again. It means that in approaching reinvention we have to interrogate ourselves as to the why & what even though others can aid that effort. Their usefulness is likely more connected to advice on HOW to achieve our goals than what those goals should be. ‘Why’ can change and, therefore, ‘what’ is likely to change as well.
And so our work continues: in looking first at the ‘why’ of our reinvention, what did we find? By way of explication and at risk of TMI, I offer my own chart of the various answers to first ‘why’ and then ‘what’ and ‘how’ at different times of my life.
This is not precise. Identities are made out and then substantiated. Therefore, what I’ve included and what I left out would require different categories; did I not want to be a basketball coach when I was in college while part-time teaching gym and serving as the coach of a girls team in the Bronx? Yes, very much, but that was too fleeting a pursuit to merit inclusion in what is supposed to be a guide for others. Indeed, the first two rows are in italics because whatever reinvention occurred was accidental not intentional.
Those later reinventions came about in part because I found myself in that phase of life described by Daniel Levinson: “early adulthood is the era in which we are most buffeted by our own passions and ambitions from within and by the demands of family, community, and society from without.”[xii] if we don’t jump into some new identity during that time, we are likely to be pushed or in the worst case to be buried under an avalanche of circumstances. So we had better be sure of our mission (‘why’) so that we can then determine our objectives (‘what’). Citing later work by Levinson and Stein, David Brooks recommends three elements of such life transitions: “naming your limitations, befriending your inner life, realigning your central focus.” They constitute good steps for deciding upon the ‘what’ of our next field.
To take the first of those elements, instead of looking immediately for candidates that would satisfy our mission or ‘why’ (e.g., more money, greater autonomy, higher status, greater sense of self-worth, etc.) specify the things that we would not be good at, the areas where we have the least confidence or competence. If we are not good with numbers or if we dislike constant confrontation, then choosing Wall Street as our objective or ‘what’ for this new identity probably doesn’t make sense. There are times when we might challenge our own sense of what is possible, but more fruitful approach is to stipulate initially those things that we feel are clearly beyond our capability or caring or both.
Looking back at my chart, even in the earliest days of reinvention I knew that certain fields would be disastrous places to land: office jobs, highly bureaucratic corporations, military organizations. I’m simply no good at taking orders. Therefore, turning around the limitations help me to understand that in every case the ‘what’ of any successful reinvention would include either the ability to be the one giving the orders or the freedom to make things up as we went along. Someone else might reverse this order; they might fear the uncertainty and risk and know, therefore, that they need to enter a field where their role is to find and decision-making rights are concrete.
One consideration in looking at what our new identity might be is to view those areas where what we currently possess combined with what we believe we can attain will be most valued. If we don’t like to learn, reinvention becomes very difficult. Our choice of ‘what’ should reflect where we believe we might develop further expertise, where we might build upon some skills that we already possess. It is not impossible to enter a field that is completely different from the one that we are leaving, but it is more plausible to think of success in the field that allows us to draw upon certain talents that might fit across different disciplines: articulateness, analysis, systems thinking, entrepreneurship, and others.
In their book The Future of the Professions, which outlines a possible pessimistic future for lawyers, doctors, and others with specialized knowledge, Richard and Daniel Susskind write that, “informed recipients of service also want the knowledge and know-how with professionals to be deep and long-established. In short, they prefer the providers to be ‘expert’, and not just ‘knowledgeable’. More than this, they seek reassurance that the expertise has been repeatedly applied in the past with considerable success. This track record in the field distinguishes the practitioner from the scholar.” Therefore, we might look for our field of reinvention to be one in which we can meet that threshold of expertise.
Here we are deep into the subject of trying to determine a ‘what’ that matches our already specified ‘why’ of reinvention, and we haven’t broached the notion of passion. There’s a good reason for avoiding that common touchstone of career changes: it deserves its own section in the series, which will happen in a few days as we continue to explore this idiosyncratic guide to reinvention.
Footnotes and elaborations
[i] Agnes Caillard https://thepointmag.com/2019/examined-life/against-advice-agnes-callard
[ii] 1st teaching job — I thought that teaching was like learning and I knew I would enjoy being in a state of continuous learning. I had not distinguished myself as an undergraduate. (BTW teaching and learning are two completely different things.)
[iii] Alcoholism counseling — I had become very interested in change due to my work at a reform school but what mattered most was finding a job that would allow me to move to Saratoga Springs — my Castaneda spot at the time
[iv] Heading a drug agency — I was at a crossroads in my life after a divorce and this allowed me to throw myself fully into a new all-consuming enterprise
[v] Director of Education — I had been working a part-time job as the evening supervisor in a psychiatric hospital on the alcoholism and drug addiction floor while I toiled in theater. I got married and we wanted kids. I needed a better full-time job
[vi] Leaving behavioral health — I was correct to a large degree about managed-care, but could not have envisioned how creative psychiatric care providers would become to get around managed-care even though the gyrations to do so are constant and often painful.
[vii] Start-up fever — We had just had our third child, status: my new employers recruited me energetically, fear: feeling that I was at a dead end in my previous job as vice president for operations of an HR consulting company
[viii] PS on the ‘fever’: the Startup tanked after the Second Round of Funding
[ix] VP of Operations at a small NFP: And I was escaping a boss with whom I was not simpatico. For some reason, from age 24 to my current 67 years only three years and change were spent with male bosses. This guy was the ‘and change’ part and we never got along.
[x] ETS — And being part of the community where any work I did — especially cultural changes I was able to help effect — would be more lasting than those incited by a consultant
[xi] Playwrighting — Joe Queenan asked me to try writing a play with him. That solves the question of ‘what’: I couldn’t turn down an offer like that one especially since for years I had been hankering to return and fulfill the ‘why’ of this identity again
[xii] Levinson, Daniel (1986) A Conception of Adult Development, American Psychologist P. 5
