Adapted from NEXT! The Power of Reinvention in Life & Work, by Joanne Lipman, published by Mariner, March 21, 2023.
Three years after the pandemic shutdown, the crisis has receded, but we don’t seem any closer to the “new normal” than we were back then. More than two-thirds of Americans aren’t engaged with their work, and job unhappiness is at a record high. The majority of job seekers are considering switching careers altogether.
Joanne Lipman’s NEXT! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work taps into this current moment, with a deeply reported guide to navigating change in how we live, work and lead. Lipman, a former editor-in-chief of USA Today and The Wall Street Journal Weekend, calls on her formidable reporting skills to offer a Reinvention Roadmap, along with a dozen strategies to take you through the transition process. Whether you’re looking to change careers, pick up the pieces after a traumatic event, or you’re simply feeling stuck, here are five of these key steps five steps that will jumpstart your reinvention and help you change your life.
- Try on “possible selves.” Bestselling author James Patterson spent almost three decades working as an ad executive, yet envisioned himself as a novelist. Telephone repairman Chris Donovan imagined himself as a shoe designer – and today has his own couture shoe line. Psychologists Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius coined the phrase “possible selves” to describe how we envision our futures: what we want to become, or could become, or even fear becoming. Conjuring these “possible selves” can help make them real, and lead to meaningful change.
- Talk to an “expert companion.” Trauma experts have found that survivors can achieve post-traumatic growth – that is, positive, not just negative, outcomes – by talking with a person who knows them well. In a broader sense, all of us could use an expert companion. As a young man, Danny Meyer was considering law school when his uncle told him, “Since you were a child, all you’ve ever talked or thought about is food. . .Why don’t you just open a restaurant?” That moment set Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group, on a path to becoming one of the most successful restaurateurs in the world. “I knew I loved restaurants, but it just never occurred to me that that was a viable career choice” before then, Meyer told me.
- Move before you move. Your hobbies, side hustle and passions are telling you something! When I sought out people who had successfully reinvented lives and careers, virtually every one told me they began moving toward their new life before they even realized it. Will Brown was a bank economist who bought an old farmhouse as a weekend home – a path that ultimately led him to become a fulltime cattle farmer. Ina Garten was a budget analyst who enjoyed throwing dinner parties on weekends, a passion that culminated in her reinvention as the Barefoot Contessa. Your side hustle, or that quirky hobby you’ve been nurturing, may well end up leading to your next reinvention.
- Reach out to your network, especially your “weak ties.” If you’re looking for a new direction or new opportunities, your best bet may be your dormant ties—people you haven’t spoken to in years—or your “weak” ties, people you know only casually. Reams of research, including an analysis of LinkedIn data, have found that when you’re job hunting, people in your larger network are far more likely to help surface a job opportunity than those closest to you. What’s more, when 224 executives asked for work advice from people they hadn’t spoken to in years, the acquaintance sparked more creative ideas and fresh insights than did their own friends and colleagues.
- Take a break: a shower, a run, a nap, even a sabbatical. And go ahead and daydream— that has benefits too! Drexel’s John Kounios has found that distracting yourself when you’re stuck is often the best way to solve a problem or come up with a new idea. In a 2015 survey of 1,114 people, 80 percent reported solving challenges while in the shower, exercising, commuting, in nature, or sleeping. Indeed, an entire body of research has grown up around the benefits of sleep, which, scientist theorize, allows tangentially related thoughts to mix and combine in new ways that coalesce into breakthrough ideas. There’s a reason why you have your best “aha” moments in the middle of the night- or in the shower or while on a run. For some of those I interviewed, eureka moments literally changed their lives.
In NEXT! you’ll find these strategies and more. Your next adventure can start today.
NEXT! The Power of Reinvention in Life & Work is available from Amazon and Bookshop.