Reinvention Isn’t a Rebrand

There’s no shortage of advice on how to reinvent yourself.

Update your LinkedIn headline.

Get a sharper headshot.

Rewrite your “about” section until you almost believe it.

We treat reinvention like a PR exercise, something you can plan, polish, and post about. And maybe that’s why it’s so appealing. The tangible stuff gives us a sense of control when everything else feels uncertain. It’s easier to do something than to sit in the quiet and ask who you’re being.

Real reinvention doesn’t wait for permission. It’s not a campaign. It’s an unraveling.

The kind that happens when you’re not performing. When you stay in the car a few extra minutes before going inside, because some small part of you knows you’re not quite the same person who left that morning.

Reinvention isn’t about swapping one identity for another. It’s about noticing what’s falling away… and not stopping it.

The Myth of the Makeover

We’ve been taught that change starts with action.

Do something new. Work harder. Upgrade, improve, optimize.

It’s the logic of the makeover. Change what people see and the rest will follow.

But that order keeps us chasing. Because when doing comes before being, we’re always performing toward an image we haven’t actually grown into.

In coaching, I learned a simple model that still rattles around in my head: BE–DO–HAVE.

Most of us live it backward. We think, Once I have the job, the clarity, the confidence - then I’ll do things differently, and finally I’ll be different.

But real reinvention flips that order. It starts with being. With becoming someone who can hold what comes next.

That’s the part you can’t capture in a headline or a resume bullet. It’s the internal calibration… the slow shift from proving to trusting, from control to curiosity.

Reinvention isn’t a makeover. It’s not about having something new to show; it’s about being someone new quietly enough that you don’t have to show it at all.

The Work Beneath the Surface

I’ve built three versions of this website. Each one slightly better, cleaner, closer to something I couldn’t name.

And when I wasn’t adjusting colors or rewriting copy, I was buried in PowerPoint - fine-tuning a slide master for a presentation no one had asked for.

On the surface, it looked productive. Strategic, even. The kind of work that says, I’m still in motion. But underneath it was something smaller and sharper: a need for control. Proof that I could still make something function, even if I couldn’t make myself make sense.

By slide fifteen, the absurdity caught up with me. There I was, obsessing over a quote icon while my entire sense of direction sat offscreen. I actually laughed - that brittle, half-hysterical laugh that shows up right before a truth does.

What if I just said it:

I don’t know who I am right now. I don’t know what I’m building toward. And making another dang slide deck isn’t going to answer that.

We’re taught to work backward. Get the credentials, do the impressive work, become the person you’re aiming for. Have. Do. Be.

But what if that’s exactly why we stay stuck - chasing proof instead of presence?

Maybe reinvention starts there… not in motion, but in the pause that finally admits you’re lost.

What Stays / What Changes

What still fits? What no longer does? I’m still figuring it out. But here’s what I know.

I keep circling back to what remains steady underneath the chaos: my instinct to connect the dots, to make meaning, to look for systems in the mess. The part of me that believes belonging isn’t just possible, it’s buildable. And it’s critical. Those things are still here. They don’t need rebranding.

What’s changing is subtler, almost invisible from the outside.

The way I measure worth. The pace I’m willing to keep. The quiet boundary between care and over-functioning.

It’s strange to realize that the person I’ve been becoming all along was never waiting on a job title, a plan, or a polished portfolio. She was waiting on space… and a little permission to stop performing competence long enough to feel human again.

Sometimes that looks like closing the laptop at slide three instead of fifteen. Sometimes it’s admitting I don’t have an answer yet. Sometimes it’s just this - writing it down and calling it enough.