From the course: Reinventing You with Debbie Millman

What is reinvention and why is it important?

From the course: Reinventing You with Debbie Millman

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

What is reinvention and why is it important?

“

- John Maeda once explained, that the computer will do anything within its abilities, but it will do absolutely nothing unless commanded to do so. I think that people are the same. We'd like to operate within our abilities, but whereas the computer has a fixed code, our abilities are limited only by our perceptions. Three decades since determining my code, I began to rewrite the possibilities of what could come next. So far, the results have surprised me. Sometimes they scare me, sometimes they baffle me, most times I'm just glad that I'm feeling something real. But you know what? There hasn't been one minute during this time that I haven't wished I started sooner. I really don't know what I was waiting for. The grand scheme of a life, maybe just maybe, is not about knowing or not knowing perhaps what is truly known, can't be described or articulated by creativity or logic, science, or art. Perhaps it can be expressed by the most meaningful and authentic combination of the two, poetry. As Robert Frost once wrote, "A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with." I recommend the following course of action for those like me who are reconfiguring and reinventing who you are, midway through your career. Heed the words of Robert Frost, start with a big fat lump in your throat, start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, a crazy lovesickness, and run with it. If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don't compromise and don't waste time. In order to strive for a remarkable life, you have to decide that you want one. That is why I have created this course with LinkedIn. My goal is to help everyone else out there that might think they don't deserve fulfilling their dreams, to not reconsider their dreams but to reconsider the way that they think. You can start to reinvent who you are, right now. Not 20 years from now, not 30 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now, so let's begin.

Contents