Make A Change. Reinvent Yourself!

I’ve always believed that change is the essential ingredient to lasting success. What stands in the way of reinventing ourselves is fear. We fear we won’t be as successful in our new role or that our peers won’t accept us.

 I know how powerful fear can be because I’ve experienced it myself.  When I look back at the person I was in Los Angeles, I see someone who lived in fear.  I worked so hard to please others, to maintain a lifestyle, to control everyone and everything around me.  Like so many women in my situation, I was seeking approval and scared to death of not getting it.

That all changed when we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  On New Year’s Eve of 2007, my husband Steven, daughter Roxy and I arrived at the artist’s haven to start a new life.  Making the move wasn’t easy.  We had to sell our house in a tough market, downsize and relocate our business, and say goodbye to our friends and all the trappings of Hollywood.

Los Angeles had been an empowering place for me.  I met my husband, built a thriving business and had a child. 

We lived an exciting life catering to some of the biggest brands in the world like Sony, CNN and Discovery Channel, but our heavy work schedule kept us from spending time with our daughter.  Add to that horrendous traffic, poor air quality and a home invasion we narrowly survived, and I began to feel it was time to make a dramatic shift.  I knew that to live authentically, to be true to myself, I would have to leave Los Angeles and overcome my fears.  I would have to reinvent myself.

The definition of reinvention is to recast something familiar into a different form– to change something so much that it seems entirely new. As one of the few career reinvention experts who have been on the frontlines of big business and built major brands, I have the trade secrets to help you define exactly what you do well so that you can put your career in high gear.  

When Oprah recently evolved from a talk show host to the head of her own television network, the fear she had to face was that she might not surpass what she had done in the past. Once she realized that reinventing herself wasn’t about topping the phenomenon she had created, but rather building on all that she had accomplished and experienced in her life, she could move ahead.

The miraculous and utterly natural process of biological evolution is all about course correction. For people like you and me, it’s about observing what’s working and what’s not. It asks you to look deep inside yourself to chronicle your accomplishments, define the skills you can monetize and the strengths you can build on so that the new you reflects a progression that’s organic and feels right to you.  It may just be a slight shift that happens. Your evolution doesn’t have to be revolutionary– just reflective of your true nature.

Robin Fisher Roffer is a reinvention and personal branding specialist. She is the author of Make A Name For Yourself: 8 Steps Every Woman Needs To Create A Personal Brand Strategy For Success and The Fearless Fish Out Of Water: How To Succeed When You’re The Only One Like You. She’s also CEO, Big Fish Marketing, Inc. bigfishmarketing.com