Updated August, 2021

What does reinvention demand of us?

With every new year, many of us consider what we would like to change in our lives, what could be better. When you find yourself questioning many aspects of your life at once, you might want to push further, towards a desire for transformation, or reinvention. Is it harder to reinvent yourself when you are younger, or when you are older? Can you reinvent yourself without changing your external environment?

What raised these questions was a conversation I had with a language exchange partner, a former corporate executive in Madrid (and neighbor to my favorite Spanish singer Miguel Bose!). Retiring launched him on that voyage to find out who he was outside of father, husband, and I have to presume, former big shot. He complimented me on what he viewed as my reinvention, deduced from reading a few of my blogs. He saw my enthusiasm for the new life I lead and asked me what it had been like getting there.

Most reinvention we read about focuses on career reinvention, an industry dies and a person has to apply their skills to a new field. Obviously, my successful friend (and neighbor to Miguel Bosé ! ) didn’t need any career advice. Although he confessed to missing the regular reaffirmation that came in the form of a paycheck, and more than anything else, leading and guiding younger employees. Instead, he was interested in reinvention as it relates to maintaining a zest for living.

First I questioned that I was “reinvented.” I never thought of it that way. I had been so scared and busy conceiving, planning, and executing my move to Mexico that I never considered naming the process. It had to be done to keep living, unlike his desire for continued personal growth.

However, demonstrating the powers of observation that propels a person to lead global organizations, not write blogs, he pointed out that I lived in another country part-time, performed a different kind of work than my prior careers, and had a new circle of friends who didn’t speak English (in other words: If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…).

For all the talk of the joys of reinvention, true reinvention isn’t something a person does voluntarily. For every 50 inspiring stories of reinvention, probably 45 of them are propelled by hardship; death, loss of job, divorce or personal crisis or combination of several of these.

Reinvention is a survival tactic, usually the only choice one has given the circumstances. I was dubious that an affluent executive could heat the embers of mild restlessness to the five-alarm fire of the soul required for reinvention. Reinvention is not a hobby. It’s the total deconstruction. What he was seeing, and wanted, was the result, not the messy, painful process required to get there.

Maybe life has brought you to the point of believing that you need to reinterpret yourself in new and drastic ways to recover your happiness and enthusiasm for life. These are the steps that worked for me, and a little about how they related to my moving to Mexico.

Solitary introspection

At stages of your life, you need to think alone. It might be meditation. It might be prayer. It might be very long solitary walks. You have to spend time alone to define who you are, and what drives you.

Everyone, if they take that time, can break themselves down to single, immutable drive (security, greed, fear of being alone, the need to be needed). Part of the goal of introspection is identifying that primary drive. You cannot reinvent your life without a strong guiding principal. There’s just too much static to make these decisions without deep introspection. Our overarching drive is the trunk from which other needs branch out.

What drove me was a sense of personal dignity, which ticked uncomfortably so far right as to approach the red zone of pride. To my credit, in spite of its unsavory connotations, I owned it. You have to own what drives you. If you don’t, you will never understand why you do many of things you do. Probably more than anything else, that one insight led to the idea of Mexico. If I couldn’t afford to live well and with dignity in the U.S., I would leave the U.S.

Deep introspection, and being totally honest with yourself are required to determine how far you can realistically go towards satisfying your salient drive under new conditions. No one is identical in what they bring to the table, we have our own gifts, resources and limitations. If you are older, you also have a shorter runway to factor in, an abbreviated ramp.

Floundering

Expect a certain degree of chaos in the process of reinvention. Mistakes will be made. Trying new things, most of which you will be terrible at, at least at first, is a critical part of the process. For inspiration, try reading Buddhist literature on how to develop a “beginner’s mind.” You will begin to see floundering more as expressing natural curiosity, as play. Once you incorporate that mindset, experimenting and its subsequent failures is a lot more fun.

Creating your story

You have much more freedom to be whomever you want than you think. I know of a doctor who practiced medicine for 25 years, moved to Puerto Vallarta and opened a bike shop. I have also heard stories about expats who come to Mexico and fabricate total histories (I think that’s kind of beautiful as long as no one gets hurt).

While I can’t recommend this particular approach, it says a lot about how much control we have over our story. Some people move to Mexico and create completely different lives, right down to how they dress. They closed some doors and opened others.

If you see yourself as a painter and enjoy the process, paint. Dress like a painter. Read about painters you like. Act like the painter you want to be. “Fake it till you make it” never goes out of style. I was introduced socially as a writer my first week in Mexico. It felt silly. But it did help me visualize and develop habits aligned with that vision.

Finding processes you like

Not once have I heard of a person who spent his days engaged in a process he really enjoyed say, “Yes, but I am so unhappy.” You sleep eight hours and spend several hours on necessary tasks, cooking, exercising, and running errands every day. If you spend six hours of what remains in your day in processes that you enjoy and address your overarching drive, you will have arrived at least seven-eighths of the way to happiness.

If you are thinking about expat life, it’s useful to begin to think about processes or creative outlets you enjoy that will translate to expat life. You can start laying the groundwork by taking classes or going to workshops that might not be available in Mexico. You can investigate technologies that can help you bring processes you enjoy to Mexico. For several reasons, this type of research is easier to do while still in the U.S.

I have friends who live modest yet very enthusiastic lives. If they still work, the rest of their day is spent in processes they enjoy, processes that produce a tangible result, such as cooking, repairing bicycles, photography, studying a second language, or taking care of others.

Disconnecting process from results

When you breaking new ground, you have to ignore the quality of your final product. My first website design was ridiculous. My first business plan a complete failure. All I knew was that I achieved flow, that sense of time stopping, whenever engaged in new processes I put into place for my life in Mexico. The more hours of flow we have, the happier we are regardless of commercial success. Try to remember the big picture.

It takes time.

Reinvention doesn’t happen overnight. It takes at least a few years. In spite of our best efforts to shut them out, conversations by friends and family will affect your moving forward in manifesting a new version of yourself. People who come to Mexico can reinvent themselves without that distraction. When I arrived to Mexico and presented myself as a writer, there was no one to question that.

That’s the freedom of life in Mexico, and what makes it a perfect place to reinvent yourself.

Related links:

Money, Divorce, and Sojourns to Mexico - Divorce spurs a different kind of reinvention. Sojourns have a long history of examining your life from a different perspective. - Ventanas Mexico

How expats have been reinventing themselves for decades in San Miguel de Allende [blog] Ventanas Mexico

Reinvention: Nothing more than learning new dance when the music changes [blog] - Ventanas Mexico

Most recent:

My best photos from my years in Mexico to date

About the author:

Kerry Baker is the author of three books.

"If Only I Had a Place" is your guide to renting in Mexico successfully and luxuriously. Her second book is "The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico." This is the book that will tell you what to expect and how to do it without leaving you anxious and numb. Most recently she released a cookbook, “The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico”. In Mexico, to maintain a healthy diet, you must cook. This cookbook will show you how to shop and cook in a foreign culture (150 recipes).