How to reinvent yourself

My father always told me, “There comes a point in life when you need to reinvent yourself.”

Every New Year's Eve since I was 16, we would asynchronously re-read the same speech by John Gardener to McKinsey in 1998, called Personal Renewal. In that thought-provoking (and, closer to the end, tear-shedding) speech, Gardener makes a number of brilliant arguments about why individuals owe it to themselves to never stop learning and always seek new opportunities to uncover their hidden talents.

It’s a wonderful speech. And I loved that tradition — for it not only brought me closer to my dad (hey, we now actually have something we do in common!) but it made me year by year aware of the perils of complacency.

Never stop learning.

Always upgrade yourself.

You have more hidden potentialities inside of you than you have ever dreamed of.

You don’t know who you are — life is a journey of figuring it out.

It ain’t over until it’s over.

Surely, many of us can attest to a time when we felt like we outlived the lives we led and it was time for an upgrade — for self-renewal. But not everyone has — or, yet alone, catches — these moments. For most people, it’s school-college-work-“Hey, where did all that time go?”.

And it’s sad. Terrifying. Witnessing your life pass you by like that.