GABRIEL SCHIRM

Ready for a change? Life? Career? Location? It can be tough to reinvent yourself even though I would argue it is healthy to do so. When there are so many expectations about who and what you are, how do you reinvent yourself? When all others look at you with amusement and a sparkle of crazy glimmers in their eyes, how do you persevere?

To start, look around you. 

I have a good friend Matt, who did something remarkable last year. He was working in a typical American office and one day over a cold brew, he announced, “I am going to coding school.”

This was the first time I had ever heard him mention coding school. In fact I didn’t even know exactly what coding school was. This was far from anything he had done previously in life and to some, I am sure this idea seemed a bit absurd.

He wanted something drastic. He was looking for freedom from the “cube life”, from “safety” and he landed on coding school. It turns out coding schools are quite popular nowadays as the demand for talented coders has never been higher. He chose a school called Turing in Denver.

Matt quit his job, enrolled and began an intensive 7 month program. He dove headfirst into the great unknown. He took a risk to reinvent himself.

There are things known and there are things unknown and in between are the doors. -Jim Morrison

Now a year later from that first mention of this new path, Matt landed an amazing job working as a coder in the music industry. Oh, and that freedom to work from anywhere thing? He gets to work from home.

Create your vision and write it down. I keep 3 books. The first is for book ideas. Novels, travel adventure books etc… The second is for entrepreneurial ideas and the 3rd is goals. You could call them the books of dreams. You hear this all the time. Write down your goals. It is spooky how well this works. I took a peak at my goals for 2016 yesterday and they are all coming true. This will all help you get clear as well. If you reinvent yourself you better have an idea of where you are going.

Surround yourself with supportive people. If someone reacts negatively to your new dream, it may be time for new friends. Yes you want someone to be honest with you when you tell them you are going to be an NFL quarterback at 40 having never played football. But, beware of haters and trolls.

Believe in impossible things. The most important question to ask yourself is, if you could do anything in the world and not fail, what would it be? When you answer that question (and I bet you can) you inevitable follow it with the terrible word; but. Stop it. You can.

Take action or take a trip. Do something small everyday to support your dream. Need space to ready yourself for a launch into the great unknown? Take a trip. That always works for me.