107: the Revolution of Reinvention

Speaker 1: How to make love. Now, is that from recipe or from scratch? This is how to make love. Wow. Oh gosh. Oh

Speaker 2: My God. Yeah. A little to the left and faster. A show that tests the edges of what love is, worthiness, empathy, beauty, sex, positive, the borders. It can cross how we do integrity in all of our relationships, and its hidden costs and shadows. In a

Speaker 1: World where we other people, where we build walls, we just tear down walls, fuck finding it or falling into it. Our

Speaker 2: Future depends on making it. Hey everybody, la here. Welcome back to another episode of How to Make Love, where we continue to hone our skills and our wills and our capacities to make the things we value, like love and justice and courage. I'm really glad you're here. And today I want to talk about reinvention. What does it mean to reinvent ourselves and why should we even consider doing something like that? Not to just make a change, but to potentially overhaul the way that we see or live or understand ourselves? See, reinvention isn't just a personal act. It's a deeply social even revolutionary one, and today I want to invite you into this conversation as we explore the personal and collective power of reinvention. But first, let's get real for a bit. Reinvention is not about running away from who you are or not about becoming someone else entirely.

Speaker 2: It's about meeting yourself as you are and asking what else do I want? What else is possible? Who else might I want to be? What new world could I build for myself or for others? In the course of my life? I've been reinvented a couple of times, like fundamentally reinvented divorce was one of those things. Being publicly outed when I was 18 and losing the entire community of spiritual people that I had been spending my time with. That prompted a giant reinvention of myself and also when I discovered I was polyamorous, all those things have reinvented me and totally overhauled me from the ground up. But they were reinventions born more of necessity in survival and circumstance versus choice. And while those shifts were important, they weren't necessarily deliberate, they weren't led by freedom. They were reactions, not necessarily revolutions, but here's what I've learned.

Speaker 2: Reinvention doesn't have to wait for a sort of crisis. It can happen by choice. Over the past few years, I've been leaning into this. As I settle back into my hometown, I've been tossing out old identities and stories and experimenting with some new ways of being and relating to myself as someone who's full of possibility and someone I've never actually even met yet. Reinvention when chosen isn't just change. It's transformation, and this is my favorite part. It's something we can choose as often as we want to. I want to be really clear though. You don't have to reinvent yourself. There's nothing wrong with being exactly who you are. Reinvention isn't a moral obligation. It doesn't make you any better or smarter, stronger. It's simply an invitation to meet yourself and then ask yourself, who would I be? If not this? If you feel that spark, if you feel that tug and curiosity, then stick around. Boo.

Speaker 2: Okay, what is reinvention? Well, reinvention to me is the conscious act of imagining and becoming a new version of yourself. It's not about self-criticism or abandoning who you are. It's about opening a door to something new and then stepping through it even when you're scared and you have no idea how to do it. It's about sort of peeling back what you've been handed and deciding what stays, and then imagining what else you might want there to be. Here's the thing. Reinvention isn't about fixing yourself or patching up your life or making micro adjustments to your life. It's about dreaming up something brand new, something that feels potentially wildly true to who you are and who you want to be. It's not about tweaking what's already in front of you. It's about asking, what would I build for myself if nothing was holding me back? It's not just about what is, it's about what could be.

Speaker 2: It's about breaking out of this kind of box completely and then deciding, screw it, I'll make my own damn box or maybe no box at all. I think the thing that's really important here is you don't actually have to go and live the life that you envision. Part of this daring to imagine is a part of what is so radical about this process to begin with. Then the reinvention is just kind of bonus, but I want to be real for a minute. Reinvention is really hard, hard, hard. Our brains are wired to stick with what's familiar because it's what's safe. Comfort zones aren't just cozy. They're like survival mechanisms. And let's not forget, the world is constantly nudging us to stay in line, to be predictable, to not rock the boat, to not be deviant, to be compliant. That's why so many people never reinvent.

Speaker 2: It's not because they don't want to, it's because the resistance sometimes feels just too big and the uncertainty can be very, very, very uncomfortable. And then obviously there are a bunch of systemic forces squeezing us down, which exacerbates it all and makes it especially hard. But internally, reinvention takes real deep vulnerability. It takes real deep curiosity and it takes a willingness to not just step but kind of throw yourself into the unknown. It's work, but it's really, really worthwhile. So why does reinvention matter? I want to start on the personal level. Reinvention gives you freedom. It reminds you that your life is in a script that you're stuck with. You can write new scenes, you can add plot twists. You can even change the genre entirely if you want to. But the thing is, it's not just personal reinvention is political. Every time you break free from a role or a narrative that's been handed to you, you are doing liberation work.

Speaker 2: You're saying, I won't let society tell me who I am or what I'm capable of. And this matter's not just for you, but for the world. Systems of oppression thrive on sameness, on keeping people in these predictable boxes and reinvention disrupts that. It trains us to imagine differently, to create alternatives, to build something totally new. Think of it this way. If the systems we live in need to change, don't we need to be the people who know how to change ourselves? Reinvention becomes the training ground, the courage you build by reinventing yourself, the resilience, the creativity, the willingness to experiment are the exact tools we need to reimagine systems and communities and movements for justice. Bell hooks called personal transformation revolution or revolutionary, and she was right. The work we do inside ourselves isn't separate from the work we do out in the world. It's practice, it's preparation.

Speaker 2: Reinvention is how we become the people who can dream bigger, love harder, and create a freer, more liberatory world for all people. So it's personal and it's collective. I want to talk for a few minutes about what it takes to reinvent yourself. Unfortunately, I can't give you a lockstep way for how to do this because it's very personal and intimate for each of us, but I do know some foundational skills and willingness is that reinvention requires and it's not for the faint of heart. It takes vulnerability, it takes curiosity, and maybe even the most difficult thing is that it asks us to have a willingness to let go of what we've known in order for the possibility of something new, but it's also playful and liberating and full of possibility. So if you're feeling drawn to this work, I think here are a couple of things you'll need.

Speaker 2: Number one, courage in particular. Courage to, as I just said, let go. Reinvention requires you to release what no longer serves you. Old beliefs, old habits, sometimes even old versions of yourself that may not feel just safe. They may actually feel kind of sacred and a part of what's core to who you are, but they may also be some of the very things that are kind of keeping you stuck or stagnant and where you currently are. And this isn't about abandoning who you are, it's about making space for who you could become. You get to keep the things you want to keep about yourself, but you don't want your attachment to keeping those things to be the very reason that you're not imagining new possibilities in the first place. The second thing I think this work requires is imagination, and specifically the willingness to imagine at a bigger level, not because bigger is better, but because part of reinvention is breaking your brain.

Speaker 2: That's a part of what we're trying to do literally. We're trying to break some of the synapses that have created a sense of safety and comfort for you, but we're also trying to create possibilities that we have never dreamed up before. You can't reinvent yourself without imagination, and you need the abilities to see beyond what's already in front of you and ask what if. Give yourself permission to dream without constraints. Don't edit. Don't shrink the version to make it more reasonable. A part of the skill building for yourself and for the world is the radical capacity to imagine. The third thing you're going to need is a bit of a spirit of experimentation, so to speak. Reinvention is well. You don't really know exactly where you're going, so it's about trying things on like clothes in a fitting room, and some are going to feel awkward and some are feel just right and some are going to be like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2: I don't even know what this piece of clothing is, which is how I feel these days when I go into the stores that service the younger generation. But the point is to experiment, to play, to see what fits and to be willing to try everything on last. I think the thing you need to do this work is a deep commitment to liberation and to justice reinvention. Remember, it's not just for you. When we do this work, we're practicing the skills that the world needs. The world needs creativity, it needs resilience, it needs courage. It needs vulnerability. It needs radical imagination. So reinvention prepares you to show up for collective liberation if you are practicing, if you are making your life a practice, it's not just about your transformation though that is valid and of value in and of itself, but it's also about who you're becoming and the process and how that serves the greater good and the ability for all of us to transform.

Speaker 2: Remember, friends reinvention isn't easy. It's not supposed to be. It's messy, it's uncertain. Sometimes it's downright scary, but it's also one of the most liberating things you can do. It reminds you that your life is your life and it's yours to create, that you're not stuck with a script that you've been handed, and that you can imagine new possibilities and live into them, and you don't need permission to start. You don't need a crisis to justify it. You don't even need a clear picture of where you're going. In fact, you probably and almost certainly won't have a clear picture of where you're going. All you need is the willingness to ask what if, what else might be possible? And then the courage to imagine in the boldest ways that you can dare what you might find if this is sparking something in you, and if you feel even the smallest tug to explore this more, what reinvention could look like for you, follow that spark.

Speaker 2: And if you'd like support along the way, I want to invite you to join me in my new unschool program called Unscript. Unscript is about this. It's about re-imagining and reinventing yourself, not from pressure or force, but from choice and consent and freedom and toward liberation. It's about creating space to play with all the possibilities and try them on and discover what you might become. If that sounds like your jam, head to the link in the show notes to learn more and make sure you apply by Sunday, November 24th, and just in case you can't attend unschool this semester, it's just not your jam. I want to make sure I still leave you with some juicy questions. Here are a few things you might sit with or journal on or discuss with someone who knows you really well and do this in partnership with others. Number one, what feels too small in my life right now?

Speaker 2: Where might I be holding myself back? Number two, what do I sense that I'm ready to let go of, even if it feels scary to release? Number three, if I could start over with a blank page, what would I create for myself? Number four, what would it feel like in my life to live more freely and what might that look like? And last, what version of myself have I been afraid to step into? You don't have to answer all of those today. You don't even have to answer all of them ever, but let them simmer. Let yourself play with the ideas they stir up. Remember reinvention. It's not a race, it's an unfolding. It's a becoming.

Speaker 2: All right. Booze, reinvention is no small thing. It's not just change. It is revolution as revolution of the self. It is. I've never been this before and I'm going to dare to be it. It is the act of meaning yourself with curiosity and peeling back what no longer fits and stepping really boldly into something you have never been, someone you have never been. And of course, it's not just about you. Every time you expand what's possible for yourself, you expand what's possible for all of us. You practice breaking down the systems that can confine us. When you break down those systems inside yourself, you create this ripple effect that opens the doors for so many of us to follow. So who do you want to become? Until next time, my friends, keep dreaming and keep playing. Keep making all that reinvented, revolutionary love. I'll see you soon. Bye for now.