3 Steps to Take to Re-Discover Yourself

Call it a mid-life crisis. Call it re-invention. Whatever it is, lean into it.

Do it to re-discover who you are and who you want to be next.

My dad had passed away. I quit my job. I committed the cardinal cultural crime by severing ties with a family that always took but never gave. I lost the desire of pursuing a career, and essentially punted my Ivy League diploma off the freeway, like it were Baxter. Change was happening. It was overwhelming. I cut ties with everything that had anchored down my identity from a past life, so that I could reach without being limited by the expectations of who I was.

When your world shifts, let that profound change, change you.

I finally stopped to let everything that was happening to me sink in. I finally tapped into my emotions without feeling rushed by the million other things I’d needed to get done. I allowed myself to fully mourn my father and my past self without interruption. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. The uncertainty unnerved me completely, but I embraced it. I knew it was a time of transformation and I let my body guide me there.

Things I did to get acquainted with the new me

Suddenly, I had time. I didn’t know where to begin. This abundance of time felt strange, almost immobilizing. Once the initial shock of this unusual calm from the storm settled, I said, “F*** it,” and went for it.

I said, "F*** it," and went for it.

I finally signed up to learn how to swim. I got over being the only adult in a K-3 class and will always remember the high schooler who finally taught me how to swim.

I went back to school. Well, for one class. I signed up for adult education and took an Investing 101 class. I was going to “buy the dip”, I told myself, but I didn’t even know the basics of how to place a stock order. (I do now, but it’s not that interesting). This was my time to give active investing a try. I learned it somewhat, and also learned that active investing wasn’t going to be my jam. It was wiser to keep my funds in a passively managed account.

I did a lot of therapy. I leaned on my friends for emotional support, but also wanted to give them a break by going into therapy. It helps to have a neutral third-party weigh in to guide you out of the dumps.

I got back to gardening. I started with simply watering. Then through that, started pruning, composting, and maintaining more until things started to look green again.

I reignited my love for food, growing and cooking it. I turned my house into my kitchen and garden laboratory, and lived out the reveries of “what if I had gone to culinary school instead of college.”

I wrote. I thought about my dad a lot. I found ways to keep his memory alive in the best ways I knew how, through writing.

I did a lot of doing to learn what stuck and what didn’t, so that I wouldn’t be left wondering “what if”. I tested out the various roads before me.