Are You A Rebel?

Maybe you are and maybe you’re not. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. The definition, of course, is “A person who breaks rules, defies a ruler, or challenges the standard way of doing thing”.

One of my high school English teachers wrote in my yearbook, “… Thank you for being you–for not conforming just to please others, to dated norms set down by this or any city high school.. You made me think, revise the original thoughts and then think all over again.”

(I do have a good memory but if you’re wondering, I didn’t remember the quote verbatim. I knew I had a few yearbooks in my living room closet and got that one out to review the quote.)

On a college interview I was very excited about, I carried my writing portfolio to the school I most wanted to attend. The interviewer informed me that it wasn’t required. I insisted that the portfolio had to be reviewed. I told him they really wouldn’t understand much about me without reading at least some of my work. I watched his mouth drop open in astonishment.

Then I followed that comment with a statement that I wanted to schedule a few more minutes with him the following day after he’d had a chance to read at least a little of the material in the portfolio, I can’t believe I had the gall to do that.

When I lived in San Francisco, I wanted to take some upper division and graduate level psychology courses in which psychodrama and role play were important components. I was told I didn’t yet have enough credits under my belt to qualify. I challenged the decision and got a yes.

I suppose I’ve  continued challenging the status quo in different ways. I’m not exactly sure what contributed to that, because in so many ways, I’m actually an introvert. We can be different things that seem contradictory.

As I discovered about myself over time, despite my inner rebelliousness, I still fell into some roles that others expected of me.

Are you a woman of contradictions?

 Now let’s talk about a lot of women I know. Let’s talk about you, if any of what follows resonates.

Stepping Out of Other People’s Expectations

Some women grew up accepting roles and rules other people imposed on them. This isn’t just true of the distant past. Many women don’t consider challenging these roles and rules, or if they do want to, they feel some insecurity and anxiety.  I’ve had clients who described themselves as having always been that way. Sometimes they didn’t mind and settled comfortably into the roles and situations they thought they were supposed to accept. Sometimes they grew dissatisfied and restless, or even miserable after years, or decades of being mostly who others thought they should be.

Then something happened. Maybe life brought  disappointment, loss or trauma into their worlds. Maybe they just reached a certain life stage and found themselves at a crossroad.

Oooh, Scary!

That might be where you are now, if you are at midlife or older. Perhaps you suddenly realize you want and need to do, or be something new. Or at least you want a clearer understanding of who you really are now that life has brought you some big changes. You are feeling it’s finally time to create a new chapter, despite how scary that sometimes feels.

Even if you realize it’s time to reinvent yourself, it’s not easy when you’ve been a person who has followed the rules and pretty much  accepted the roles others imposed. So at first you resist. You dig in and convince yourself nothing is really going to change  and you are too set in your ways, too entrenched in being how you’ve always been.

Yet, it keeps nagging at you and you feel dissatisfied, or even scared about your future.

 Untold Stories And Reinventing

Maya Angelou said, in I Know Why The Cages Bird Sings,  “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

I have had the incredible privilege of being able to listen deeply to many women’s untold stories. These are stories women carry after divorce, widowhood, caregiving, motherhood, aging, loss, career changes, or simply after years of putting themselves last and living the way others expected them to live.

Often, the women didn’t even realize that was happening. They thought that was who they were and maybe it was.  Yet now their lives have changed, are changing still. They are feeling it could be time to rebel against being only part of who they’ve always wanted to be.

Have you been carrying untold stories that are ready to be spoken—not because you need to explain yourself, but because you are ready to hear yourself?

Reinventing

The poet, Charlies Bukowski, says, in his poem, Reinventing Your Life, – ‘Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself”. It’s a poem about accepting the realities of what is, yet still claiming the right to reshape your life.

When we land where we are now due to loss, or other really painful things that have happened in our worlds, it may feel safe to stick with our old roles. Yet when things change, it isn’t always possible to do that. We are not the same as before. Or, if we try to keep things the same when they really aren’t, we are miserable and in some cases, even become clinically depressed.

Reinvention is definitely not just for the young. A woman at 50, 60, 70, or even 80+ isn’t “starting over.” She is continuing with everything she has learned.  She is giving herself permission to discover who she has become, and who she still wants to become.  She isn’t discarding the past.

We learn so much as we mature and move through different experiences. Yet some of our lessons really don’t serve us anymore, or maybe never really did.

And that’s when it’s time to rebel against roles we mostly just settled into and accepted when we were younger. That’s when it’s time to exercise our rebellion muscles, or at least to start building them!

Wonderfully Rebellious

But what  if reinvention isn’t about  becoming a new person? What if it is finally allowing yourself to love what you love, to do what you want, create what you want to create—and you can stop apologizing for it?

What if there is a bit of rebelliousness within you that you never realized was there? What if you really are wonderfully rebellious?

If you want to discuss how to shed some roles that don’t serve you any longer, without shedding the best parts of the past, let’s have a conversation.  If you’re ready to figure out what’s next and who you want to be now, I invite you to contact me . I bet we’ll both learn something!

I am a credentialed Life Reinvention, Grief and Women’s Confidence Coach, poet, writer and owner of Vision Powered Coaching.

Contact me at ir**@*******************ng.com and let’s set up a time to chat soon.

And please watch for my new website. I hope to be rolling it out soon. Same url, but a new look and some new info!