The Art of Reinvention: How to Embrace Change Without Burning It All Down

Welcome to Find you'd Clarity. I'm your coach and your show host, Megan Johnston. For over a decade, I've helped women move from burnout, pressure and overthinking to clarity, confidence and ease. If you've been stuck in a cycle of self doubt or fear, this is your space to come back to you. Each episode will blend real life coaching, grounded tools and intuitive insight to help you trust yourself more, lead with your energy and take your next aligned step. Now let's find your clarity and the life that's been waiting for you on the other side. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the show with a new name. Welcome to Find you'd Clarity. I'm so excited you're here. Same show, same energy, just a refresh with it. You know, this space is really all about you. And while clarity is one of the gifts that I really bring to this space, my clients have nicknamed me the Clarity Queen. It's something I really support you in activating. I really wanted to bring it back to you. That's one of my core pillars, one of my missions in this work and my hope is that every episode helps you get closer to your clarity. Every episode helps you find your clarity. So we've got some exciting things in store for this new season. I'm excited, very, very excited for some of the conversations that I have coming up. I've got some incredible humans sharing the mic with me, including some former clients, which I'm so excited to highlight their gifts and the magic that they bring to the world and the magic they've really expanded into. So it's going to be super fun. We're going to continue doing some live coaching on the show as well. If you'd like to be considered for one of the live coaching spots. If you feel like you're a little bit stuck in life, maybe feeling a lot of fear in something in particular in your life, or maybe it's just kind of all consuming or you're feeling kind of at a stage of burnout. The first place that I'll open those coaching spots is going to be on my love letter list, which I'll make sure is linked in the show notes. And I would love to support you in that way. Okay, what are we talking about today? We are talking about reinvention. This is something that a lot of my clients come to me to work on. A reinvention of self. Sometimes it's a little more specific, like a reinvention of career. I was just talking about a client. I was just talking to a client today about Taking a little work sabbatical and kind of resetting and stepping into a new chapter there. I love the transition period. The space in between, aversion that's not working and stepping into the new. And I think the space in between is the place that holds so much magic, but it's also probably the most terrifying place to be. So we're going to talk about reinventions today, what that even means. If maybe you're on the brink of one without even realizing it. I'm going to give you some helpful tools and considerations to help you move through that with a little more ease and grace and to the beat of your own rhythm and maybe an action step or two in there as well. So what is a reinvention? You know, I think we go through so many reinventions throughout our life, and I think some of us are designed to even have like, mini reinventions every single day. You know, actually one of the upcoming episodes, actually two upcoming episodes I feel like are really going to be aligned with this conversation. But one of the upcoming episodes with a beautiful former slash ongoing client. We've had a coaching relationship and friendship over the last nine years or so. She's coming on the show, and one of the first questions I ask is, you know, who are you? How would you describe yourself today? And she gives us these beautiful musings about, like, what a funny question that is and the way we answer it in so many different seasons and chapters of life. And I also have an upcoming episode with the fabulous Sarah Jennifer, who helped me with my rebrand. And I think we'll talk a little bit about reinvention from the terms of your personal brand. So look out for both of these conversations for even more layers to this topic. But I think that idea that we can reinvent ourselves in so many ways and also it is something to. I think we can definitely hold ourselves back from the idea of reinvention, like I said, because there is that scariness in the in between, in the transition. Like, what does that actually mean? We can get really overwhelmed with all of that as well. And I think there's a lot of grief that can happen in a reinvention, too. To me, a reinvention is. It's kind of that out with the old, in with the new feeling. It's. This version is no longer working. What do I want to step into next? I think it can look really tangible, like something like a brand, especially if you're a personal brand. I think the reinvention holds a different energy. And then of Course, there can be personal reinventions as well. Just kind of resetting everything in your life and how you're showing up and how you're responding to the interactions that you have day to day and the boundaries that you're setting and how you introduce yourself, how you answer that. Who am I? Question. Gosh, there's so many angles we could look at a reinvention from. I think often the way that the women I work with describe coming into it is just this, like, overwhelming feeling of, like, I just want to, like, burn it all to the ground. So if you're having that feeling of like, I just want to burn it all to the ground, you're in the right place for this episode. And I'm actually going to chat through how you don't. The idea of burning it all to the ground, maybe that's what's going to serve you. And sometimes we feel like we have to do that and, like, burn it all to the ground and, like, start completely fresh, but that's actually not what's going to serve us the most. So we're going to talk a little bit about micro changing as well. To me, a reinvention holds so many possibilities, and it's definitely a space of growth. It's this. It is stepping into the new right. And so I think, you know, we can get into our comfort zone and really scared in that change. And. But when we can tune into the excitement, we understand and kind of open our perspective to all the possibilities that a reinvention can actually hold. All of the new doors that are going to be available to be open when we do take that step into reinventing. And then I mentioned briefly grief. I think there's this element of grief that's not often discussed when we're growing. And if you're on a personal development path or just a growth journey in general, as a human human, there can be so much grief and letting go of ways that you have operated for years, because even if it's not serving you, you have that recognition of, oh, you know, the way I'm responding to conversations out of frustration, that's not serving me anymore. I want to shift that and maybe even the idea of it, maybe you're holding a lot of judgment around how you've been showing up. And even that can create shame on how you're showing up. So you can have all these tangled feelings of like, this is no good anymore, I need to get rid of it. And at the same time, it's protected you for so long, it's Been there for a reason. That mechanism was put in place because of a belief or an experience that you had that created a belief. And so there can be a lot of grief in letting that go. And that can feel really confusing because it's kind of a bit of that both and experience dance, that tangling of I don't want this anymore. And also, I've loved this part of me. And so I just want to acknowledge that more than anything, if you're feeling that sense of, like, I want to burn it all down, I want to change everything here. And at the same time, I'm, like, kind of sad to let it go. You're not alone in that feeling. I think that's so common in a verge of reinvention. So if you are feeling that kind of conflicting energy of, like, the back and forth, back and forth, it kind of feels like you're spiraling a bit, and then you just choose to stay in the same place because it's so confusing. I think that's a huge sign. You're kind of right on that brink of a reinvention. I think a reinvention might also be looked at as, quote, a next level for more like, I don't know, for lack of a better term, like, cliche personal development talk. When we talk about a next level of growth, I think that is a reinvention because in order to step into a next level, that is changing the way you're showing up, that is changing the habits you have, that is changing the boundaries you have in place, it's changing the way you communicate. Maybe not all at once, but one step at a time. What are the other signs that you're kind of right on the verge of a reinvention? I think if you're really feeling like you're in a state of force, especially with something that has worked for a really long time, this is a big one. I think this is a big one for our. If you're a manifesting generator, I mean, this can be true for any energy type for sure. But I think a manifesting generator, particularly the pivot element of that, or also a generator who has been in their kind of zone for so long, but now that same zone is feeling frustrating. So maybe you super resonate with this piece. If you're one of those energy types, but also to my manifestors, reflectors, projectors, this kind of stale energy could be true for you as well. It might just show up with, like, a little bit of a different flavor. But our generators and manifesting generators have that capacity that energy to, like, go to be in the doing energy, the creation energy. And my constant reminder for them is just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. And so when things start to feel frustrating, even the things that. Not. Not just the things that were working before, but the things that were maybe even lighting you up before, they're starting to feel frustrating, they're starting to feel hard, they're starting to feel, like, a lot of force and pressure, and you're just feeling, like, annoyed and irritable with it all. I think that's a huge sign that there's a bit of a reinvention here. And I feel like. I mean, I think I briefly talked about this, but I think there can be reinventions on, like, different scales. I kind of talked about it from the lens of, like, maybe there's a personal reinvention or maybe there's like, a more tangible professional reinvention within your business or within your career or something along those lines. But I also think we can have, like, big, mega reinventions where kind of like, everything changes. The way you show up change, and then it's like a domino effect from there of, like, the circumstances in your life are changing as well. But I also think we can have these kind of, like, mini reinventions as well, where it's more so, like, parts of us are changing or even it's not the whole, like, let me burn it all to the ground, let me change everything, but it's more of the energy of, like, let me keep some of these things in place and shift just a few things. I think a great example of that is, like, if you're working in a career and you're starting to feel really frustrated with where you're at in that career, and then you have, like, a beautiful conversation and you get to, like, shift roles or departments that you're in, or if you're a business owner, maybe it's, you know, I'm not going to, like, change everything in my business, rebrand, start the new Instagram, like, do everything from scratch, which I feel like every business owner can relate to that moment of, like, I just need to, like, start everything from scratch. Like, let me just start from square one with it all. But I think we can have many reinventions within it, right? And I think I hear this again. I'm just bringing up our manifesting generators again. I hear this so often with them in their programs. It's like, yeah, I have this program that's, like, working really well, but I'm Just going to, like, tweak this one random thing, like this one random module. It just. It needs to be tweaked, it needs a refresh. And so I think we can have really big macro reinventions and also micro mini reinventions as well. And to be fair, the mini reinventions can have really big feelings and the macro reinventions can have, I mean, for lack of a better word, small feelings just to. Just to have contrast there. But I don't think we need to label like, oh, big reinvention happening. Like, it's going to be hard and there's going to be all this stuff, and sometimes we can do that, and that creates more overwhelm in the reinvention itself. It's like, I'm going to do this big thing and it's going to be hard and there's probably going to be a lot of frustration. And when we approach something that way, we tend to amplify those feelings. And then it's kind of like manifest destiny, right? It's like, oh, see, it was. It was hard and it was harder than I even imagined. But if we actually approached it as like, oh, I'm having a reinvention. And like, what if this was fun and what if this was easy? We just enter into it in a different way. And I'm not saying the heart goes away or it makes it any less frustrating or anything like that. We can't bypass life or the emotions completely. But I think we change the way we approach it, we change the way we experience it, and we also change our capacity when we do that as well. And so I think that kind of brings us to some of our considerations. If you are on that brink of reinvention, my first consideration for you is, how are you approaching it? Like, what are the thoughts that are coming up for you? What are the feelings that are coming up for you? And how would you like to approach it so that you can start to shift into those? Not overnight. Not like fake it till you make it not. Let me just like, pretend this is going to be like fun and cartwheels. But how would I like to approach it? And what if I just brought in, like, one thing each day that kind of supported that thought and feeling that I wanted to bring into this. The other consideration I want to bring up for you, if you are feeling like maybe you already know you were on that brink of reinvention, or maybe you're like, listening to this and you're like, oh, that's what I'm experiencing. Okay, I get it. Now I want you to consider, what is the feeling that's driving this. What is the feeling that's driving me towards reinventing everything? I. I think I briefly talked about this earlier, but it's kind of that sense of, like, sometimes we're like, I just need to burn it all to the ground. And that can be really driven from comfort of like, I just need to burn it all to the ground just to get rid of this discomfort I'm having when and when we operate from that place. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes what can happen is, okay, then we burn it all to the ground and. And then we're like, wait, why did I do that? I actually liked some of those things. And then we have to work extra to bring some of those things back. And so when I say, what is the feeling that's driving it? Consider. Am I trying to run away from something here? Am I trying to avoid something here versus alignment? Where. No, this is actually what I want to step into. I think a great example of this. And again, I think this is something I'll talk about when I have the episode with Sarah. She helped me massively with my rebrand. I rebranded my entire business, my entire website, everything, the name, the colors, everything like that. I decided to completely align it with my married name because I got married in 2023, and I decided to align my business with that. And that was a really slow moving, intentional process that had a lot of energy work behind it as well. And I really sat with the consideration of, is this align. What story am I choosing this from? Why is this something I'm choosing? And there was a lot of intention behind it. And because of that, the rebrand, and also because of Sarah's support, who is incredible, the rebrand just felt like it carried so much ease and all of these questions that I had before of, like, is it going to confuse my audience? Is it going. Am I going to, like, lose credibility with this? All these kind of questions before have just completely dissipated and it's just been eased because it operated out of alignment versus anything else versus, like, franticness. I just need to make this happen, and I need to make it happen now. And so really consider, like, what is the feeling that's driving this before you just scrap everything and then go, wait, why did I actually do that? The next consideration, and this one's for you. If you are. If you feel like you've kind of been spiraling on this for a while, you feel like you're in that kind of back and Forth, back and forth. Like, oh, yeah, this could be great. But also, like, it's kind of great here. What's halting you? What's the story that's making the reinvention wrong? What are the ideas that. What's the meaning that you're attaching to. Okay, if I change all of this, then that means fill in the blank and just take that moment to consider, like, what is actually stopping me here? Because people reinvent all the time. Like I said at the beginning, people reinvent every day. And so what is actually stopping me here? If you're in that kind of back and forth, of course, we've got to bring some human design in here. This is a great space to run it through your authority in your human design. Remembering we are not just disconnected heads. A lot of us live head up. Our authority helps us to get into our body, so we run it through our authority. Our authority helps us to get out of our mind. And so someone with a splenic authority. The reminder for someone with a splenic authority is if there's logic backing it all, you've kind of gone back into that headspace. Because the splenic authority just knows there's just this full body knowing there's this whisper and that's. That's it. Like, it's full stop, end of story. If there's something backing it, then, you know you've popped back into mind or someone on the opposite of that. And we have. I have a Human Design episode where I run through all of the authorities, if you're interested in learning more about that. I don't think I've done a dedicated authority episode, but my Human Design 101 episode, we talk about authorities. If you want me to do a deep dive on the Human design authority, send me a little note and I'll do a upcoming episode on that. Just a little contrast, though. If you have that emotional authority, the reminder is to just consider the charge that's attached to the decisions you're making. Are you on a really high high? Are you on a really low low? And my invitation for you is just to consider the charge. Maybe there's nothing you even need to do with it. Maybe it doesn't actually have to, like, have this big effect on your decisions, but maybe you just take a moment to consider it. You know, sometimes with my em. Emotional authorities, I find that it can be so easy to get in your head about, like, okay, but what am I supposed to feel? And so what if instead it was just like, let me just consider what emotion is here? What charge is attached to the decisions that I'm making right now? Now, my friends, if you are feeling super overwhelmed by the idea of a reinvention and you're thinking about all the things that have to happen, I know I. When I'm. I'm just connecting back to my. My rebrand. I've definitely had many personal reinventions as well, but just connecting back to the rebrand, I remember being stuck for several months in just, like, all the logistics. Just like, I have to do this and I have to do this, and I have to change that. And oh, my gosh, I didn't even think about this, and I have to change this thing. And, oh, there's this little thing over here, and, like, all the things. And maybe you relate to that. Maybe you're just thinking about, like, oh, but what is this person gonna think? Or, oh, I didn't. A random person that I haven't Talked to in 10 years might be affected by this in some way, and you just, like, start to compile of this, like, various, like, evidence and logistics and different things, and you're feeling super overwhelmed. Makes sense, right? I feel like even, like talking through that. I'm like, I'm starting to feel like the overwhelm in my body. And so my invitation for you is to start with just step one. All doing all of it at once would absolutely be overwhelming, a hundred percent. Whether you're rebranding a business or you're rebranding yourself, doing it all in one go would a hundred percent be overwhelming for any human. That's not how our capacity is designed. Our capacity isn't designed to do it all at once, but you can do one step at a time. And the good news is, when you do one step at a time, instead of, I'm just going to burn it all down right here, right now. I'm done. When you do one step at a time, you can also take a step back, you can also take a step sideways, you can take a step diagonal. You can do a cartwheel over this timeline if you want. But when you do it one step at a time, you give yourself permission to move freely, to move in your own flow, and to connect back with all of the other things we were talking about, because you're gonna figure out things along the way of the reinvention. I said at the very beginning of this that a reinvention brings possibilities. You're gonna open new doorways to possibilities on this path. And the one step at a time allows you to Go. Huh? Do I want to go in that doorway? Do I like that doorway? Do I want to change the color? Do I want to stay here for a minute and paint that doorway? So we got one step at a time. Just start with the first step. What would the first step be? And then one little action step for you. I feel like there's a few action steps in here depending on where you're at in your journey. But if you are feeling called towards that reinvention, but you're feeling overwhelmed by it all, or you're feeling a lot of fear, maybe there's a lot of fear holding you back of just like, oh, but I'm scared if I even start with step one, then I'm scared I'm gonna mess it up from the beginning, or I'm scared it's not gonna be my best work. Or something along those lines. My action step. For anyone listening, whether you are feeling the overwhelm, you're feeling the fear, or if you're just like, I just wanna start this, this reinvention, my action stuff for you is to change mini habits so you don't have to rebrand the website tomorrow. I think my rebranding process took, I mean, I think it took several months. You don't have to change the way you show up tomorrow. You don't have to become someone who has sturdy, strong boundaries tomorrow. You don't have to become no longer the people pleaser tomorrow. You don't have to come the person who understands what it is to live in your power tomorrow. So what can you start with? What is the habit, the mini habit that you'll start with? Maybe for you it's deciding to like wake up early, as silly as that sounds. Maybe for you it's starting to craft regularly. Maybe it has nothing to do with the actual thing that you want to change. But when we shake up our normal routine, when we add new habits in, when we create mini changes, we rattle the sound barriers of our comfort zone. We rattle the balance that our comfort zone has created. And if you're like, oh, whoa, you don't understand, I'm not in a comfort zone. Maybe you're one of my high achieving friends who's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I don't live in my comfort zone. Remember, we can get just as comfortable in our success as we can in the mundane. And when we shake up our routines, we create new mini habits. We do something new, we do something fresh. It gives our, it expands us, it helps support that next level. Because our comfort zone thrives in repetition. And that's why we can get just as successful in the success and just as comfortable in the success. We can be successful in the success too, which is as comfortable in the success, because we're still. We start to operate in repetition. That's what our brain is designed to do. It's like the smartest computer on earth. It's designed to support us, to get into repetition. And sometimes that's really, really good. And sometimes we need a little more comfort if we're. It's an episode for another time. I won't go all the way down this rabbit hole. But if we're constantly jumping out of our comfort zone, we create a different path of burnout. So if you're feeling on that brink of reinvention, find that mini habit that you can change and start there, even if it has nothing to do. If you're like, I have no idea why this is here, but I want to try it. Give that one a go. It's reminding me of, like, when I started, I kept calling what I was doing embroidery, but it actually wasn't embroidery. I started doing punch needling, which is like a fun little craft. I started doing that for, like, absolutely no reason at all. And I found that it was something that really supported, something I wanted to shift about myself, which is how much I was scrolling on social media and I had no idea why I wanted to that. But it was so supportive for breaking that habit. And that's a microwave that we can reinvent as well. So with that beautiful you, I hope this has supported you today. I would love to hear from you if it did. As always, let me know if this episode landed. I'm so excited to be back behind the mic. Like I said, there's some really fun conversations coming up. I cannot wait for you to cozy up with me and some really awesome humans for really great conversations. And I hope you have the most beautiful day. I'll see you next time, friend. Bye for now and keep finding your clarity.