Unlearning the Borrowed Playbooks

Sometimes the whole process of reinvention brings us right back to where it all started. If we are lucky, we recognize ourselves, we recognize the througline that has ran through every iteration of our work, of our evolution.

And if we are lucky, we recognize that we placed our validation in the hands of external structures…where in the absence of them, we easily mistakened the crisis of context for the crisis of identity…

As such, every re- of reimagining, reconfiguring, reshaping, repositioning, realigning, recalibrating, reinventing and relaunching…is actually an un-.

Unlearning the borrowed playbooks. Uncovering the true shape. Un-forcing the misfits.

I can share my own example of writing. Since I can remember, I was told I was a great writer. I was told I would be making a living from writing. My conventional mind tried to put me in a box of conventional writers. You know, books, articles, essays…

What ended surfacing, however, is that writing is not even my primary gift. I think writing is how my primary gift becomes visible.

My gift is synthesis. I take people, emotion, strategy, operations, markets, identity, timing, relationships, language …and organize them into something coherent.

Sometimes that coherence becomes writing. Sometimes a business model. Sometimes a retreat. Sometimes a conversation. Sometimes a company.

Writing isn’t the gift. It’s one output.

Sometimes, it turns out, we were never lost, we were merely excavating. And then, we found ourselves. Again.

Sara