By Ariel Colhoun Passionate about increasing the sphere of influence for women & driving positive change.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed, feel like you need a change - or a complete overhaul, but don't know where to start? It's never too late to reset, start over, or reinvent yourself no matter your age.
Meet Arlene Dickinson
Arlene Dickinson has had her share of ups and downs from being unemployed at the age of 31, a divorced mother-of-four, CEO of one of Canada’s largest independently owned marketing firms Venture, a Dragon's Den dragon, investor, public speaker, best selling author, podcaster, one of Canada's leading entrepreneurs, and the list goes on. Sounds incredible doesn't it? But at the age of fifty seven, Arlene felt like her life on the outside was not how she felt on the inside about herself.
The dark place she found herself in began in 2013 when a sudden catastrophic flood took everyone in Calgary, Canada by surprise. Dickinson's marketing office Venture was submerged - 25 years of hard work completely under water literally. The flood was just the catalyst of what was to come - the following months were depressing and chaotic and a ripple effect began to form ... bad reviews from four major clients, employees leaving, and no new contracts on the horizon. Just like any of us would do in that situation, Dickinson took a long hard look at herself in the mirror contemplating the unimaginable - closing the doors on her long-standing business. Facing many hard decisions about her life, her future, and her career forced Dickinson to self-evaluate.
There Is A Lot Of Fear In Telling Your Story
Ever heard of the phrase "The truth will set you free"? We know it well, and so does Dickinson. Recently she admitted in an interview with Postmedia from her Calgary office, “I had to recognize that I wasn’t the entrepreneur I said I was ... I realized that I wasn’t really an entrepreneur. I was a great small business owner. I was doing a lot of other things but I hadn’t really taken that big courageous thing that let me be all I wanted to be. I knew who I was, but I wasn’t exactly who I thought I was.”
All the self-reflection and evaluation actually helped her look at herself head-on. She decided she would take all her years of experience of reinventing and helping other companies, redirect those energies, and apply it to her own life - the major turning point for Dickinson was her decision to reinvent her own self and completely turn her entire life around.
“There is a lot of fear in telling your story, you have to come clean with it: who I am and who I was and how I did this,” Dickinson says. “I thought by doing that maybe I could help other people do it, too. I’m a big believer in you can’t just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk.”
And those were the seeds that eventually became her new life, her new story, her new book Reinvention: Changing Your Life, Your Career, Your Future.
“In today’s world, so many people need to change or want to change, myself included, but we don’t know how or are too scared to,” she says. “When I went through this, I discovered when you took business principles and applied them to your life, it actually took away some of the fear and self-doubt and emotion and made positive change possible by focusing on a process.”
Her new book offers a step-by-step plan that can be applied to rebooting your professional and personal life, laying out a blueprint for you to discover and come to grips with what you are good at and what you have to offer. We think it is the perfect book to give this holiday season as a gift (or even to yourself!) to reset, reflect, self-evaluate where you stand today, plan where you see your future, and prepare for the new year ahead!
All posts are intended strictly for educational purposes. It is not intended to make any representations or warranties about the outcome of any product/service.
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