Reinvention: Changing Your Life, Your Career, Your Future by Arlene Dickinson

 My wife, Teena, read Reinvention: Changing You Life, Your Career, Your Future by Arlene Dickinson. She did a review of it and recommended it to me.

At fifty-seven, Arlene Dickinson’s life was turned upside down. Her company was on the brink of disaster. Her sense of herself as a strong, confident leader was in tatters. She was overwhelmed by feelings of loss, fear, and shame. Five years later, her business is booming, she’s never been happier or more excited about the future, and she’s raised tens of millions of dollars and built a whole ecosystem to help other entrepreneurs.

How did she turn things around? By following the process she’s always used to transform underperforming companies—only this time, she used it to transform her own life. Applying business principles to her personal life helped her figure out very quickly where she wanted to go and how to get there. Having a clear set of practical steps to follow kept her on track when emotions threatened to derail her progress.

In Reinvention, Dickinson shares this blueprint for locating your sense of purpose, realistically evaluating your strengths, assessing opportunities outside your comfort zone, and charting a bold new path. Whether you have a big career dream to achieve, or you need to rebuild after a personal setback, this step-by-step plan for reinvention will help you change your own life—for the better.

I thought it was good. It's not just a self help book, but a story of how Arlene dealt with a disaster in her life. She had to change the way she thought of herself, presented herself and surprisingly, how to build and keep confidence. I really appreciated a line near the end of the book: ""Don'y deny the world the contribution that only you can make. Whether that's being a better parent, or a better executive, or a better artist ... "

My hope, when I read a book of this sort, is to be able to get something out of it. I did which made it an enjoyable and worthwhile read for me.

About Arlene Dickinson

Arlene is a venture capitalist on the hit CBC TV show Dragons' Den, the co-host of  The Business of Life Podcast and the #1 bestselling author of Persuasion. Dickinson is the owner and CEO of Venture Communications, a company she grew from a small local firm to one of the largest independent agencies in Canada, and the founder of District ventures, Canada's top accelerator for entrepreneurs in the food, beverage and health sectors.