At certain points in our lives, we may be given the opportunity and become beset with a niggling desire to re-invent ourselves, to almost enter into a completely new space where nobody knows us and we can ‘start over’, as it were. I’ve had this moment at many stages in life, such as during the period of my starting college and also at the time of my being offered a new job in another country, which I took. These moments in time may sometimes be single and separate - where we would have achieved the last effort to create the newest version of ourselves and would have moved on to the next - or they could make up parts of an entire continuum of unfulfilled desire and unachieved goals in this singular vein. No matter the specific case, these instances are reflective of the fact that as humans, we make mistakes along the way and don’t always believe we’ve ‘got it right’. In essence, life sometimes seems to be a continuous effort to ‘get it right’, and whether or not we ever do is a question that needs further exploration.
For now, we can rest in the knowledge that wanting to re-model ourselves is a universal trait and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. After all, we do so for our homes and office spaces; why not for our personal and professional lives? I would want to suggest that the process in itself makes us better people and teaches us new lessons. If we take examples from the business world, we see how companies and industries that fail to innovate, considering market changes, stand a high chance of becoming redundant. On the other hand, those that do become almost indispensable and greatly impactful. Take the instant film and camera company, Polaroid, for instance; in its prime, in the '80s and '90s, you would hardly have found a set of the most cherished photos shared by family and friends that did not use this technology. Two decades on, the company is hardly in existence and the relevance of its last technology has faded as the market has placed a lot more emphasis on the smartphone camera. On the flip-side, we have a company like Apple that has made significant contributions since the advent of the personal computer and till-date is constantly re-inventing itself, making its products more user-friendly and improving its safety features.
Business models are not meant to be static; they are meant to go through several iterations so that they can keep adapting to the evolving world we live in. The same really should apply to our personal models. The skills I had in my 20s are vastly different from the ones I have now; and my environment has changed too. What strengths can I enhance or new skills can I develop to make me more useful in my current workspace? Do I need to tweak the way I look at my current day-to-day activities or the resources I invest in and utilize? My personal business model canvas is a template that I routinely go back to, re-assess and modify. Learning how to use this template is something I would recommend to anyone seeking to improve in their current way of life. Are you that person, and what does the next-level version of yourself look like?
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