An Antidote to Frenzy: Dorie Clark | GP Interview #28

This is the twenty-eighth in a series of interviews with explorers, thinkers, artists, activists and other luminaries around the world, people whose life’s work resonates with our founding principles.

We first met our friend Dorie Clark through Renaissance Weekend, a community of prominent and diverse thinkers that meets about five times annually at resorts throughout the United States and Canada.

Dorie is an author, keynote speaker and expert in personal reinvention and big transitions. Her recent books are Reinventing You, Entrepreneurial You and Stand Out. Her forthcoming title is The Long Game, a book about long term thinking in a short term world.

Our conversation touches on her areas of expertise, but also on more fundamental questions around what it means to be effective in the world.

GP: What sent you down the path of focusing on personal re-invention? Does this speak to something fundamental in American culture, something distinctive from most other cultures?

DC: I started to focus on reinvention almost accidentally, as the result of an article I wrote in 2011 for Harvard Business Review, based in part on my own experience as a former journalist, political operative, and nonprofit executive who reinvented myself into having a consulting & executive coaching business. The topic seemed to resonate, so I began to do more work in that field. I do think that reinvention is particularly meaningful — and possible — in an American context, because we are historically a people that believes in change and not being bound by class or heredity.

GP: Have you heard of the Long Now Foundation?

DC: I am familiar with The Long Now Foundation, though the timeframe that they focus on is a bit longer than mine! ☺ I’m talking more about a person’s life span, which is long-term to that individual, whereas most of the Foundation’s efforts are focused on millennia and the history of humanity. I think the work they are doing is fascinating, and thanks to a connection that I met at TED, I was lucky enough to be introduced to…