This is one of my favourite recommendations for anyone who wants to really explore themselves and others and go much deeper than typical personality models. Personality models can be useful for understanding observable preferences and behaviour such as thinking/feeling, introvert/extrovert, detailed/big picture, but they don’t necessarily help us understand why behaviours develop in the first place, or whether they are holding us back.
Reinventing Your Life explores deep-rooted patterns called lifetraps, which develop in childhood and can initially serve as ways of coping and getting our needs met. What helped us function earlier in life, however, may not necessarily serve us in adulthood. These patterns can become deeply embedded and influence how we work, lead, make decisions and interact with others.
The book is grounded in psychological theory, particularly Schema Therapy, but its ideas have considerable relevance for leadership, relationships and personal development. We all develop habitual ways of thinking and behaving, particularly under pressure. Some of these patterns may be limiting our choices, relationships and effectiveness.
A high-performing executive may be exceptionally capable, yet find themselves repeatedly overworking, avoiding difficult conversations, seeking excessive approval, struggling to delegate, becoming overly controlling or reacting strongly to criticism. Reinventing Your Life provides a framework for exploring whether deeply rooted patterns are sabotaging rather than supporting careers and relationships. It is a particularly interesting read if you are at a cross roads and have important decisions to make.
When reading it, I would encourage you not only to consider your own lifetraps, but to think about the system around you, such as your family, colleagues, boss and team. What lifetraps might they have developed? How might their patterns interact with yours? This can be a particularly powerful way of gaining insight into recurring relationship dynamics and understanding why certain interactions can be so challenging and draining and others energising. Lifetraps can attract the wrong people into your life!
The authors identify a range of lifetraps, including perfectionism and unrelenting standards, approval-seeking, self-sacrifice, emotional inhibition, dependency, failure, defectiveness, mistrust and abandonment. The value of the framework is not simply in putting a label on a behaviour. It is in creating a language for recognising patterns that explain “just the way I am” or “just the way they are.” With greater understanding comes the opportunity to consider where our habitual responses came from, how they are showing up today, and what we might choose to do differently.
For coaches who want to explore this coaching approach further, I would recommend Schema Coaching by Iain McCormick, which translates Schema Therapy into a coaching model, and Where Did You Learn to Behave Like That? by Sarah Hill, which similarly provides a framework for coaches to explore childhood narratives and how clients can develop more beneficial current ones.