Reading: Reinventing By Learning to Let Go

“When you get sick, you learn about the randomness of life. You have to accept it and get on with it,” says Lisa Lori, owner of Perfect Provenance, a unique outlet in Greenwich, CT. Lori was a top PR maven creating memorable campaigns for Absolut Vodka with Tom Ford and Gucci. Then at 33 she was diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease. “I had to rethink my life,” she tells Lesley. After taking time off to recover, she started her own PR firm, which took off. But 9/11 struck,  and her office was just blocks away from the World Trade Center. Pregnant with her second child, she packed up her family from the Upper West Side, “drove to Connecticut, and picked a spot.” When she turned 50, Lisa realized she was “not dying” and decided to open Perfect Provenance, which “offers unique things you can’t find elsewhere.” “Everything in America is about being huge,” Lori says. “But I employ 20 people and change lives. I take pride in that.”

Lisa’s Top Tips for Reinvention

1. Learn to let go
   Life will not go according to plan — we all know that theoretically, but when it doesn’t, will you be ready to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and start again? When I got sick and my career path changed, I of course was first upset, but then I read a lot of books and one book in particular was about the randomness of life. That if you believe if there are certain things that we have no control over, you can let that go and get on with it. And that’s really what I tried to learn to do. Because then you stop feeling sorry for yourself and you can say, ‘Okay this happened, and now it’s time to keep going.’
2. There’s no special sauce
   I look around all the time and I see successful businesses and I see people who have overcome enormous personal challenges, and there’s no special sauce. Of course some people have more money or a better education or what have you, but what you really need is tenacity. What most successful people have in common is the ability to say ‘okay, that didn’t work. That sucked, but I’m going to get back in there tomorrow.’ I always feel bad if something we try to do doesn’t go well, but I’ve got to get up in the morning and go back at it.
3. Do what you love
   I know it’s cliché, but no one has to twist my arm to read about fashion, or to want to go to Paris or any number of things. I absolutely love it every day.

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