Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #146| Why Starting Over in Midlife Is a Myth—And What You Should Do Instead to Beat Overwhelm
Transcript
- 0:00Kavita Ahuja: It's not like you're starting over.
- 0:01Kavita Ahuja: You know, you're starting from experience, right?
- 0:08Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:20Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:32Michelle Gauthier: If you have ever felt stuck in your career or your life, wondering is this really it?
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: You're not alone.
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: So many women hit a point where they realized they've checked all the boxes that they were supposed to, but something still feels off.
- 0:48Michelle Gauthier: And today's guest is here to help us navigate that exact transition.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: Kavita Ahuja is a career and life transitions coach who specializes in helping women reinvent themselves, especially in midlife.
- 1:01Michelle Gauthier: When you listen to this episode, you'll learn how to rediscover your strengths and passions and values.
- 1:06Michelle Gauthier: I can't tell you how often when I work with a client and I say, like, what are you into, what are you passionate about, what's fun for you?
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: They don't know anymore.
- 1:13Michelle Gauthier: So that might sound silly, but it's really true.
- 1:16Michelle Gauthier: Kavita is also going to teach us about a Japanese concept called Ikigai that can teach us about finding purpose and how you can apply purpose to your own life.
- 1:27Michelle Gauthier: And then the third thing we'll talk about today is why reinvention isn't about starting over.
- 1:32Michelle Gauthier: It's about using everything you've already learned to build something even better.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: So if you are kind of asking yourself, is this all there is?
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: Could there be something else?
- 1:42Michelle Gauthier: For me, today's episode is going to be perfect for you, so let's get started.
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: Thank you, kavita, for joining us.
- 1:48Michelle Gauthier: Can you just say hi and tell us a little bit about yourself?
- 1:51Kavita Ahuja: It's wonderful to be here, Michelle.
- 1:53Kavita Ahuja: Thank you so much for having me.
- 1:54Kavita Ahuja: Yes, absolutely.
- 1:55Kavita Ahuja: I am a career and life transitions coach for women and I really you know it kind of ties into a little bit of what you do in terms of, you know, helping women who are feeling perhaps overwhelmed in their life and there can be different forms of overwhelm, right, Whether it's like what am I going to do next in my life, my career, especially around the midlife stage of life, when we're often questioned, you know, is this it?
- 2:20Kavita Ahuja: Or what am I doing, or who am I really?
- 2:23Kavita Ahuja: Or all of those big questions that we tend, especially as women, to ask ourselves.
- 2:28Kavita Ahuja: So that is my passion and my, you know, my coaching focus is on helping women in these career and life transition phases of life.
- 2:37Michelle Gauthier: That's so great and I saw from your background that you had a successful pharmaceutical career.
- 2:43Michelle Gauthier: But you had sort of an inner voice telling you this is maybe I don't.
- 2:45Michelle Gauthier: You had sort of an inner voice telling you this is maybe I don't want to say what your inner voice was saying, but that there was something else for you.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: You tell us what your inner voice was saying.
- 2:53Kavita Ahuja: Well, I'm sure many of your listeners perhaps have come from corporate backgrounds, with all the pressures and all of that that our careers can lead us to.
- 3:05Kavita Ahuja: And, yes, I was in the pharmaceutical industry for 25 years and we were talking a little bit before this.
- 3:11Kavita Ahuja: But I'm Indian and grown up in Canada and kind of followed the traditional expectations, I would say, of life.
- 3:19Kavita Ahuja: You know, education, career, marriage, kids, all of that.
- 3:23Kavita Ahuja: And you just kind of go and you're very successful at it and you're almost like, oh my God, where did the time go?
- 3:29Kavita Ahuja: And then all of a sudden it's like you pause.
- 3:32Kavita Ahuja: And that's what happened to me.
- 3:33Kavita Ahuja: I was very successful Kids growing up.
- 3:37Kavita Ahuja: Now this is a stage of life where I was like questioning is this what I really want?
- 3:42Kavita Ahuja: Is this what fulfills me?
- 3:44Kavita Ahuja: Is this what, what I would like?
- 3:47Kavita Ahuja: When I'm 90 years old, when I look back and go, yeah, I've done everything that I want to do, you know, and it wasn't and it was scary and you know, it was overwhelming and it was the time of life where a lot of women also, you know, question that.
- 4:02Kavita Ahuja: So I decided that I was going to take the leap and change things and figure out who I was, and so I did that and that's where it led me today, and my passion is to help one do the same.
- 4:14Michelle Gauthier: I absolutely love that because and I think for everybody listening just because you thought you wanted to, for example, have a really successful pharmaceutical career in your case, and get married and have kids, and you sort of had this dream in your mind for what your life wanted to be, and you had that and maybe it was really great.
- 4:32Michelle Gauthier: But then at some point, if it's not anymore, where you're like OK, this isn't fulfilling me.
- 4:36Michelle Gauthier: That's exactly what I had, exactly that same thing.
- 4:39Kavita Ahuja: It's.
- 4:39Michelle Gauthier: It's OK to say, oh, that was good, I'm glad I did that.
- 4:44Michelle Gauthier: Now I want something different, and it doesn't matter, in my opinion, how old you are, how many years experience you had doing something else, because you and I are the same.
- 4:52Michelle Gauthier: I had a completely different career and when I decided I wanted to become a life coach, I was like, who am I to become a life coach?
- 4:58Michelle Gauthier: I don't know anything about this, yeah, but it doesn't matter.
- 5:02Michelle Gauthier: It doesn't matter.
- 5:03Michelle Gauthier: You can still do it.
- 5:05Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, the thing is, Michelle, is that you know it's not like.
- 5:08Kavita Ahuja: It's not like you're starting over.
- 5:10Kavita Ahuja: You know you're starting from experience, right, and everything that has happened to us in our lives led us to the point where we are, so it's not like, oh, I have to give up everything and start over.
- 5:22Kavita Ahuja: That's why, you know, like, my podcast is called the midlife reinvention it's reinventing, it's like taking the best parts of you and putting them into something that's magical, right?
- 5:32Michelle Gauthier: Yes, exactly, and I definitely did learn things about.
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: You know how to be a life coach in certain methodologies, but so much of what I learned from my business career also helped me.
- 5:44Michelle Gauthier: Of course, yeah, if you feel like gosh, I already decided this is the life I wanted.
- 5:49Michelle Gauthier: Now I have to stick with it.
- 5:49Michelle Gauthier: It's not true?
- 5:50Kavita Ahuja: You can take your skills and move them on.
- 5:53Michelle Gauthier: Yes, so tell us a little bit about how you help your clients do that and what the listeners can take away today if they're feeling kind of stuck and overwhelmed with where they are.
- 6:05Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, it really actually just ties in very well with what we were just talking about, because I went through this process and I decided I'm going to kind of document this, because I actually went through it and I was like this is, a lot of women can do it themselves.
- 6:19Kavita Ahuja: You can, you know, figure out what it is that you want to do next, but it may take longer.
- 6:23Kavita Ahuja: You may need a guide, right?
- 6:25Kavita Ahuja: So I call it the pyramid of reinvention, and it all starts with rediscovering who you are inside.
- 6:32Kavita Ahuja: You know, there's a really good quote that I like by Carl Jung.
- 6:36Kavita Ahuja: He says that he who looks outside dreams, but he who looks inside wakes.
- 6:43Michelle Gauthier: That's interesting, especially for a midlife career woman who's also a mother.
- 6:47Michelle Gauthier: We're not really thinking a lot about ourselves and who we really are.
- 6:52Kavita Ahuja: We've been looking after everyone else.
- 6:54Kavita Ahuja: And yes, we've had very little time to look at, so I encourage the pause is what I would say.
- 7:00Kavita Ahuja: So this is the first thing I do in terms of how I actually help my my clients is I first get them to look at their strengths, like whatever they're really really good at, taking into consideration all they've done in their life.
- 7:13Kavita Ahuja: What are the greatest things they've done?
- 7:14Kavita Ahuja: What's their natural ability, and are they using it right now to the utmost?
- 7:18Kavita Ahuja: If not, why not?
- 7:19Kavita Ahuja: And how can you use it now Right?
- 7:23Kavita Ahuja: The second thing is looking at your passions, and what I mean by that is what just makes your heart sing.
- 7:28Kavita Ahuja: You know what would make you wake up in the morning and go.
- 7:30Kavita Ahuja: I mean, I can't wait to do this thing.
- 7:32Kavita Ahuja: Or what did you do as a child that you know?
- 7:35Kavita Ahuja: Your time went by so fast, so quickly, that you just didn't know where the day went.
- 7:39Kavita Ahuja: Can you bring that into today?
- 7:41Kavita Ahuja: And the third thing is looking at your values.
- 7:44Kavita Ahuja: Do our values change year by year?
- 7:47Kavita Ahuja: Are you living your values?
- 7:52Kavita Ahuja: Are you like is it now, you know, serving people versus maybe before it was, climbing the corporate ladder?
- 7:56Kavita Ahuja: And then those kind of culminate into determining what is called your ikigai, or reason for being Okay, and that is a really interesting concept.
- 8:09Kavita Ahuja: Once we figure that out, then it's about visioning your future.
- 8:14Kavita Ahuja: It's about looking at your obstacles that are in your way, and then it's about gaining the confidence to actually reach your reason for being.
- 8:23Kavita Ahuja: So it's kind of a step-by-step process that is very, very eye-opening, very transformational.
- 8:29Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes.
- 8:30Michelle Gauthier: I find that a lot of times women are like I don't even know what I think is fun to do anymore.
- 8:36Michelle Gauthier: I don't know what I like.
- 8:38Michelle Gauthier: Like I'll say if you had a whole day to do whatever you want, what would you do?
- 8:40Michelle Gauthier: I don't know, and I think it's just because we get out of practice.
- 8:45Michelle Gauthier: On reflecting, and paying attention to ourselves.
- 8:49Michelle Gauthier: But I'm really curious about this ikigai concept.
- 8:52Michelle Gauthier: Am I saying that right?
- 8:53Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes, okay.
- 8:54Michelle Gauthier: So where?
- 8:55Michelle Gauthier: Where?
- 8:55Michelle Gauthier: What is this word?
- 8:57Michelle Gauthier: Where does it originate from?
- 8:58Michelle Gauthier: What does it mean?
- 8:59Michelle Gauthier: Tell us all about it, yeah, yeah.
- 9:00Kavita Ahuja: I was really, Michelle, really fascinated by this concept early on because it just seemed to click, especially with the time of the life that I was going through, the stage I was going through, and it really fits in well with the whole transition idea, right.
- 9:14Kavita Ahuja: So ikigai is a term originating, it's a Japanese term originating in the village of Okinawa, Japan, and it is so.
- 9:24Kavita Ahuja: Okinawa is one of the world's blue zones.
- 9:26Kavita Ahuja: I'm not sure if y'all are familiar where the blue zone is.
- 9:30Michelle Gauthier: Yes, but tell us for anybody who doesn't know.
- 9:33Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, so there's areas, different areas in the world, where the largest numbers of centurions live like the hundred year olds, and in fact, there was recently a Netflix I don't know if there's a series.
- 9:46Michelle Gauthier: Yes, there's a Netflix documentary about it.
- 9:47Michelle Gauthier: Yes, it's fascinating.
- 9:48Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, so he looked at Dan Bietner, looked at.
- 9:50Kavita Ahuja: You know, why are these people in these areas of the world?
- 9:54Kavita Ahuja: Why do they live for so long, and particularly in this area in Japan?
- 9:59Kavita Ahuja: One of the reasons he found in research was people follow the concept of ikigai and that really means there's a combination of two words to live ikuru, which means to live, and kai, which means the realization of what one hopes for.
- 10:17Kavita Ahuja: So it is really the reason for being and it's really a lot more than purpose.
- 10:24Kavita Ahuja: You know, purpose can seem very overwhelming for a lot of people.
- 10:28Kavita Ahuja: When you break it down into how to find your ikigai, it's really like it's four elements.
- 10:36Kavita Ahuja: So it's kind of like a Venn diagram if you look at it.
- 10:39Kavita Ahuja: Combination of what you love, your passion.
- 10:42Kavita Ahuja: So, as I was talking about passion earlier, right, what you are good at, so your strengths, what does the world need?
- 10:50Kavita Ahuja: Right?
- 10:51Kavita Ahuja: So kind of related to your mission or your values, and what you can be paid for.
- 10:56Kavita Ahuja: So all of that, what can you actually put forward in the world?
- 11:01Kavita Ahuja: So it's a really interesting concept.
- 11:03Kavita Ahuja: So what we do is we go in each section and you, you come out with the words or how you feel in each your strengths, your passions, your values, what you can be paid for, and you see the overlaps, right, and it's it's so interesting because it's so eye-opening, because you can see the overlaps right away, and it's like, oh my God, that is what I, that's what I need to do, yeah, and it brings forward so much positivity when you're actually leading your life according to all the combinations of everything.
- 11:36Kavita Ahuja: It's not just you know what you can be paid for or what's going to make you the most money, or you know, but it's also like how do you want to contribute to the world and what unique skills do you have to to lead to that?
- 11:49Kavita Ahuja: You know mission in your life.
- 11:51Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yes, that's so.
- 11:53Michelle Gauthier: I love the idea of taking all those things into consideration, because maybe you have this huge passion, but it's not something that you could really do to like support your family, for example, you know maybe it's not you know, not something that can make money.
- 12:06Michelle Gauthier: Or maybe there's something where you can make a lot of money, but it doesn't, you know, suit your values or whatever.
- 12:11Michelle Gauthier: So what are some of the things that you have come up with in working with your clients, like, what are, what are some of the results of doing this with yeah, yeah?
- 12:21Kavita Ahuja: So I've worked with so many clients on this and it's always an eye-opening experience and you know I can give you an example.
- 12:27Kavita Ahuja: So, for example, one of my clients, she she was in like an education system.
- 12:33Kavita Ahuja: She was an administrator for like 25, 30 years and she came to me she was.
- 12:40Kavita Ahuja: She said, Kavita, I'm just like dying inside.
- 12:42Kavita Ahuja: I just can't do this anymore.
- 12:44Kavita Ahuja: I really don't know what to do.
- 12:46Kavita Ahuja: I'm feeling very stuck.
- 12:47Kavita Ahuja: I'm over.
- 12:48Kavita Ahuja: She was overworked, overwhelmed and she just wanted to know what.
- 12:52Kavita Ahuja: What is it she wanted to do?
- 12:54Kavita Ahuja: And so we went through this process and she realizes the things that she actually liked about her previous job was like this, process work and helping people, getting processes together.
- 13:05Kavita Ahuja: You know she loved working with people, but she didn't love other aspects.
- 13:09Kavita Ahuja: Her passion was writing also and she so her strengths were in organization and all of that.
- 13:19Kavita Ahuja: So as we looked at all this stuff together, we came to realize that she would be best suited as a consultant in process improvement.
- 13:29Kavita Ahuja: That's what she could actually work at.
- 13:33Kavita Ahuja: But at the same time, she had her personal issues with family members who were going through anxiety and depression, and she really wanted to bring that out in a writing.
- 13:43Kavita Ahuja: So she started to write a book on that.
- 13:47Kavita Ahuja: So it's not about just like, okay, yes, work, yes, but other parts of your life where you can apply different passions, different skills which will create what I call anabolic energy, which is positive energy in your life which will fuel you to do the things that you really love.
- 14:03Kavita Ahuja: I love that, you know.
- 14:05Kavita Ahuja: So it's like identifying what she likes, what she's good at, what she's passionate about, but putting it all together, and so that's just one example.
- 14:15Michelle Gauthier: I love that, though that's such a great example and I love how you're talking about that.
- 14:20Michelle Gauthier: The result wouldn't just be like OK, here's your perfect job, because here's a job you could do with those skills and maybe you absolutely love it, but here's some other fun, interesting things that you could do.
- 14:30Michelle Gauthier: Like for me, I miss creativity and of course, I have creativity in trying to find solutions with my clients and writing in things, but, like, I'm forever decorating my house because that's like the outlet that I need for that.
- 14:44Michelle Gauthier: So I think it's important to look at your whole life versus just your career.
- 14:49Michelle Gauthier: So I love that.
- 14:49Michelle Gauthier: That is so cool.
- 14:50Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for sharing that with us.
- 14:52Michelle Gauthier: I've never heard of it before.
- 14:54Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, it's you know it's age old, it's been researched and if you can put it into your life practically, it really does.
- 15:01Kavita Ahuja: It's eye-opening, you know it really guides you and you know I do this other exercise where I really take my clients through what is it their vision for themselves?
- 15:13Kavita Ahuja: What is it?
- 15:13Kavita Ahuja: What is they envision for their life, like, who's their inner mentor?
- 15:17Kavita Ahuja: That's your inner self, and usually they say that when they see their inner mentor, it's actually aligns very well with what we came up with as our Ikigai.
- 15:28Michelle Gauthier: Oh, interesting, that's what they're actually doing.
- 15:31Kavita Ahuja: That makes a lot of sense.
- 15:32Kavita Ahuja: Oh, that's so cool.
- 15:35Michelle Gauthier: I also want to ask you, before we wrap up, the two things that I ask everybody, and the first one is what is something that you do when you feel overwhelmed to make yourself feel better?
- 15:48Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, great question, because there's so much overwhelm in our lives all the time, right?
- 15:53Kavita Ahuja: So I would say that whatever I do is I always just take a pause.
- 15:58Kavita Ahuja: You know, it's always about taking the pause and assessing how I'm feeling at that moment, you know, and taking clues from that.
- 16:08Kavita Ahuja: Am I, like, really stressed?
- 16:10Kavita Ahuja: Why am I stressed?
- 16:11Kavita Ahuja: And asking myself why, right?
- 16:13Michelle Gauthier: Yes, Because when you're overwhelmed it's hard to access anything useful, like useful thoughts about what to do.
- 16:20Michelle Gauthier: So if you can make yourself take that pause, that's a game changer.
- 16:23Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
- 16:24Kavita Ahuja: And then, and then, and then, you know, depending on how much time I have, if I only have a few minutes, I will pause, take a deep breath, close my eyes.
- 16:33Kavita Ahuja: I'll say something like everything always works out for me, everything's okay, right?
- 16:39Kavita Ahuja: So if that's only 15 minutes but I have more time, then I will try and take a walk.
- 16:44Kavita Ahuja: You know I'll go outside, I'll try to go do a workout.
- 16:47Kavita Ahuja: I'll, you know, listen to music, I'll meditate, you know, all those things that will create that anabolic energy that I talked about earlier.
- 16:55Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, but it is really about taking whatever amount of pause you can take.
- 17:00Kavita Ahuja: Yes, but it is really about taking whatever amount of pause you can take and assessing and analyzing what is the emotions that you're feeling at that moment.
- 17:06Michelle Gauthier: Yes, that's great One of the other things we talk about on the podcast all the time is how to do less to save more time, because it feels like, as women, there's always more that we can be doing, and so what is something that you do consistently?
- 17:26Kavita Ahuja: to either save time or just to do less.
- 17:27Kavita Ahuja: Yes, well, I think it's really important and what I try to do, and what I do is is I really schedule my, my week ahead of time and I schedule in downtime me time as well, so that I'm not looking at my day and feeling, oh my God, I didn't even have time to take a shower or whatever.
- 17:45Kavita Ahuja: So it's scheduling my time ahead of time and also looking at going back to you know what we're passionate about.
- 17:51Kavita Ahuja: It's like, what do I really love to do?
- 17:53Kavita Ahuja: That really I want to focus more of my time on.
- 17:57Kavita Ahuja: So for me, it's coaching, it's writing, it's, you know, it's podcasting, right, and all the other things, if I can delegate those, honestly, and so it frees up more of my time to do the things I love, right?
- 18:13Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, so I recently hired a virtual assistant who does a lot of the stuff that I don't like to do, like, so social media posting and all of that.
- 18:23Kavita Ahuja: I've delegated that so that frees up time, you know.
- 18:26Kavita Ahuja: So that I think it's important, like, if you do the things that you're, that you really identify that you love, that bring you that positive energy, then then that that just creates a life that's more at ease, and flow right yeah, absolutely.
- 18:43Kavita Ahuja: I don't know if that answers your question, but that absolutely answers the question.
- 18:46Michelle Gauthier: I mean, I can't imagine how much time you save in a week if you've planned out your whole week, because you don't have to refigure it out every day, every hour, every minute.
- 18:54Michelle Gauthier: You've got it all on there and I love that you can put white space on there for yourself to just do things that you like to do so.
- 19:01Kavita Ahuja: that's a great answer.
- 19:02Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much.
- 19:04Kavita Ahuja: You're welcome.
- 19:04Michelle Gauthier: Well, you mentioned your podcast, which we'll put that in the show notes.
- 19:08Michelle Gauthier: Where else can people follow you or find more information about you?
- 19:12Kavita Ahuja: The best place to go is my website and you can go to itsmytimenowcoaching.
- 19:16Kavita Ahuja: com and there you can learn about my coaching program, my podcast, which is called the Midlife Reinvention Podcast.
- 19:25Kavita Ahuja: I have an online course as well.
- 19:27Kavita Ahuja: I do one-on-one coaching and group coaching, but I also have an online course that, if somebody is interested in you know self-directed learning, they can take a look.
- 19:36Michelle Gauthier: They can do that too.
- 19:37Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay, that's awesome, thank you, and thank you so much for being a guest today.
- 19:43Michelle Gauthier: It was so great to talk to you and I love your story and I just want to say amazing what you're doing for the world and that you had the nerve to leave your corporate career and start something else awesome and help other women too.
- 19:55Kavita Ahuja: Well, I mean, it's the same to you, like you did the same thing and you're.
- 19:58Kavita Ahuja: I mean, I think we're from our experience and our passion, we really it's important to know that you know it's.
- 20:05Kavita Ahuja: You don't have to have it all figured out.
- 20:06Kavita Ahuja: Go with your gut and just be yourself and focus on your ikigai, if you can, if you can yes.
- 20:12Kavita Ahuja: If you don't.
- 20:13Kavita Ahuja: If you want to help with that, I'm there for you.
- 20:15Michelle Gauthier: But yes, yes, yes, yes, okay, wonderful.
- 20:18Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much.
- 20:19Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 20:31Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthiercom.
- 20:34Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.