One night, at the top of my career, I sat down on the couch and burst into tears. Today, my friend, I'm gonna tell you why. Welcome to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast, a podcast helping women in career and life transitions achieve clarity on their next steps so they can transform uncertainty into an energizing next chapter. I'm your host, Kavita Ahuja, and the founder of It's My Time Now Coaching. If you're wondering what's next in your career or life, you are in the right place. Through solo and guest episodes, you'll gain practical tips, tools, and inspiration to help you uncover blocks, gain confidence, and be, do, and have what you want. I rediscovered myself after the age of 50, and I know you can too. It's my time now to help you do just that. I'm so excited you're here. Let's dive in. In this episode, you'll discover three things. First, the playbook I followed for decades. The education, the career, the awards, the children, the marriage, the life everyone around me agreed was a good one. Second, the question one of my dearest clients, Jen, asked me. And the gremlins I'm finally ready to name out loud. The ones that started quietly years before I knew anything was about to change. And third, the moment those gremlins stopped being whispers and became impossible to ignore. So stay with me to the end because by then I want you to have a question of your own. A question about a chapter of your own life that may look more right on the outside than it feels on the inside. Hello and welcome back to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast. It's your coach Cavita. If you're new to this podcast, welcome to our family. And I do not take it lightly that you're here. If you've been listening for a while, I thank you so much for your loyalty and for coming back. You are tuning in to a new series called My Story. And although I'm sharing details of my story, I really haven't shared before, this is really about you. Because if you're facing a transition in your life, whether that is a career transition or a life transition like an empty nest, a divorce, a health scare, or simply a feeling that something needs to change, please do listen to my story for glimpses of your own, and also for the mistakes I've made and learned from. Last week I spoke about my family's history, the moves from India to Africa to Canada that laid the foundation for the courage I didn't even know I had inherited from my grandparents and parents. It was also about the values that built the foundation of my life. As Indians, and you don't have to be Indian to relate, our parents always instilled in us many different values. The strongest of which for me were hard work, family, respect for elders and other people. Those values were noble. And this next chapter is about how I followed them without question. You see, one of the values of hard work I understood was that you had to work hard and you had to sacrifice in order to succeed. Success was always tied to the outcome, whether that was money or status. Don't get me wrong, my parents were not obsessed with money or status, but they did struggle in the beginning of moving to a new country to find their footing. So they had to work really hard to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. And they did it beautifully. So in my mind, success equated achievements. It's it equated climbing higher, making more money, and getting recognized for my achievements. The value of family, of marriage, and children was also ingrained in me and my sisters, and they were not going to have it any other way. So, as a youngest of three daughters, I was determined to educate myself. While my sisters got married at a younger age, my determination was improving my worth through education and employment. When I was in high school, I loved biology. I loved really understanding how the body worked and how it was this vast system of homeostasis where if one thing went wrong, the body would compensate to make it better. I also really loved reading and writing. But when I was deciding what degree to get, my parents told me, there's no money in writing. What are you going to do as a writer? They said I should go into the sciences. At that time I knew they would not agree for me to go into medicine or medical school because that was a too long of a study, and I would be too old to get married. So without knowing much, I applied for pharmacy school. We were living back then in Calgary, Alberta, which is in Western Canada, and at the time we moved to Toronto. In those years there was only one pharmacy school in Canada, and I didn't get in because of the fierce competition. So I pursued biology at the University of Toronto and really enjoyed it, although I really had no idea what I was going to do with it. Those were beautiful years of friendships being made, of learning, and of beginning to understand myself. I didn't know it then, but I was already following a playbook. I was not questioning it. I was not wondering whose playbook it was. I was just walking down a path that felt like mine because nobody had handed it to me directly. Do you remember your college years or early years of education? What led you to the decision of which path to pursue? Was it because of your passions or something practical that maybe your parents had suggested? Keep that thought in mind because I'm going to come back to it a bit later. It's interesting to follow the clues in your life, and I would encourage you to do that. It really reveals so much about where you are now. One clue for me was that after I graduated with a bachelor's in biology, I tried working in a lab for one summer, soon to discover that I hated it. I was always a people person, and being stuck behind a microscope looking at little organisms was not my idea of a career that would inspire me. So I started to research. What could I possibly do? The idea of understanding the world of business really interested me, and that was also suggested by the owner of the lab and a dear friend of mine. Why don't you go back and get your MBA, they said. Truthfully, I didn't even know what that was at the time, but it sounded good. Again, breadcrumbs. So I kind of fell into my MBA, and that was where actually I made some of my closest friends, and realized how much opportunity there really was in the world out there. At the same time, I met my now husband, and those years were so sweet and exciting, a whole world of possibilities ahead of us. I often think about how when we are younger the world is aligned before us. And I often think, how did we actually get to where we are today? This was actually the impetus behind this whole series, a question posed by my now wonderful client Jen. As luck would have it, I came across the world of pharmaceuticals when I graduated from my MBA. And it seemed like the perfect combination of my science interests, my business interests, and my love of working with people. So in 1993, I started my career in the pharmaceutical industry. I was introduced to sales, and although I thought, okay, this is temporary, 25 years later it became who I was and what I did. And I did it very well. I look back at that decision now and I see how natural it felt to step into it. I do not see it as following anything, I saw it as choosing. But that is the thing about the playbook. You do not see it while you're inside of it. What I love most about that career was the interaction with my customers, really understanding their needs, finding solutions, forming relationships with both them and my colleagues. If I think about it now, this is still the heart of what I love. That human interaction which feeds me to this very day. I'd like to pause there and share something with you. Often women come to me who are feeling stuck with their career or life, unsure of what is next, but knowing that they don't want to continue doing the thing they've been doing for the last twenty or thirty years. One thing I tell them is this there was a reason you got into that, and there must be something you enjoyed about it. What was that? It doesn't mean that you have to continue doing that exact same thing, but what aspect about it to do love that you can carry into what you are shaping into now? So my friend, in my thirties and forties I excelled at my work. I worked hard, the way I had been raised, to get the promotions, the raises, the recognitions, and I got them. I received not one but two President Circles awards for my achievements, which meant I was the top one percent of salespeople in Canada. Those awards took my husband and I to exotic trips, and I was literally at the top of my game. All the while I was juggling a move to Arizona, where we lived for five years, and I stayed home with my boy, my two boys when they were very young. Raising two demanding children with their sports and music and academic schedules, a busy social life, a husband whose work took him all over the world. If I look back at it now, oh my goodness, how did I do all of that? Those were the building years, and I'm sure you can relate. They were amazing years. I built great skills, deep friendships, made good money, and achieved so much. It was almost as if those years had been pre-written by the playbook handed to me when I was a teenager. I always say that every state in our life builds us towards the next. And we should not reject any of it. Even the years that hold hardships are heartbreak. They are teaching us something. So what was the problem then? Everything seemed perfect, right? The thing is, they were great. But I will never forget one day when I came home from work, took my son across the city to a squash practice, came home, made dinner, cleaned up, did more work, and at eleven PM threw myself on the couch with exhaustion, and looked at my husband and burst into tears. I was running on autopilot, doing all the things I was supposed to do, being the good employee, the good mom, the good wife, the good friend. But somewhere along the way I had forgotten who I really was. Maybe yours is not the couch. Maybe yours is the night you sit in your car in the driveway for fifteen minutes before you walk inside. Maybe yours is the night you scroll your phone past midnight because going to bed feels like surrender. Maybe yours is the morning you cry in the shower so no one can hear. These are our couch moments. Mine just happened to be on a couch. My client Jen asked me about my gremlins. She asked me what my gremlins were during my transition. But the truth is, my gremlins did not start when the transition started. They started years before. In the chapter that looked exactly right. The gremlins sounded like this. When I asked myself, is this all there is? My gremlin replied, You should be more grateful. Everyone would kill for you this life. You're just tired. Maybe in five years it will feel different. Maybe when the kids are older. Maybe after the next promotion. You see, my gremlins started surfacing way before I had any inkling that the work I was doing and the life I was living was fine, but not who I really wanted to be anymore. So what did I do? I dismissed them. I attributed them to hormones or burnout or stress. I told myself, this too will pass. The problem is what it cost me. Years of dismissing those internal signals that were trying to wake me up to make a change that inevitably I would make. I hear this too often in the women I coach. They have built a life of success, of achievements that look great on the outside. But inside they are slowly burning out or becoming dissatisfied or unhappy. Why? Because the passions which had built that stage of their life have changed. Or worse, the passions they should have pursued have become buried under responsibilities, under what they should do versus what they really want to do. Last week I told you about the girl I used to be. The dreamer who read books past her bedtime and who wrote stories on scraps of paper. Somewhere in the playbook years of my corporate career raising children, the busy household, that girl went quiet. Not because anyone silenced her, but because a playbook did not have room for her. But I want you to hear this. That is perfectly okay. In our life's transitions, there is a time and place for everything. But what is not okay is if we forget about those dreams that we once had, because we are comfortable, or because we don't want to hear the judgment of others, or the discomfort of making a change to finally pursue those dreams. As I reflect upon those beautiful years, there is a nostalgia in them. Years of being such a big part of my children's lives, years of growth and busyness and chaos that I sometimes truly miss. But I also know that I don't regret any of it. The different chapters and transitions in our lives are all meant to be cherished in their own ways. Let me get back to my gremlins now. The ones that slowly started the night I fell exhausted on the sofa. They became even more poignant the night I received my second President Circle Award. In front of all those people, going up on the stage, being grateful for all of it. But inside something started to whisper. Is this the type of achievement that I really want? The one that makes me happy? These outside measurements of success? The whispers became questions. The questions became thoughts I would could not unthink. Things I used to say to myself once a year, like, is this really what I want to be doing the rest of my life? I started saying once a week, then once a day. By the end of those years, the gremlins were not gremlins anymore. There were knocking on a door I had been pretending was not there. By that point, the question was no longer whether to ask it, the question was when and what would happen on the other side. Before we close today, I want to ask you a few questions honestly. When did your fine first start feeling off if it did? Which gremlins have you been calling something else? Exhaustion, hormones, the wrong week, the wrong year? And what chapter of your life looks more right on the outside than it feels on the inside? If any of this resonates with you, I invite you to ask yourself these deep questions and don't be afraid of what the answers will reveal. Bring your own gremlins quietly out into the light so you can hear them clearly for the first time. What we walk together today, my friend, are the years that built most of us. The years where the playbook works, where success has a definition we did not write, where the dreams of who we were as girls go quiet without anyone noticing. And where the groundlines begin to whisper the questions we are not yet ready to answer. These years are sacred. They built me, they likely built you. But they are not where the story ends. The breaking point for me happened one Monday morning. A morning where I hit the snooze button five times and crawled back under the covers, not wanting to face the day. A morning where I could no longer ignore those internal whispers. A morning that led to my next chapter of life, the one that has led me to where I am today, retelling my story. But before I take you there, I want you to hear from someone whose own story will sit in conversation with the one I have just shared. Next week, my guest is Deborah Knight. Deborah is an entrepreneur and strategic communications expert who has lived her own playbook of expectations that did not pan out. She talks about what she calls life quakes, the moments the ground beneath your feet shifts, whether you wanted it or not. She talks about a question one of her mentors once asked her. And she talks about what she calls the possibilities in the middle, the space between the plan that broke and the next chapter that has not arrived. Her story is not mine, but you will hear echoes. Listen for them, and then when we return to this story, I will take you into the morning everything cracked open for me. Before we go, I want to remind you that this whole series is being shaped by you as much as by me. The Gremlin question that opened the heart of today's episode came directly from my client Jen, who asked me what mine were doing my transition. Her question literally opened up this episode. So if a question is rising in within you, whether it is about your journey or my journey, the gremlins you're wrestling with right now, the chapter you are sitting in, the courage you're looking for, or anything in between, send it to me at cavita at it's my timenowcoaching.com. I'm answering these listener questions throughout my story series, and your question may be the seed of an entire episode. Your story matters as much as mine, my friend. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen, because next week's conversation with Deborah is one you don't want to miss. And remember, you get to decide what comes next. So say it with me, and say it with confidence. It's my time now.