This weekend, I turned 60. And today, rather than tell you what I have figured out, I want to show you my own reason for being still changing right in front of you and what that might mean for yours. 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, why milestone birthdays are not the top of the mountain, but the beginning of the next climb. And why your reason for being is never complete. Second, how to find your ikigai or reason for being using a framework that uncovers the overlaps of four dimensions in your life. And third, how I discovered my own current ikigai. Laid out honestly, so that it helps you see your own. Stay with me to the end because this is one of the most personal episodes I've ever recorded. And there is an invitation in it, I would genuinely love your opinion on. And if you are a returning listener, thank you so much. I don't take it lightly that you choose to spend this time with me here again. This weekend I turned 60. And it was absolutely lovely. My husband took me on a surprise trip and honestly made me feel like a princess. I'm so grateful for him and for my family and friends, and also for all of you and your beautiful birthday wishes. I'd like to share a bit of what turning 60 has meant personally for me. There is a voice in the culture that hands us about 60, and it is a voice of winding down, of the best being behind you, of settling down into whatever you have already built. And I want to tell you from right here on the morning of my seventh decade that I have never felt that to be less true. When I look back at the last 10 years in my life, my 50s, that was the decade I did my most radical reinvention. It was the richest, most alive decade I ever had. I left a 25-year career and built something entirely on my own. This podcast was born, I became a coach, and found the work I believe I was made for. Everything you know me for, everything we do together here, all of it was built in the 10 years that have just ended. So I don't stand at 60 feeling I've arrived at the summit and the interesting part is behind me. The last decade was deeply interesting and fulfilling. I stand here feeling like I've built a strong enough base to reach for even more of the things I've wanted for years and never had the courage to pursue. The best of that decade was not a peak. It was a foundation. And the point is, wherever you are at, you are standing on a very solid foundation, my friend. You have heard me talk about the pyramid of reinvention, which is the framework my coaching program is based on. How you do not leap to the top, you build it one rung at a time, and each run makes the next one possible. We build different pyramids in each stage of our lives, and what I've realized as I'm turning 60 is that the top of one pyramid is simply the ground you stand on to build the next. That is what I want this birthday episode to be about. Not looking back at what is finished, but looking forward to what is possible. And to do that, I thought I would walk you through my own ikigai or reason for being, dimension by dimension. So you can see for yourself how this actually works. If this is new to you, here's a quick version and you can go back to episode 318 for the whole thing. Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning your reason for being. And it lives where four dimensions of you converge. Your strengths, your passions, your values, and your contribution. Four dimensions and your reason for being is in the center where they all meet. But your reason for being is not the only thing those four dimensions create. Because when any of two of them overlap, they make something meaningful on their own. And these overlaps have names. Four of them. And I think of them as the rungs, the place you climb through on your way to the center. I've put the diagram in the show notes so you can see them. And let me walk you through each one right now using my own life because it is the most honest way I know how to show you how this works. So to review, the first dimension is your strengths, the second is your passions, the third are your values, and the fourth is your contribution. So let's start where your strengths meet your passions. That is called flow. It's the place where the thing you are good at and the thing you love are the very same thing. And when you are in it, time simply disappears. For me, it looks like this. I'll be in a coaching call, and an hour will vanish, and I will not have noticed a moment of it passing. And there are times in that call or in that hour when a woman finally sees herself clearly and the goosebumps come, and we look at each other and we are both in tears. And afterwards, I'm so full of energy, that anabolic, expansive energy I always talk about that I feel like I could conquer anything and at all. And that is what flow feels like for me. It is a combination of some of my strengths, which are listening and distilling information, with my passion for helping people untangle the confusion in their lives. It is the thing I'm good at and the thing I love, meeting at the same moment. Notice yours, the activity where you are both skilled and passionate at once, where the hours disappear, because that overlap is one of the truest signposts you have. Next, where your passions meet your contribution is called your mission. What you love pointed outward at what the world needs. And this one for me is the heart of the last 10 years. One of my passions, as I just shared, is helping people untangle themselves so they can see the path forward clearly. And my contribution, or what I believe the world needs, is more understanding of purpose. Why are we here? This translates into my mission, and it has guided me in the last 10 years. My mission has been to guide women like you through the transitions of your life, to help you rediscover who you truly are, to bring out the very best in you, so that you can lead the extraordinary life that you were meant to lead with confidence and courage and a real sense of hope. That is what this podcast has been about week after week, and it is what every coaching conversation has also been about. And Turning 60 has clarified something for me. That mission is not changing, it is just expanded. For years I've done this work with one woman at a time across a table. Then this podcast has let me do it for women all over the world, women I may never meet, and that has been one of the great joys of my life. When I hear from listeners like you, it reminds me of why I do this every single week, and it really does feel me forward. And now I feel like the next expansion pulling at me. I want to bring you together. Because every woman I speak to believes she's the only one going through this, and she is never the only one. There are thousands of you, and you would recognize each other in an instant. So the words I would write in my own expanding mission are these building a greater community. A couple of weeks ago I told you about the Okinawans and how their long lives were built not only on purpose, but on something they called Moai, which is a small circle of people who walk through life together and hold one another up. As I thought about it, it sparked something in me. While I love to do what I do, I know there is more, and what better way than to connect each of us together. Just like the Okinawan concept of Moai. We are more disconnected than any generation in history, and so many of us feel more alone than ever. And a transition does deepen that because it is a lonely thing by nature. But I want to help change that. So my mission is purpose and people. I have given you a great deal about purpose. The people part is what my next decade is asking me to build, and I'll tell you more about that later. Next, where your contribution meets your values is called your calling. This is where the difference you make meets what matters most to you now. As I shared, one of the pieces of my contribution, what I think the world needs, is more understanding of purpose. Pairing that with my own evolving values of sharing knowledge and helping others has shaped my calling in the last decade and continues to shape it moving forward. Think about what you are called to do now. For example, what I value now is different from what I valued when I was 40. At 40, it was still partly about proving, about building, about establishing myself. Now it is more about knowledge and giving back about what I've learned. So the words I would write in my own calling are these sharing knowledge to help people find their purpose. I'll tell you a little thing about my own heritage in the Hindu tradition. Life is understood in four stages called the ashramas. And there is one called Vanaprasta that describes exactly this turn in the second half of life. Away from acquiring, improving, and moving towards wisdom, reflection, and giving back to others what you have learned. When I think about those ancient teachings, it reminds me of my own life, and maybe many of yours too. I'm quite sure of that. It is one of the oldest understandings there is of what this stage of life is actually asking of us. This is not winding down. It is stepping into the season we are meant to be moving towards all along. Finally, where your values meet your strengths is your expression. This is where what you are good at meets what is important to you and how you show up in the world. For me, I shared that one of my values was that of sharing knowledge and helping others. One of my greatest strengths has been writing. Yet, as I've evolved in the last decade, my strength at speaking has also improved. In fact, when I think about it, my expression has probably changed the most in the past decade. I was always a writer. That was my comfort. The page. Speaking was not, not because I didn't have anything to say. I always had things to say, but because sharing them out loud as fully as myself did not really come that easily to me. Yet over these last ten years that has shifted. I grew comfortable on a microphone, then in front of a camera, then on stage. I did it because it was important for me to share my message, however shakily it was at first. And the confidence came once I had done it more and more, with that purpose behind it. I spoke at my son's wedding recently, and it felt completely authentic while I was doing it, because I wanted to share my love for them. The writer became a speaker too, because the value of sharing what matters is what finally let me show up as exactly who I am. So the words I would write in my own expression are these. That is expression, and it can keep growing at any age. How do you want to express yourself? Where do your strengths meet your values? So there they are, my four overlaps, guiding, which is my flow, building community, which is my mission, sharing knowledge, which is my calling, and my authentic voice, which is in my expression. And here's the part I really want you to see because this is how you actually find your icky guide. You don't go hunting outside for it. You climb to it. You find it by looking at what overlaps have in common. So look at mine, laid side by side, guiding, building community, sharing knowledge, my authentic voice. And ask, what is a single thread running through all of them? What do they all point to? For me, it is this. Every one of those overlaps is about using my voice and my gifts to help women find their way to their purpose, and to help them put that purpose out into the world. And it is to gather them together while they do it. That is a center. That is where all four converge. And so my evolving Ikigai in one sentence is this to guide women through the transitions of their life, using my gifts for coaching and for authentic communication, to help them rediscover their purpose and to bring them together in community, so that no one has to walk alone. And that is how I found it, not by inventing it, by naming my overlaps, and then listening for what they were all quietly saying at once. And that is exactly how you find yours. You look at where your strengths meet your passions, and where your passions meet your contributions, and where your contributions meet your values, and where your values meet your strengths. You name each of those overlaps honestly, and then you ask what they all have in common. Your reason for being is not hiding somewhere far away, it's sitting right there in the middle of your own four overlaps, waiting for you to notice what they share. If I look ahead now, I'm so excited by what the future holds, and I want you to feel the same way about yours. I'm gonna write some books. For me to say that out loud makes it real, because I've stated it to the universe. And I've wanted this quietly for years and set it aside the way we do. But I'm not willing to leave it buried for another decade. There are at least two in me. One is a framework of reinvention for women in exactly the transitions we talk about here. Everything I've learned and lived made into something any woman could pick up and use in her own life. And the other is closer to my heart than I can explain. It's my family's story. My grandparents moved from India to Africa, and then my parents from Africa to Canada, carrying almost nothing but their hopes, and building a life each time from the ground up. My dad had a farm in Kenya, land that was his, that he had worked and loved, and yet he had to leave it. I think about what it must have taken to walk away from something you built with your own hands and start over in a country that is cold and unfamiliar and doesn't know you yet. But here is what my dad still says to me, to this very day. He has never once spoken of it as a loss. He speaks of the adventure of it. He searched for the opportunity in a new country, and he still carries that spirit with him now. And I think that is the single greatest thing he has given me. And that story is not only mine, because a migration is a reinvention. It is the most physical kind there is, leaving everything you know and rebuilding in a place that doesn't know you yet. But it is also an internal one, becoming a new version of yourself in a new world. And that is exactly what you are doing, even if you have never left your own town. The transition you are in is a migration of the self. You are leaving a country called who you used to be, and building a life in the country of who you are becoming. My family did it across oceans. You are doing it across a chapter. It is the same courage. And what I inherited from them and what I most want to give to you is this if you keep your eyes open for the opportunity, even in the hardship, especially in the hardship, it is always, always there. One other thing, because this is important, your Ikigai is never stagnant. And it was never only about your career. It is about the way of life you lead, and it reaches into every corner of an ordinary and extraordinary life. And it is forever changing and evolving, just as we are. I'd like to go back now to one thing I mentioned earlier. I spoke about expanding my contribution in this world, and to that end, there's something I genuinely want your opinion on. This idea of bringing you together, of building the people part, the community. I'm formulating it right now and would far rather build it with you based on what you actually want and need. So I would love to hear from you. What would that actually look like for you? Would you love to have an online space where women in transition could actually find one another and meet and learn and hold each other accountable and try? Would it be perhaps gatherings or retreats somewhere to come together in person? What are you really longing for at this stage of your life that you can't quite find anywhere else? I would love to be the one to create that for you. Write to me truly at Kabita at it's my timeowcoaching dot com and tell me. I read every single message, and yours might genuinely shape what I build next. So as I leave you today, let me leave you with three things I most want you to carry from this episode. First, that turning sixty or fifty or any age you have been taught to fear is not the top of the mountain. It is a ground you build your next climb from, because your ikigai is always evolving. Second, that you find your reason for being by climbing to it through your overlaps, your flow, your mission, your calling, and your expression, and then asking what all four of them have in common, because the answer is your ikigai, and you can find it at any chapter of your life. And third, that even now at 60, my own ikigai is still expanding, my mission widening towards community, my passion for writing coming back to life, and if it can keep evolving for me, it can absolutely keep evolving for you. So here is the now. I walked you through exactly how I found my own ikigai today, and I hope that helped you clarify the process. I know it's not always easy, so I would love to help you along on your journey to find yours. And this is exactly why I created the Ikigai Clarity Assessment. It takes just a few minutes, and it will show you which of your dimensions is thriving right now and which one has gone quiet, so that you know precisely where to begin. You can find the link for my new Ikiguai Clarity Assessment at the top of the show notes, and I'm really excited for you to take it. Take it today while all this is still fresh in you. It is the truest first step I can give you towards your own reason for being. Thank you for spending part of my birthday week with me. It means more than you know. And remember, my friend, you get to decide what comes next. So say it with me, and say it with confidence. It's my time now.