#304: 3 Ikigai Lessons From My Own Midlife Transition (And My Son's Wedding)

Three Ikigai lessons. One unexpected midlife transition. And a son's wedding in Cartagena that taught Kavita more about purpose, identity, and reinvention than any framework ever has.

Most of us in midlife are exhausted because we're asking the wrong question. We're asking what do I want, what's missing from my life, what's wrong with me. And the more we ask, the deeper into stuckness we sink. But there's a different question that changes everything. 

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why asking "what does the world need from me right now?" is one of the most powerful questions you can sit with during a midlife career or life transition - and why it opens doors that "what do I want?" never quite reaches
• The real reason so many women only feel fully alive on vacation - and what it reveals about the permission we have stopped giving ourselves in our everyday lives
• Why the transitions that catch us off guard are often the most important messengers we have, and the one question that every midlife transition is quietly asking you if you are willing to slow down enough to hear it

Press play to hear an honest, personal reflection on what it means to truly live what you teach - and why the question that kept Kavita up one late night after the wedding is the reason this podcast is about to feel a little different.

If this episode stirred something in you, download the free 28-Day Confidence Guide for daily practices and short video lessons to help you find your voice and step into your next chapter with confidence. And if you are ready to talk through where you are and what comes next, schedule a Clarity and Next Chapter Call with Kavita.

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This podcast explores career and life transitions, helping women find clarity, confidence, and purpose through Ikigai and self-discovery. We cover navigating change, overcoming self-doubt and limiting beliefs, finding your purpose-driven career, and building the courage to start your next chapter - whether you're facing a career transition, life transition, or midlife reinvention.

Transcript

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In this episode, you'll discover three Ikigai lessons I learned through my own unexpected midlife transition and the question that can completely shift how you see your next chapter. 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, I'm sharing something I haven't fully told you yet. I went through my own midlife transition recently, and it caught me by surprise. It happened at my son's wedding, of all places. In this episode, you'll discover three Ikigai lessons that came out of that experience. First, the question I want every woman in midlife to ask herself, the one that came alive for me at the wedding and has shifted everything. Second, why so many of us only feel fully alive on vacation and what to do about it. And third, the Ikigai lesson I think is the most underrated of all. The one that explains why so many of us feel restless in midlife, even when life looks good on paper. Stay with me to the end because there's a moment from the week after we got home that I want to share with you. A question I asked myself one late night. That's the reason I'm bringing you this whole next chapter of the podcast differently. I'll share it with you before we close. So if you've been quietly navigating your own transitions and wondering whether anyone really sees it, this one is for you. Hello and welcome back to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast. It's your coach, Kavita. Let me start at the beginning. Two weeks ago, our family traveled to Cartagena, Colombia for my son's wedding. He married the love of his life, and from the moment we arrived to the moment we left, it was the most magical and most beautiful experience I have ever had. I knew the wedding would be meaningful. I knew I would cry, but what I did not expect was how much the experience would teach me about my own life and about the work I do with women like you in midlife transitions. By the time we got home I had realized something. The wedding was not only my son's transition, it was mine too. I am no longer the mother of a single man. I am soon, perhaps, going to be a grandmother. The role I have played for thirty plus years has shifted quietly and beautifully into something new. And the strangest part is that I did not see this transition coming until it was already happening. That is how midlife transitions often work. They show up in moments of celebration, in milestones, in the small shifts of identity that we do not plan for. And if we are not paying attention, we miss what they are trying to teach us. So today I want to share with you three Ikigai lessons this experience handed me. Lessons that I think any woman in midlife transition will recognize. Lesson one. And one of the four pillars of ikigai is the question, what does the world need? For years I have taught this concept and asked clients to sit with it. But I do not think I fully felt the power of it until I watched my son and his bride bring it to life. Here is what they did. From the very first conversation about their wedding, they did not ask what do we want? They asked, how do we want our guests to feel? How do we want them to feel when they walk into the welcome dinner? How do we want them to feel during the ceremony? How do we want them to feel at the reception? Every single decision was made from that lens. And the result was magic. Pure magic. People were crying and laughing and dancing and telling stories they had not told in years. Strangers became friends, and old friendships deepened. That is what happens when we lead with the question, what does the world need? Not what does the world need in some grand abstract sense, but what does the world right in front of you need? What do the people in your life, in your work, in your community need that only you can give? Most of us in life are exhausted because we are asking the wrong questions. We are asking, what do I want or what am I missing or what is wrong? And we are running ourselves into the ground trying to fix something we cannot quite name. But the moment you shift the question to what does the world need from me right now? Something opens up. You stop trying to extract joy from your life and you start creating it for others. And ironically, that is when joy comes back to you. That was lesson one. I want you to sit with this question this week. What does the world right in front of me need that only I can give? Lesson two. The reason you only feel alive on vacation is because you have not given yourself permission to feel alive at home. This one hit me on day three of the wedding. I noticed something about myself and about every single person that was there. We had let go. We were laughing more, we were eating without guilt. We were dancing in front of people we had never even met. We were present in a way that we are simply not present in our everyday lives. And I asked myself a question that I want to ask you now too. Why? Why do we only allow ourselves to feel that way when we are on vacation or at a celebration? Why not on a Tuesday morning? It is not because Tuesday is incapable of holding joy. It is because we have decided somewhere along the way that joy is for special occasions, that presence is a luxury begin on holidays, that we have to earn the right to feel alive. And so we go through our days on autopilot. We get to the weekends, we get to the next vacation, and we tell ourselves that real living will happen later, after this project, after the kids leave, after retirement. But there is no later, my friend. There is only this. And the women I work with who are stuck in midlife transitions are almost always stuck because they have stopped giving themselves permission to feel alive in their actual lives. This connects to another Ikigai pillar, which is what do you love? Both my son and his wife are brilliant doctors. They love what they do. They got into their fields because they are passionate about helping people, and that shows up in every conversation. They are alive in their work, not only on vacation. I want that for you too, and I want that for me. I want every person who listens to this podcast to know that you are allowed to feel alive on a Tuesday morning. You are allowed to love your work, your routine, your ordinary life. And if you do not, that is your transition speaking, asking you to make a change. And lesson three. The transition you're in is trying to tell you something. This is the one I think is most underrated. We tend to treat transitions as problems to get through. Something is ending, we're uncomfortable, we want to get to the other side as fast as possible. We rush through them. But transitions are not problems, they are messengers. When I walked through my own quiet transition over the last two weeks, becoming a mother-in-law, watching my son step into his own next chapter, holding the realization that my role in his life would never look the same again, I felt a lot of things joy, pride, love, and underneath all of it, kind of grief I did not expect. That grief was not bad, it was not wrong. It was telling me something. It was telling me that a chapter is closing and another one is opening. And it was asking me, what do I want this next chapter to look like? That is the most underrated Ikigai lesson of all. Every midlife transition is asking you the same question. What now? What do you want this next chapter to look like? And if you can sit with that question without rushing past it, the answers will come. For me the answer was clearer than expected. I want to share more of myself with you. I want to keep doing this work. I want to support women in their transitions with everything I have learned, including what I am still learning. For you, the answer may be different, but the question is the same. The transition you are in is showing you the door to the next chapter. Do not rush past it. Now back to the moment that I promised you at the beginning. The week we got home, I couldn't sleep. I kept playing back moments from the wedding. The vows, the speeches, the way my son's face lit up when he saw his bride walk down the aisle. The way the room felt when we toasted them. And one late night I asked myself a question. Am I actually living what I teach? Am I letting people see me, the real me, or am I only showing up here as the polished coach? The honest answer was that I have been holding back. I have been teaching the theory of Ikekai while keeping my actual life at a distance from the work. And that is gonna change. This episode is not really about me, it is about you. So before we close, I want to turn this back to you. What about you? Are you in a transition right now that you have not fully named yet? Maybe it's your kids growing up. Maybe it is a relationship shifting. Maybe it's a slow realization that the work that used to light you up does not light you up in the same way anymore. When was the last time you truly felt alive? Not because something special was happening, but because something inside you was awake. And what is the question that keeps surfacing in you? The one that you keep pushing to the side. The one that comes up in the middle of the night, the way mine did. Those questions are not problems to solve. They are messengers, the same way mine were. They are your transition speaking. And the more honestly you can answer them, the clearer your next chapter becomes. That late night question is the reason I'm bringing you this whole next chapter of the podcast differently. Over the next six weeks, this podcast is going to feel a little bit more personal, a little more honest, a little more like a real conversation between two women in midlife trying to figure out what comes next. I think that's what you've been waiting for. If anything I shared today is sitting with you, please go back and answer some of the questions I raised earlier and answer them honestly. Journal them and reflect on them. I can also help you with a guide called the 28 Days to Build in Confidence Guide. If you're feeling unsure of yourself right now, or of your direction, or if you have what it takes to really be who you want to be, this guide offers daily, simple routines to help boost your confidence in yourself. Along with a guide, you'll receive 28 days of short video lessons from me that walk you through finding your voice and stepping into your next chapter with confidence. The link is in the show notes. It is the perfect companion to the work we're going to be doing together over the next six weeks. So thank you for being here, my friend, and thank you for staying with me on this journey of transition and reinvention. It means the world to me. And remember, you get to decide what comes next. So say it with me and say it with confidence it's my time now.