#308: The Inheritance You've Forgotten About in Your Career and Life Transition

Have you ever felt like the woman you are today is missing something the woman you used to be already knew?

This week marks the start of a brand new series called My Story, where Kavita finally answers a question one of her clients asked that she had been quietly avoiding for five years. As you sit in your own career or life transition, this series is an invitation to listen for yourself in someone else's story, to notice where your themes echo, and to remember the courage that has been sitting inside you all along, waiting for you to claim it.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• The cultural roots and family story that shaped Kavita, and why your own history holds essential clues for navigating change today
• How the values that built your life in your twenties and thirties may no longer be the values calling you now, and what that signals about your next chapter
• The one reflection question to sit with this week that can shift how you see your story and your capacity to move through this life transition

Press play to remember the bravery already written into your story, and to begin recognizing the version of it that is asking to lead you into what's next.

Ask Me Anything:  If there is a question burning in you about Kavita’s  journey, your journey, or anything in between, send her an email at Kavita@itsmytimenowcoaching.com. She  will be answering your questions in the episodes ahead..

If something in this episode is stirring in you and you are ready to explore what your next chapter could look like, book a Clarity and Next Chapter Call with Kavita or take the Career & Life Fulfillment Quiz to see where you are right now and what is calling you forward. 

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New episodes every Monday and Thursday.

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

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There is a question I have been avoiding for five years. Today, my friend, I'm finally answering it. 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 question one of my dearest clients, Jen, asked me that I've been avoiding for five years, and the invitation I want to extend to you that came out of it. Second, the cultural roots and family story that shaped the woman who is sitting here talking to you today, and the lesson it holds for you about your own roots. And third, the courage I had forgotten I inherited, and the question I want you to sit with by the time we close. So stay with me to the end because by then I want you to have one specific question to take into the rest of your week. A question that if you let it, may change how you see your own story. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Midlife Reinvention Podcast. It's your coach Kavita, and welcome to a brand new month of possibilities. June is here, my friend, and with it comes the start of a new series I've been preparing for. A series I'm calling my story. Today is episode 308. Over five years since I began this journey of this podcast, and I'd like to make good on a promise I made to you a few episodes ago after my son's wedding. I told you then I would share more of my story, the real truth of how I got from where I was to where I am today, and all the identity shifts I've been through. Today is where that begins. I'm so humbled and grateful to be sitting here right now with thousands of listeners around the world who tune in every week when you could really be anywhere listening to anyone. And I don't take that lightly. I am also so grateful for my beautiful clients who have encouraged me to share more of my journey with you. One in particular, Jen Slabin, is one of my dearest clients, who in our last session said to me, Cavita, I'm curious about your journey and why you don't share more of it on your podcast. The good, the bad, and the ugly. For all your listeners to learn from. She wants me to talk about what my gremlins were and still are, how I did this, how I started, why I decided to become a coach, the moment I discovered my Ikigai, my path before coaching, and what were my pivotal moments in my own midlife journey. Jen, I thank you so much for these questions because in asking them I realized others may have the same questions. And it also made me think, why haven't I shared all of these details before? I have in bits and pizzas, but not in detail. I asked myself why, and truthfully it was my own inner critic stopping me. She was whispering that you weren't interested, that this podcast is is about you, not me. But my inner wisdom knew better. She was telling me, of course, share your story. So I'm giving the energy to her instead. Jen kindly also suggested that I bring it open to you, my listener. To ask me anything. What do you want to know about me, my journey, or anything you want to learn more about? So as a result of Jen's thoughtful questions, I'm opening it up to you to ask me anything. All you have to do is send me an email to Kevita at it'smytimenowcoaching dot com and ask me your question. And I promise I will answer your questions in the upcoming episodes. Now before I go back to the beginning, here's something I want to say. This series is called my story, but really it's our story. Because in all my years of coaching women through midlife transitions, I've come to understand something. The details of our lives are wildly different. The countries we were born in, the families that shaped us, the careers we built, the moments that finally cracked us open. All different, but underneath those details, the themes are remarkably the same. The restlessness that has no name, the success that no longer feels like success, the identity that no longer fits but we don't know how to shed. The dreams we have for ourselves that often have not got realized. So, as I share what I share over the next several weeks, I want you to listen differently. Not for facts about me. Listen for the places where you recognize yourself, where one of my questions becomes one of yours, where a piece of my path lights up a piece of your own. Where you find yourself thinking, Oh, I felt that too. Because a gift of someone else's story is never the story itself, it is what the story unlocks in you.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

So, while you're listening to mine, the work is to listen for yours. So let me begin.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Many of you may know that in addition to being a podcaster, I'm a career and life transitions coach, and I absolutely love what I do because I get to guide and witness firsthand transformations in people's lives which quite literally alter the trajectory of their lives. It is truly a passion that I think I was born with. Our histories matter, and I'm sharing mine because I want you to think about yours too. What were you like as a child? What events led you to where you are now, and what formative experiences can you connect the dots to where you are now? For those of you who don't know, I am Indian and I'm also Canadian. I was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and my parents came to Canada when I was just two years old in 1968. I often talk about the adventure and entrepreneurial spirit of my grandparents and my parents, and that really didn't dawn on me until I excavated my own entrepreneurial nature. Think of this. In the 1930s, my grandparents moved from Punjab, India to Kenya, a totally wild country completely different to anything they had ever known, to establish the railways there. There was no internet, no nothing to prepare them for what lay ahead. That's how our ancestors were, weren't they? Have you ever thought about yours? Where were they born? Where did they move to? And what clues did they give you about your own journey and personality? At that time so many Indians moved to East Africa and they established themselves as business people, farmers, entrepreneurs, by nature. They had to amalgamate into a completely new culture, language, and environment. My parents described it as living in the most beautiful but wildest and exciting place to grow up in. As my grandparents established themselves there, they learned the language, which was Swahili. They became merchants and laborers and successful business people. They established their own community and raised their children in a simple life. My parents were educated there, and my father was also an entrepreneur and eventually had a successful wheat farming business among many other things. My mother became a teacher, and their love story is one for the ages. My mother used to watch my dad drive past her house every morning at eight thirty AM in his convertible with his dark shades. He was an extremely handsome man, and he still is. And she used to dream about marrying him. Again, the dream. She fell in love with him without speaking a word to him. And so it goes, they met, and he equally fell in love with her. And before he was meant to be whisked away to India for arranged marriage, he asked my grandfather for her hand in marriage. Such an innocent and beautiful story. I never get tired of hearing it. Sometimes I wish the simplicity of those times would be here now. So they got married and had a beautiful life in Nairobi and on the farm, raising three girls of which I was the youngest. As history goes, political tensions forced Indians to leave East Africa in the sixties, and they had to relocate. Imagine that, having three young daughters, a young couple and family, and having to uproot to another country. Where in the world would they go? The bravery my parents showed by choosing Canada, its harsh winters, hardly anyone around them that looked like them or spoke their language, history repeating itself again. The immigrant story is so rich with contrasts and lessons. Without that bravery and vision for a successful life for their children to guide them, I wouldn't be here speaking with you about this today. Imagine the vision and courage our grandparents and parents must have had to establish a life for their children, going from a place of familiarity and comfort to completely unknown places, with only the belief that it would all work out in the end. Have we lost that same vision and bravery? I sometimes think we have. We get comfortable in where we are, and in any thought of moving beyond that box of comfort gives us anxiety. It's not only in where we live, it's in everything we do. What if our parents had remained in their respective boxes? What then? So they did move, and as young girls growing up in a new country, I was just a baby, so I really knew nothing else. We watched our parents work so hard, struggling to make ends meet, but never in my entire childhood did I ever witness them complain. They slowly developed a community of friends, established themselves in their careers, bought a home, put us through school, and with that same entrepreneurial spirit explored their new surroundings. It reminds me that when we complain about what we don't have, more of that will come to us, versus if we appreciate all that is in front of us, more of that abundance will flow to us. And they did just that. In whatever they did, they made the most of it. I'll never forget as a child, our parents would take us camping throughout the country in the Rocky Mountains on all throughout Canada and the US, to explore, to learn about new cultures, to meet new people, to appreciate the world around them. Do we build these same type of communities and friendships now? Do we explore the nature and life and places around us? Even going for a walk in the woods, or for that matter, around our neighborhoods. So the next chapter of my own story begins in my teenage years. As a young girl, I was always fascinated by reading because it just took me to places I'd never been allowed to see, and it really allowed me to dream. My husband always says that I'm a dreamer, and that's what he loves about me, and that is truly where it comes from. I would read and I would write amazing stories, and I actually forgot about that passion I had when I was a child until much later. What were you passionate about when you were a child? And do you remember how you felt when you pursued that passion? Can you bring that same passion into what you're doing now? As a daughter of immigrant parents, they had always instilled values in us, and the value of education and marriage and raising children was instilled in us in a very young age. If I'm gonna be honest, they never forced this upon us. In fact, my two older sisters were encouraged to pursue a shorter college education versus a university degree so that they could get married sooner. But I wanted nothing of that. I had a desire, always had a desire in me to learn more, to be educated, so it would open up doors that I could walk through. I was top of my class in high school on into university, and I was the only one in my family to get not one but two degrees.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

And my love of learning has really never left me. And that brings me to another point. Our values. Where do they come from?

SPEAKER_01 14:39

If we look at our histories, a big part of our value system is ingrained from a very young age. Education, marriage, community, respect for elders. Those are the values I was raised with, yet we develop our own in different transitions in life. And those values can and do change. So why do we stay stuck in the same old value system and then wonder why something feels off when we grow older? Sit with that for a moment. The values that built your life may not be the values that are calling you now. And that doesn't make you ungrateful.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

It makes you ready.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

My parents inherited their bravery from their parents. Their parents inherited it from theirs. And here I am, generations later, having inherited every bit of it. But somewhere along the way I forgot. I forgot that I came from people who crossed oceans. I forgot that the same blood that built railways and farms and new lives in new countries was running through me too. So what I want to leave you with today is this. Every one of us is standing on a foundation built by people who were braver than they had to be. People who chose the unknown over comfortable. People who believed in something they couldn't yet see. And underneath, whatever transition you are sitting in right now, whether it's the career one, the marriage one, the identity one, the empty nest one, there is a version of that same bravery waiting inside of you. The question is whether you remember it, or whether, like I did, you forgot it for a while. Next week I'm gonna take you into the years where I did forget. The years where I followed the playbook beautifully. The education, the career, the recognition, the marriage, the life that looked exactly right from the outside. And how a life that looks exactly right can still leave you, decades later, quietly wondering why something feels off. If that is the chapter you're living in right now, I want you to come back next week. I think you'll see yourself in it. In the meantime, sit with this. What did you inherit that you have forgotten about? What courage is sitting inside you waiting for you to remember it? What part of your story have you stopped telling yourself? And one more thing before we close. This whole series is being shaped by you two. If there is a question burning in you, something about my journey, your journey, or anything in between, send me an email at Cavita at it's my timeowcoaching.com. I will be answering your questions in the episodes ahead. Because your story matters as much as mine, my friend. And the whole point of me telling mine is that you can begin to tell yours. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen because next week's episode 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.