#313: The Hidden Strengths That Can Reshape Your Midlife Career and Life Transitions

What if the greatest strength you have is one you can no longer see, or one you set down years ago?

In this Thursday companion to Monday's conversation with Deborah Knight (episode 312), Kavita continues the My Story series with a closer look at the first circle of ikigai: your strengths. The ones that can change your whole next chapter are often the ones you would never put on a resume. Some have gone invisible because they come so easily to you. Others have simply gone quiet, waiting for you to pick them back up. In midlife career and life transitions, learning to see and use these strengths again is what shifts your energy and opens unexpected doors.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why the strengths most central to your ikigai are usually the ones you have stopped noticing in yourself
• How anabolic energy, the expansive energy you feel when you use a true strength, begins to draw opportunities and people toward you
• A simple practice this week to surface a forgotten strength and put it back into use on purpose

Press play to reconnect with the gifts that have been with you all along and see what begins to open up when you let yourself use them again.

Have a question about a strength you have set down, or anything else on your own journey? Ask Me Anything! Send it to me for a future episode: Kavita@itsmytimenowcoaching.com

If something in this reflection stirred a strength that has been dormant for too long, book a complimentary Clarity and Next Chapter Call with Kavita or take the Career & Life Fulfillment Quiz to see where your next chapter wants to begin.

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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

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The greatest strength you have is one you can no longer see or one you set down years ago. Pick it back up, and it can open doors you cannot even imagine today. Stay with me and I'll show you how. 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. Hello and welcome back to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast. It's your coach Kavita with your Thursday check-in. We are continuing the My Story series, where I have shared elements of my story. And if you were with me on Monday, you heard Deborah Knight's story. If you missed it, go back to episode two hundred and twelve. Deborah is a woman who lost almost everything at forty-six years of age and built a life richer than the one that fell apart. And the part I keep coming back to is how she did it. She didn't start from scratch. She rebuilt on everything she already knew how to do. Everything she had spent years quietly becoming good at. Her strengths were the group ground she stood on, even when everything else had given way. So today I want to talk to you about your strengths. And I want to illuminate the word that has been sitting underneath this whole series. And that is Ikigai. Your reason for being. It lives where four things meet, and one of those four things is your strengths, the things you are truly good at. We will get to all four circles before this series is done, but today let's focus on only this one. Here's what I've come to believe about strengths. The ones that could change your whole next chapter are often the ones you wouldn't put on a resume. Some have gone invisible, the things you do so easily that you have you have stopped counting them as anything special at all, even though they are truly special. And some have simply gone quiet. A way you once led or created or brought people together, sat down somewhere along the way and never picked back up. They did not leave you. They have been waiting for you to find them. Think about it for a moment. Maybe you are the one everyone calls when their world falls apart because you stay steady and somehow always know what to say. Maybe you are the one who walks into a room full of strangers and have them feeling at home within minutes, without even trying. Maybe you are the one who sees the pattern in a mess that no one else can untangle, or the one who quietly holds a whole family, a whole team together while no one notices how much it actually takes to do that. You have done these things so many times and so effortlessly that you've stopped seeing them as anything special at all. But they are not nothing. They are you at your most natural, and that is exactly where your strengths live. And here is the part I most want you to hear. The moment you begin to use those strengths again, something changes in your energy. In my work it is called anabolic energy, and you do not need to f the term to really feel it. It's the expansive, lit up energy that rises when you are doing something you are genuinely good at. It is the opposite of catabolic energy, that heavy kind of draining kind of energy that comes from forcing yourself through work that was never yours. And anabolic energy does something almost strange. It draws things towards you. Opportunities that you don't see coming, people who seem to arrive at exactly the right moment. Listen to what happened to Deborah. After a period in her life when she had lost everything, she got back up and stepped back into the strength she already had, the talents that were always within her. And when she believed in herself again, old clients reappeared. The love of her life walked in. She will tell you it was the energy, the positive energy that gets created when you finally trust what you are capable of. And that is not luck, my friend. That is what your own strengths set in motion the moment you let yourself use them. Have you ever noticed when you are immersed in a task that you are truly good at and you love to do? Time flies by and this is when the sparks fly. This is when the ideas are generated, and this is when solutions are found. It is not random, it is you tapping into the inherent talent within you and bringing it into the world with confidence. So here is your practice this week. First, find one. Go to two or three people who know you well and ask them, What do you think I am genuinely good at? Or what do you always come to me for? I have done this with so many clients and they always report that what comes back surprises them because it is usually a talent that they think is no big deal. Then the next step is to use this talent, or think back and name a strength you have not used in years, one that used to light you up. Then do the real work. Use it once this week on purpose. Offer it or share it, put it somewhere it can be seen, and notice what shifts in your energy and in what begins to open up around you. Because the answers are really are within you. Sometimes you need someone to hold up the mirror so you can see what has been there all along, and sometimes you simply need to dust off a gift you forgot you had. So this is the Shrinth segment of Ikigai, and next week we will bring it all together with what the world really needs from you, that only you are equipped to contribute. Before then, if you have a simmering question about my story, about your journey, or anything in between, send it to me. Email me at cavita at it's my timeowcoaching.com, and yours just might be the question I answer in the next episode. If this week's conversation with Deborah or this reflection on your strengths has stirred up something in you which has been dormant for a long time, reach out and book a complimentary clarity and next chapter session with me. I'm here to listen, to offer my perspectives on where you are and who you may want to be moving forward. 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.