#85. On Assessing Your Current Life Situation, with Kavita Ahuja

If you are in a transition right now, perhaps in your career or other aspects of your life, before you can take action with confidence, it's so important to really rediscover who you are and what you really want. In order to do that, you must reflect on very direct questions that will require your honest answers. In order to make concrete and positive shifts, we have to assess our current situation honestly.

When I started on my journey of, uh, rediscovery, I had many different emotions including fear, uncertainty, confusion, but at the same time, excitement and anticipation.

When we embark on anything new, it's normal to have these emotions and it's also important to acknowledge them. It's normal to have these feelings, and I actually encourage you to journal them and what are you feeling right now if you are in a state of transition right now in your life or career? I wanna take a few moments now to talk to you about some concepts around transitions, especially around midlife transitions.

These concepts can apply to any stage in our life, but the midlife stage has some unique characteristics. The first concept is the difference between a midlife crisis and a midlife transition. In society when we reach a certain age and start to question our life moving forward, this is immediately referred to as a crisis. In fact, the term was coined by a psychoanalyst, his name was Elliot Jax, in 1965 and caught on in popular culture.

Yet when investigated further, there was actually no such phenomenon in in the scientific literature. I'd really like you to turn that on its head and look at what you're going through right now not as a crisis, but as an opportunity. There's a few other concepts I'd like to review right now. One is called the U-curve of Happiness.

And you may have heard about it before. It was a 2008 study by economists by the name of David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald found that happiness declines in a U-shape from youth through midlife hitting a low around the age of 50 and rising to a peak around 70.

What happens during this middle period is we begin to examine our life and look for more meaning. As we find this meeting, we generally start to swoop up the other side of the curve. Another concept I'd like to review is a difference between transition and change. I was introduced to this concept by Linda Rosetti, a Harvard MBA and researcher and expert on transitions, whom I also interviewed on, uh, on my podcast, so you can listen to the podcasts I have on my website.

Linda's extensive research shows that transitions occur when there's a shift in what holds value and meaning to us. They really require us to reexamine our identity, our capacity, and our values. Transitions are an incredible invitation to unlock the enormous potential that is resonant within each.

Transitions is really about the shifts in how we think about ourselves and they have more to do about our beliefs, about who we are and how we, how we bring meaning into this world, and this is different from change, which is very goal oriented. And transitions are comprised of three parts, a trigger, a decision, and an action. For example, you may have experienced a triggering event.

For example, a job loss, a divorce perhaps, and said an empty nest menopause, which is now is causing you to make a decision about what to do next. Often, when these triggering events happen, we think we can fix it by changing the situation. For example, when I became unsatisfied with my work and my children were left the house and I went through menopause all at the same time, I thought maybe by changing my job, it would fix everything.

At the time, however, I didn't realize that that was not the case. Changing the situation would not fix everything. Rather, I had to reexamine my changing identity, my capacity, and my values, and ask myself very hard questions like, who am I? What do I really want, and what should I do next? What I'm asking you to do now is be willing to ask these questions of yourself, and I will guide you through this process.

You have likely experienced one or more triggers, which have either occurred in an instant or over the course of time. The decision you have made to examine where you are now is such an important one and will lay the foundation for a concrete action plan for your life moving forward.

I brought these concepts forward to stress to you that what you're feeling is normal. The fact that you are here should tell you that you are ready to make the transition in your. Everything that you need is to make the shift is within you, and I'm here to guide you to do just that. Of course, making these transitions are not easy. We are held back by so many obstacles. Obstacles, which are often perceived and not real, and are mainly in the form of our fears.

Fears that I'm not good enough, I'm not qualified enough, smart enough, or the fear of judgment.

What will people think. Or the fear of failure. What if I fail? Or even the fear of success? What if I actually succeed?

Do any of these fears resonate with you? Take a moment now to acknowledge and write down which fears may be holding you back at this moment. And why do these fears arise? As we have explored many times through this podcast and in my through about the podcast I've done and in my other trainings, they arise mainly to protect us, to keep us small in our comfort zones. And if the only way to move forward is to grow, is to take one step and then the next, and by doing so, our confidence builds.

Fear is always there, but it's how we deal with it that really matters. Despite all the obstacles that may feel like they're in your way, it can be done. Sometimes we just have to heed that little voice that sends inside our heads because it's giving us important signs. So as I mentioned, I developed a process which is depicted in the notes below, and you can click on them and and get more information on that.

It's called the Pyramid of Reinvention, which I will go through in my coaching program and which will go through over the many next many videos that I will be sharing with you. I go through this in detail with my coaching clients, both one-on-one and in groups. So if you'd like to dive deeply more deeply into this, reach out to me and we can schedule a complimentary initial consultation to start on your, on your journey. The process has six steps. The first is rediscovering yourself.

The second is envisioning your future. The third is facing your obstacles. Fourth is gaining confidence, and the fifth and sixth are action and accountability. It has worked for me and it has worked for countless other women, so it requires you to really be honest with yourself and ask yourself hard question. So we'll go a little bit in today into the first exercise we do in the re-discovery phase, and which is to assess major areas of your life and your level of satisfaction in each.

Below, you will see you can access something called the Wheel of Life. And the Wheel of Life is separated in this case into eight areas. The first career or profession, the second family or parenting, third personal development. Fourth, spiritual awareness. Five. Fun and enjoyment. Six. Relationships, both intimate and social. Seven, health and aging. Eight, personal finance. As you look into each of these areas, think about what success or satisfaction would feel like in each.

So in order to complete the Wheel of life, please do the following. And if you have it, I'd, I'd love you to print it out and we can do this exercise, even pause the video and then do it afterwards. So for each section of the wheel, circle the number that represents your current level of satisfaction. The higher the number, the more satisfied you are in that area where one is very dissatisfied and 10 is fully satisfied.

Use a number that just pops into your head, not the number that you think it should be. Next, connect the numbers, the circle in each section with a line, so now that you have a new perimeter of the wheel, now take a look at the wheel. Is it a bumpy ride? How do you feel about your life as you look at this wheel? Are there any surprises for you? Maybe you take a look at which categories would you most like to improve?

You can easily see them, like you can see the, the lower one has a the least satisfaction. That's probably the one that you wanna work on most. And then rank the importance of, of the areas that you'd like to work on in the top three areas. So do this exercise and answer the following questions. And once you do them, like how do you currently spend time in these three areas? And how would you like to spend time instead in those area?

What specifically do you like or dislike about your current situation in these three areas and just ideate, what would a score of 10 look like in those two top three areas that you've chosen? There's no right or wrong answers here, ideate, anything that comes to your mind. Finally, you can ask yourself, are you ready to make a change in these three areas? And what is the top area right now that you wanna focus on in your transition? So take a minute and pause the video, and then do the exercise.

Walk through it as I, as I just, uh, walked it through you, with you. So what is the point of this exercise? The point is to really look into your life and figure out what areas might be out of balance, which are preventing you from rolling smoothly through the changes in your. It is a tool that can help you create positive change as you face transitions in your life.

This will can be revisited as many times as you like, of course, and it really is a good indicator of how you are doing right now. If you don't know where we are right now, it's really difficult to know where we should, where we'd like to go, right? So listen to this video over again and follow the instructions and answer the questions on your own. See what comes up for you as you assess your current life situation.

I would love it if you reached out to me with any insights you've gained from this first exercise as we follow the pyramid of reinvention together. Let me know if you enjoy this type of work and if you have any questions or feedback. I'm committed to transforming the lives of each of you by guiding you to realize your true purpose and potential. If you want one-on-one guidance, reach out to me and then let's book a chat.

I'd love to know which area you chose and how you feel about your bill of life. What insights did you. Thank you for listening, and we'll go through further steps in future videos because I want you to say and believe with confidence. It's My Time Now. Thank you so much. Till next time, stay well. Stay safe.