[0.0] You don't need to blow up your life to change it.
[2.8] Today, we talk about the one small step back to the part of you that you bear it.
[9.8] Welcome to the midlife reinvention podcast, a podcast helping women in career and life transitions
[17.9] achieve clarity on their next steps so they can transform uncertainty into an energizing next chapter.
[26.6] I'm your host, Kavita Ahuja and the founder of It's My Time Now Coaching.
[33.5] If you're wondering what's next in your career or life, you are in the right place.
[40.3] Through solo and guest episodes, you'll gain practical tips, tools and inspiration to help
[46.8] you uncover blocks, gain confidence, and be, do and have what you want.
[54.4] I rediscovered myself after the age of 50 and I know you can too.
[60.6] It's my time now to help you do just that.
[64.1] I'm so excited you're here.
[66.5] Let's dive in.
[67.5] Hello and welcome back to the Midlife Reinvention Podcast.
[74.6] It's your coach Kivita with your Thursday check-in.
[78.6] On Monday in episode 320, we sat with a real cost of burying a passion.
[85.4] It quietly takes from you to keep the truest part of yourself folded away.
[91.5] If you haven't heard it yet, please go back and listen first because today grows right
[95.6] ahead of it.
[97.6] On Monday we named the cost.
[100.5] Today I want to give you the way back.
[103.6] And my friend is so much smaller than you think.
[107.2] Here is what stops most women.
[110.4] You believe the way back to yourself has to be enormous, but you have to quit the job
[115.8] or up in the family, disappoint everyone who counts on you, and gamble the whole house on
[121.8] a dream.
[123.8] And when the only way out looks that big and that terrifying, you do the most human thing
[129.0] there is, you do nothing.
[131.0] You stay exactly where you are, and the passion stays buried for another year.
[138.3] So let me take that fear off the table right now.
[142.6] You don't need a grand gesture, you don't need the five-year plan, you don't even need to
[148.2] know where it leads, you just need one hour.
[153.3] Let me show you what one hour actually looks like because I don't want this to stay
[158.0] as a nice idea, I want you to see it.
[162.6] When I first uncovered that this were, my coaching, the speaking, the podcasting, was my
[169.2] icky guy or reason for being, I didn't quit my life and announce a new career.
[175.7] I spent one hour learning how to, for example, use a microphone.
[181.4] That's it.
[182.8] I sat at my desk with a piece of equipment.
[185.1] I didn't understand, and I fumbled through it for an hour.
[189.7] That one hour became this podcast here listening to right now, and that's where I started.
[196.0] And the woman I told you about on Monday, the scientist who had buried her art and her
[200.5] music, her first hour was simply picking up her instrument again after years of it sitting
[206.7] untouched, just playing it for one hour, for no reason other than she loved it.
[213.9] of her hours later on was opening up a small online shop to put her art into the world
[220.3] for the very first time. One hour to set it up, that was the whole leap.
[225.6] I think of another woman I worked with, the one who had climbed the top of her corporate
[230.6] career and felt empty at the top. Whenever first hours was spent doing nothing more than
[237.2] researching design schools around the world, she wasn't enrolling, she wasn't quitting
[243.0] her job, she was just letting herself look, for one hour, at a door she had never allowed
[249.2] herself to even glance at.
[251.3] So do you see it now?
[254.3] Not one of them blew up their life.
[256.7] Each one gave a single hour to the thing that was calling her.
[260.1] And here's why that hour matters so much more than it looks.
[265.6] When you give yourself an hour on something you truly love, you release a different kind
[270.0] of energy.
[271.4] call it anabolic energy, that alive expansive energy that is a really opposite of the
[277.6] heaviness that we sat with on Monday.
[281.0] And it doesn't stay inside the hour.
[283.7] It spills into the rest of your day.
[286.4] My one microphone hour gave me the energy for the next hour and the next.
[291.7] Her one hour with the instrument gave her the courage to publish her music on YouTube.
[297.8] One hour becomes the first step, and the first step shows you the second, and that is how
[302.9] a path lights up.
[305.1] Not all at once.
[306.8] One run at a time.
[309.0] Now I have to be honest with you about that one hour, because on Monday we talked about
[313.1] why the passion got buried in the first place.
[316.6] All those years of being practical, of doing what was expected, of putting everyone else
[322.3] first.
[323.7] So when you sit down to take your hour and old voice is going to show up.
[328.5] The one that says that this is selfish, this is indulgent.
[332.2] Who do you think you are?
[334.0] There are a hundred more important things to do right now.
[337.3] I want you to expect that voice.
[339.4] And I want you to take the hour anyway, because that hour is not selfish.
[345.9] That hour is you finally answering a part of yourself you've been kept waiting for years.
[352.0] You haven't even decades to everyone else.
[355.0] You can give one hour to you.
[357.9] So here is your invitation this week, and notice how small I'm making it on purpose.
[364.0] Find one hour.
[365.4] Not every day.
[366.6] Just one this week.
[368.6] Give it to the one thing that you have buried.
[371.9] Maybe your hour is pulling out an instrument you have not touched in years.
[376.6] Maybe it's signing up for one class.
[379.5] Maybe it's researching something you've always been curious about the way she looked
[383.5] up those design schools.
[386.4] Maybe it's putting one piece of your writing or your art or your baking out into the world.
[392.1] Maybe it's just sitting with a sketchbook and letting your hand move.
[397.0] Whatever it was that used to make you lose all the track of time.
[401.8] Don't attach a goal to it.
[404.0] Don't try to turn it into a plan or a business.
[407.4] skip yourself that hour and pay attention to how you feel while you are in it and afterwards
[413.9] because that feeling is your answer. That feeling is a part of you that has never actually
[419.2] gone away. That one hour is your first step back to yourself. It is a smallest thing and
[426.1] is also the thing that changes everything because it proves to you what you've been
[430.8] afraid to believe all along. The way back was never a cliff you had to leap off.
[437.3] It was a step that you can take today.
[439.7] And if you want to hand turning that 1B hour into something steady, my free 28 days to
[446.5] building confidence guide is made exactly for this.
[450.6] It is simple daily practices that build a quiet, growing certainty one day at a time.
[457.8] The link is waiting for you in the shones.
[461.1] So remember my friend, you get to decide what comes next.
[465.9] So say it with me and say it with confidence.
[469.4] It's my time now.