Ep.91 – Avivah Wittenberg-Cox – The Hidden Secret: The Best Decades of Your Life For Parents

Podcast

Dec 8

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What if you woke up and suddenly realized you had more time? Not just hours, days, or weeks, but decades?

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox thinks about time in not only decades but in 25-year increments. As someone who thought in her thirties she would be retired at age 60, she now finds herself starting anew again, refreshed by the ability to start something new because she may only be at the halfway point of her life.

With this point of view, Avivah wrote a Harvard Business Review article that, instead of focusing on the challenges and stresses of being a working parent, she instead focused on the joy, knowing that this would be one of many life transitions.

There were four areas that Avivah, looking back now, wished were easier to remember while she was in the middle of raising her family. One of the most important was loving your spouse or partner and not demoting your relationship to the bottom of the pile.

Life transitions have constantly been a part of the conversations throughout the history of this show. So Avivah's work should remind all of us, especially parents, that being a working parent can and is hard. But as you get older, like many other things, it gets better and better.

Building up your life transition skills is worth the time and energy. Skills that involve "letting the inside out" by exploring uncharted territories. Or "letting the outside in" through seeking feedback from the outside world.

According to Avivah, "longevity means that, more than ever, we need to plan for change. Using the gift of decades requires acknowledging their existence and deciding what you want to do with them. People say you can't have it all, but the gift of time gives us new options to have a lot more than we ever thought possible."

Please enjoy my conversation with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox.