Healthy Pivots, Money and Love
As a coach, I often see people struggling. They’re burned out by work, parenting, and the stress of trying to meet commitments and everyone else’s priorities—and for many, it’s been that way for years.
Unfortunately, when I talk to people who have successfully pivoted from that experience, the catalyzing moment was traumatic, such as a personal health crisis, loss of a loved one, or relationship break. In those moments, they were forced to reconsider what was essential and the lives they wanted to lead. This prompted them to shed obligations that no longer fit and reallocate their time, attention, and emotional energy to what mattered most.
A few weeks ago, my friend Abby Davisson emailed me about next week’s release of the paperback edition of her book, Money and Love, which she wrote with Myra Strober, the professor of the Work & Family class we both took at business school. The book is all about strategies for making life decisions that align with our authentic priorities.
When we caught up, there was lots of fun, but I asked her about what enables people to make proactive and healthy life pivots without the trauma, figuring that her research and the people she’s met on the book tour would have given her an interesting perspective on. She said something that really stuck with me:
“We don’t have enough intergenerational relationships.”
Abby’s point was that we can gain wisdom by dealing with difficult circumstances, or we can leverage the accumulated wisdom of those who have gone before us. For instance, she shared that while they were writing Money and Love, Myra was the primary caregiver to her husband while his chronic illness steadily worsened. He passed away before they turned in the manuscript.
Abby told me the experience prompted them to change a chapter title from “The Golden Years” to “The Senior Years” to reflect that none of us can guarantee that period of life will be easy. Myra’s insights about the experience helped Abby and her family incorporate the lesson—that there’s no time like the present to move toward the life you want.
Abby’s insight about intergenerational relationships resonated with me because I’ve recently hosted a couple of “Parent Wisdom Dinners,” where I brought together people with young kids like mine and those whose kids are now adults. We asked them, “What do you know now that you wish you had known before?”
What struck me most from the dinner was how the complex questions of parenting, education, and career choices we were wrestling with were almost instantly clearer with the insights of the more experienced parents. If we hadn’t taken the time to ask, the confusion would have lasted. But because we did, we didn’t have to learn the hard way.
Many of us are lucky enough to have older relatives, friends, and colleagues, but do we ask them the important questions? And most importantly, do we listen to what they’re saying?