Viveka 
What does it mean when you ask “is this all there is?” at 50 or 55?
It means you’ve hit the edge of a role that used to fit and no longer does — and it’s a signal worth listening to, not a symptom to medicate with a vacation. I recently sat down with Dorien Morin on her Strategy Talks podcast to talk through “Rocking Your Career Pivot,” and the honest answer to how mine started is embarrassingly simple: “When I turned 55 last year, I was like, there definitely has to be more to this.”
That wasn’t dissatisfaction in the ordinary sense. I wasn’t miserable, and nothing had gone wrong. It was a deep yearning for evolution showing up right on schedule, the way it does for so many accomplished women who’ve built something real and then find themselves standing at a crossroads anyway — still capable, still respected, and still asking whether “successful” and “fulfilled” are actually the same word. They’re not always. That gap is where the pivot begins.
How do you actually start a career pivot when there’s no roadmap?
You start with a mindset shift, then you build the roadmap yourself, because nobody is going to hand you one that fits. My own pivot began with recognizing my decades of experience and judgment as formidable assets rather than the thing I needed to apologize for or downplay — that reframe alone changed what I thought I was allowed to want next.
From there, the second move was getting honest about my “why.” Not a vision-board why — the real one. “You have to tap into that deeper knowing, intuition, calling, whatever you want to call it,” and let that be the thing that decides, not the market, not what looked impressive on paper, not what other people expected of someone with my resume. That purpose became the guiding star that kept me aligned when the path got confusing, which it did, repeatedly.
The third move was building the actual plan. When I went looking for one, there wasn’t a roadmap for “executive leaving a company she helped build and figuring out what’s next at 55” — so I put one together myself, and eventually that became the book I co-wrote with Dayna Steele, 101 Ways to Rock Change. The lesson underneath it holds regardless of whether you ever write a book about it: a personalized plan, built from your own goals, skills, and passions, is not optional. Generic advice will not carry you through this.
What should you actually do first — three moves that made the pivot survivable?
Commit to learning on purpose, rebuild your network deliberately, and protect your health like it’s part of the business plan — because it is. These aren’t inspirational extras; they were the load-bearing walls of my own transition.
On learning: I immersed myself in whatever was relevant to where I was heading. “I looked for books, I looked for roadmaps, I looked for podcasts and experts” who could hand me both knowledge and the evidence that this was survivable. LinkedIn Learning was one of the places I went — I have courses there myself now, which is its own small proof that the student eventually becomes part of the roadmap for the next person.
On network: community did more for this pivot than any single strategy decision. Existing relationships and new ones gave me support, accountability, and opportunities I couldn’t have engineered on my own. But the harder truth is that some of that same work was about who I let go of. “You really do have to go inside and let your intuition guide you — you have to make that decision to let go of what no longer serves you.” Not every relationship built around the old version of you is going to survive the new one, and that’s not a failure of the pivot, it’s part of it.
On health: this is the one people skip and then wonder why the rest falls apart. My well-being became non-negotiable, because “you need to find ways to tap into that deeper knowing,” and you cannot hear that knowing over the noise of a body you’re not taking care of. Routines that nurtured my body and my spirit were the foundation everything else got built on top of, not a nice-to-have around the edges of it.
How do you deal with ageism when you’re pivoting after 50?
You deal with it by naming it accurately and refusing to let it set your price. Part of what I talked through with Dorien is the plain fact that “we start to become more invisible... and this very youth-focused world, people stop listening to us as much.” That’s real. It is also not a verdict on what you’re capable of doing next — it’s a bias in the room, and the move is to walk in already knowing it’s there instead of being blindsided by it.
Viewing your age as an asset, not a liability, is the actual reframe — the years you spent building judgment are the exact thing a business built on your name can’t be copied without. Everyone pivoting after 50 has to find the resolve to face this one directly; nobody gets to skip it.
What about the money — how do you plan the financial side of a pivot?
You build a clear, actionable financial plan before the anxiety builds one for you. Understanding the real financial implications of the change you’re making — what’s coming in, what’s going out, what the gap looks like while the new thing gets its legs — is what turns “scary” into “specific,” and specific is a plan you can actually work.
This is also where the emotional side and the financial side meet. The rollercoaster of a real pivot is genuine, and having mentors who’ve navigated similar transitions gave me both the practical playbook and the reassurance that the wobble I was feeling wasn’t a sign I’d made the wrong call.
What is the liminal space, and why does it matter for your pivot?
The liminal space is the in-between stretch where the old title is gone and the new one hasn’t fully formed yet — and it’s not a delay to rush through, it’s where the actual transformation happens. I’ve written before about what it takes to live inside that in-between without panicking your way out of it, and this pivot is exactly where that idea came from.
“It’s in that liminal space where who you really were meant to be is starting to formulate and find itself.” Enter it on purpose, with the right mindset, and it stops being a void you’re falling through and starts being the workshop where the next chapter gets built.
What does “letting go to grow” actually require you to do?
It requires releasing past achievements that no longer serve you, even the ones you’re proud of, so there’s room for what comes next. That’s harder than it sounds — you spent years earning those achievements, and letting go of them can feel like erasing the work instead of what it actually is, which is making space.
Part of letting go is also learning what to delegate. “Do what only you can do and then find other people to do the rest.” You do not have to personally carry every piece of the new thing you’re building — trying to is how a pivot meant to free you turns into a second version of the job you just left.
What happens after the pivot — what does the phoenix stage actually feel like?
It feels like renewal you didn’t get without cost, and that cost is real: “you are going to have to burn some stuff away and you’re going to have to burn some of yourself away as well.” That’s not a metaphor to soften the hard part — it is the hard part, and naming it plainly is more useful than pretending transformation is only ever gentle.
Acknowledge that the burn is real, and then let yourself take the win for walking through it anyway. My own pivot wasn’t just a change of career; it was aligning my professional life with what I actually valued instead of what looked good from the outside — and that alignment is the whole point, not a bonus feature.
Where should you start if you’re standing at your own crossroads right now?
Start with the mindset shift, get honest about your “why,” and build a plan sized to your own goals instead of borrowing someone else’s. You don’t need the whole roadmap solved before you take the first step — you need enough clarity to take the next one, and the one after that.
If you’re in the thick of figuring out what a pivot built around what you already know could actually look like, that’s precisely the work I do with clients — you can see how the engagements are structured on the Work With Me page. I’ve also mapped the fuller arc of this transition, from the first cracks to what comes after, in the Constriction to Creation series.