#193 From Mom’s Path to Her Own: Building Career Confidence for Daughters with Ilana Levitt Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:04
How much does your career story influence your daughter’s future more than you might think, from the language you use about work to how you handle stress to the choices you make about staying or leaving a job, your daughter is absorbing it all, whether she plans to follow in your footsteps or forge a completely different path. Alana tolpin Levitt, licensed counselor, career coach and author of what’s mom still got to do with it, has spent decades uncovering how the mother daughter dynamic shapes career confidence and decision making. In our conversation, we unpack the career blueprint daughters inherit the fine line between supporting and controlling, and why giving your daughter emotional permission to dream differently may be the best career advice you’ll ever offer. I’m Lisa Marco Robins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation. You

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:05
Alana, my friend, welcome to the

Ilana Levitt 2:07
show. Thank you, Lisa, I’m so happy to be here. Ah, I am

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:12
thrilled to talk about this topic, about moms and daughters, and it’s not really the typical moms and daughters conversation, it’s moms and daughters and careers and what we need to be thinking of I love it because I have a 24 year old daughter, and I know you’re going to give me lots of great information to help me. I’m a mom of boys. Also. I have a sister. I have a stepdaughter. I have a mother. So as I was preparing, I was thinking about all the things. And so you have a great like bio of you’re doing a lot of things, organizational psychology, clinical psychologist, wonderful author, Career Coach, which is how we know each other. And so this idea of mothers and daughters, I’m sure you encounter it a lot in your clinical counseling practice, but then there’s a career impact that goes into the other piece, and then there was enough of it that you decided to write a book. So tell me about those connections, the intersection, and why it deserves

Ilana Levitt 3:19
absolutely well, you know, when I when I do a lot of public speaking, and when I start my talks, I talk about how I My mother was a psychoanalyst, and growing up, I saw what she did, and I knew I liked it, sort of, but I didn’t want to be just like her. So I made all these decisions to do something different. I studied Counseling Psychology instead of clinical psychology or social work, and I got into career work, and then I needed an office in New York City, and I asked her if I could use her office, and she said, Yes, she didn’t use it on Tuesdays, so I literally was sitting in her chair waiting for my first client. I said, Oh my god. How did this happen? I did all these things to be different, and I’m literally sitting in the woman’s chair, and it blew me away. And then a few years later, we talked about how these all these father son partnerships, and she and I decided to run mother daughter relationship workshops, and we did that for 12 years, until, sadly, she died of ovarian cancer. But it was the most magical work we saw hundreds and 1000s of women under over for over 12 years in these workshops where we were exploring the relationship. Those were great. And then years after my mother died, I would ask women, you know, who their role models are, mentors. I would ask men, too, and they would always have answers. Men have had role models throughout the years. And then I would ask women, and a lot of them would look at me like, What do you mean? And I realized there were patterns. When we look at the mother daughter relationship in where women have career struggles, career successes, there was a connection. And I thought, Oh, this topic has not been explored. I’m going to take these two things. I’m expert in and I’m going to marry them, and that has not been explored. So that was great, and that’s how the book was born.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 5:07
I love the story, so take me back. I like the story about you and your mom. So you were you were dancing around the edges, doing similar work to what she was doing, but trying to be different enough. Why

Ilana Levitt 5:23
was very I actually was very different because she was, she was European, born and a psychoanalyst, and had a degree in group therapy and group process, and I was always much more I’m very different, like I was, I’m practical, like, make things happen. I have a very different approach, but it was a really beautiful complement to each other.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 5:44
So I’m curious, like, when you’re you’re younger mindset, younger Alana, and you’re thinking ahead, and you’re thinking like, I’m going to be different. That sounded like a very purposeful decision, or was it not?

Ilana Levitt 5:56
No, it was sort of like a slow realization, like I knew I wasn’t like her. She was much more introverted. And I think intellectuals, even when we’re successful, we’re still measuring ourselves, comparing right? I knew I was different, but it was like, through the years of the work that I really came in to appreciate the differences and not judge them.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:18
Okay? And you felt, how did she respond to you? Like, were you feeling her support?

Ilana Levitt 6:27
Oh, yes, she was so excited. She loved every time we did a workshop, and we would talk about it before and talk about it after. We actually ran the New York City Marathon together when she turned 60, and I went through a breakup. We did that so we were, you know, we would. I didn’t want my biggest career mistake, Lisa, is that the Gayle King show called while we were doing this work. And I said, I don’t want my whole career to be about my mother. I had no idea who Gayle King was. Oh, my God. And I said,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 6:55
No, oh my word.

Ilana Levitt 6:59
So I still think about that like that was my resistance to having my whole career be about this mother daughter. So even during it, it was great, but I still was always doing my own thing. Yeah, so I messed that up.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 7:15
I Well, you know what? As long as there’s a lesson, maybe the lesson as we say, we embrace saying yes more often, totally. So as I know you, you wrote the book, and the book you really have like, five types of daughters in there, right? Yeah. And it ends with some advice to moms, but we’re going to kind of reverse engineer from how you wrote the book and make it really about like we have so many listeners that are moms, your advice to them, like what you’ve discovered in your practice, in your own life experience, that gives them advice. So there’s this blueprint that’s going on, whether we realize it or not, right? Yes, yes. Talk more into that. Yeah.

Ilana Levitt 7:59
Okay, so first I just want to say a few things off the bat, that every woman is a daughter. Now I don’t have daughters, I have sons, but I am a daughter. And I wrote this through the lens of being the daughter of the mother daughter relationship, right? So you are a daughter and you’re the mother of a daughter, and we’re not just talking about one generation. We as mothers have to look at where we’ve come from. So that’s one thing I want to say. The other thing I want to say is that mothers, we always do the best with what we have. This is not about blaming mothers. This is not about judging mothers. Every woman is doing the best with what we have been given. So I just want to come out here and say, this is a no judgment zone for all of you listeners. We know you’re doing your best, and all we want is for our daughters and sons to be successful and happy that this is the motivation, right? So I just want to really put that out there.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 8:54
I mean, I feel like in my work as a career coach, supporting these 15 to 25 year olds. When I talk to the parents, they’re like, I just want them to be happy. I want them to be launched. I don’t necessarily want them living in my basement till they’re 40 exactly, but I want them launched, but launched thriving and happy Exactly, exactly. So it’s always well intentioned, and I’m guessing you probably have, I mean, I know that. I We’re well intentioned, but we make mistakes, right? Of

Ilana Levitt 9:26
course, because we’re human, and we were raised, you know, we were all raised with our mother’s own flaws, right? And our so sometimes we’re trying to compensate. So the mother daughter relationship is like glue, okay? It is a tighter relationship where, you know, even before daughters are born, the mothers are thinking, are they going to be like me? What are they going to be like? I’m having this person who is who is like me, who is part of me. And even in separation, I mean, and you’re dealing with kids, you at a point where there might not be separation, because girls are. Are emulating their mothers, right? So not only you dealing with the career piece, but we know there’s a lot of separation in adolescence anyway, right? So I think that mothers do want to try their best, but not all of women our age, our mothers didn’t have a lot of the opportunities that we have, and we struggled with career and parenting, and many of us have been able to do it, not perfectly. I say women can have everything, we just can’t have it all at once, or everything we want all at once, right? So our daughters are watching us so carefully. So I think this is the biggest piece of the blueprint. Is, regardless what kind of relationship you have, our daughters are watching us. Yeah, they’re watching us with in our relationships, with friends, partnerships, food, career, they’re watching and so we have to look in ourselves and say, What are we showing and that’s something that really surprises moms. So if you out there as a mom, have been stuck in your career, or you gave up your career, or you come home every day and complain about work, or whatever you wherever you are, our daughters are hearing that, and you are their role models.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 11:15
You know. You know what this makes me think of. We’ve all this is a universal experience of parents, all parents, when that little sweet face, I’ll never forget, my five year old gets off the bus from kindergarten like it’s in the first week of school, never ridden the bus before he gets off the bus, and later that evening, we’re doing something, and he just says a sentence, And he has the word shit in the sentence. And, of course, you know, and he was, he’s my oldest, he’s now 27 and my twins are there. And I’m like, like, where did that come from? You know, we assumed it was a bus. No, it was parents. You know, it was us, right? Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, in that moment, it’s hard not to chuckle, and it’s cute, but that starts at that very young age, and then it continues. And so to your point, if we’re always complaining about work, if we’re like, our attitudes are getting transferred over to them, I guess, right,

Ilana Levitt 12:15
yes, yes, absolutely. And not only about that, but we think about because I work in human resources, right? And we see a lot of workplace dynamics. So also women’s relationships to their partners, to men, to women, how we navigate authority, how we stand up for ourselves. Our daughters are watching that as well. So there’s a confidence issue too, not even so much about work, but just confidence in general. How do our mothers navigate the world? Right? And so some daughters want to be just like mom, but then the opposite is, daughters want to be different from mom. When I when I sometimes, I’ll do a talk and I’ll say, okay, and I’ll ask all of you women out there just to think about this. How many of you unconsciously find your own mother’s words coming out of your mouth all of us, right? Yes, especially as parents, right? These are words we haven’t we don’t consciously think about so so much of this is unconscious, too, because we take in our parents, right? We literally are taking them inside. And the real trick is to for daughters and for us to recognize our own strengths and our weaknesses and separate ourselves enough from mom that we could see ourselves and as mothers, we have to not hold on so tight to an image of who our daughters are that we allow them to be themselves. We see them for who they are. We recognize what’s rebellion, we appreciate their strengths and and weaknesses, even if they’re different from ours, and we don’t apply judgment to that, because they might be just like you, but they’re not you, right? And there’s in our society, people want mothers and daughters to be best friends. I want best friends with my daughter. Well, that’s not great, especially when people are in divorce and single, then they start talking to their daughters about sex and relationships, right? Don’t want to hear it. They want the mothers also. What daughters want for their mothers is the same thing, happiness and to be thriving and not to have all the attention on them, you know.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 14:16
And here’s a question for you, because this and this comes out of my own experience with my own mom. So you have me really thinking about these dynamics. So my mom was a stay at home mom, and my dad was an entrepreneur. I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve had four businesses over my lifetime, and I remember vividly when it was on Mother’s Day. Of all times, I was out with my mom and my kids to celebrate Mother’s Day. Took my mom out to lunch, and she told me a regret that she had as a mom was that she had she felt like she had not done a great job parenting me, that I chose to work and so. To being a stay at home mom. And I mean, it cut deep, because it, you know, all the, all the things came in. And of course, I still think about this, and I don’t, I, you know, that was a great choice for her, right? And I even understand what I really think about, like she had, she was the oldest of three daughters. Her dad was World War Two. He came back, was sick, couldn’t work. My grandma had to go to work. So my mom had a lot of responsibility, yeah, so I think she saw a working mom as creating undue responsibility for the kids, and then my parents made different values based choices that were the right choice for them, yes, but she didn’t have a worldview where you could be a good mom and work, that’s right? And so what I wonder is so I was in the case of like I want, I didn’t endeavor to do differently. I just wanted to be true to myself and what I knew of myself, right? Yeah, and

Ilana Levitt 15:59
yet, but still, even today, you think about it like, what message did she send to you that it was wrong, right? Right? It was terrible, right? So as you’re parenting or coming home tired and have to be with all your kids, there’s that inner voice, that self doubt, right?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 16:16
Am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right choice?

Ilana Levitt 16:19
Exactly? And for women, you know, there’s still in a society the women who work and don’t work. There’s no right answer, like to your very individual but this is one issue. I’ve had many clients whose parents were entrepreneurs, busy all the time. They’re like, I’m never doing that. My I was a latchkey kid. I’m going to be home for my kids. There’s other women who I like my mother never worked, and she always had to depend on the dad or of a spouse for money. I’m not going to be that. I always want to have my own money, and so the money messages also around this are very complex, and that feeds into the dynamic in the relationship. But that’s a really so your example is one where you’re really showing how deep the role modeling and the comments and all of it. I said to my mom once, why didn’t she I said, this is great that I’m a I have a private practice. I do counseling. I could be a mom and work. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? This was a good career choice, like when I was choosing, she said, Lonnie. She called me Lonnie. Lonnie. You saw me do it. I didn’t have to tell you, because her office was in the basement. I bought a house with a separate entrance. She’s like, I didn’t have to tell you. I was like, Oh yeah, right, so it is. She was aware of that. But my sister made very different choices. My brother made very different choices. But, you know, I would call myself the copycat daughter, even though we’re not the same. But I definitely had some role modeling, but I also do very different things in my career as well,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 17:43
right? Well, it makes me think of like my sister did choose to primarily be a stay at home mom. She had some instances where she did a little bit of part time work when the her boys were older. And I actually appreciated that we both just were true to what we wanted to do. Very, very close. She’s one of my closest friends in the world. And, you know, I was, I’m divorced from my three kids, dad, you know, many, many, many years ago at this point, because I’ve been married to my husband for over a decade, but I see my daughter saying, like, I always want to work because I want to have a career and an income. And I think that that’s the product of divorce. And I would, you know, I’m like, I support her, whatever choice she makes, right? Like she’s in corporate America, never would be a good fit for me, right? Um, I’m too entrepreneurial, so, but it is also it makes me think too, like my dad was an entrepreneur, and I had people when I quit my job, I was a teacher for eight years, and then I quit my job and started what actually was my second business. The first one was like, for a hot second and a business that I had for 25 years, I just sold it a year ago. And people would say to me, like, what made you think that you could just quit your job and and go start a business and that it could work? And like, I actually didn’t even think about it. Because this goes back to the role modeling Exactly, exactly. I saw my dad do it, and I did see the ebbs and flows, and that can come with it, even exactly at times. But I’m like, Well, that was figure out able and do, you can do it. You

Ilana Levitt 19:14
got the confidence too from them. I mean, I want to say to the women listening that it doesn’t have to be paid work. It’s about being satisfied, and, you know, I don’t again, I think if women are volunteering, and they’re engaged in the world and they’re helping, they’re rescuing animals, whatever we’re doing, they’re watching. So I’m not saying you have to be a professional mom to be a good role model to your daughter at all. Right? I’m saying, as to our point, you’re true to yourself, but you’re also showing that you’re engaged in life. You recognize your strengths. You’re applying those strengths in the workplace. You have confidence to leave if you’re not being treated well. It’s all of that watching or that you go back to work, right? If you’re unsatisfied. Your kids, a lot of women our age, they have been. Are, you know, raising their kids and now they’re figuring out their next steps. Those, a lot of my clients, right? Yeah, we make choices at every age and every stage. So what are you showing your daughters and sons then? So Right? For our daughters between 15 and 25 you know, they’re launching different things, right, right? But when you think about college choice, choice of major, going into arts or business, whether to go to college or not, whether or not to go to college at all. There’s a million moments of clarity that you can be helping your daughter and son, not based on your own life and your own regrets or your own successes, but truly trying to see them and honor them. I do some talking at a freshman freshman parents week at Binghamton, which is where I went to college, yeah, and I give a talk for parents on how to help kids with their career. And you know, there’s and culturally, we have some parents from different cultures that are driving them and driving them. I have a client now who failed the medical exam seven times. She’s in her 30s. Both parents are doctors. They got her she got into medical school by the skin of her teeth. I did a few career assessments. She doesn’t like science, yeah, and the universe is supporting it. She hasn’t passed. I just actually held up the book to her, and she’s like, Oh my god, ah, so I’m going to help her become true to herself. But I think if the mother understood this, it would have saved the daughter a lot of pain. You know, there’s really bad about herself,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:38
yeah? Well, I I’ve had this, you and I are both Berkman certified, and that was a commonality. I love that. Yes, I know we, we met and I didn’t, we didn’t even know that. And I was like,

Ilana Levitt 21:50
Wait a second, yeah, that was awesome.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 21:54
You know, when in my launch Career Clarity course, when we’re going through and we’re supporting them, or if I’m working privately with the student this, we start with self awareness, right, right? And we, I use the Berkman as my tool for getting that self awareness. But we start, we begin with self awareness. And included in that, I also include academic profile and personal

Ilana Levitt 22:17
values, uh huh. That’s great. And the number of times self awareness. What, you know, what I do for self awareness? A few things, but there’s a I do, Clifton Strengths, uh huh. I do a fabulous exercise called the seven stories exercise, and I have them journal 20 to 25 of their moments, specific moments in their lives where they felt proud. And then they choose seven and write a paragraph, and we find the threads of those moments when people were feeling them. Could be saving a cat from a tree or a soccer goal or a moment in a meeting, but it really gets into the life stories.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 22:52
Well, those through lines are always there, right? You know, always one of the objections I hear from a lot of people is, I, like, really parents, almost not believing that they can trust their kids to make wise, informed decisions and like they can be trusted with the right support and the right tools to do so. And I’m like, those through lines are going to show up like because they’ll say, oh, they can’t know. Or careers are changing too much right now, which they are rapidly evolving. The workplace is rapidly evolving, but the through lines are there. I mean, who would have I was graduating college in 1991 who would have thought like we would be doing a show that we could film on our computers? I didn’t even a personal computer, right? You will develop over time, and those through lines will be

Ilana Levitt 23:39
there. Yes. Were you going to say something about Berkman, yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 23:43
so this was going on to like, the kids can build the self awareness, but how many times I’ve had a conversation, a coaching conversation, with the young person, the parent might be in the room, and the parent gains insights into their students or their child’s personal wiring, and I’ve seen the parent become very emotional. I mean, the number, and they’ll apologize for it. I’m sorry I didn’t. I can’t believe I’m tearing up. I can’t I’m like, It’s okay, like, you love this person, and sometimes it’s like, I’ve been misunderstanding this about them. And so when we as moms can gain that, or parents, period, can gain those insights, yes, to really know them for who they are.

Ilana Levitt 24:27
Yes, absolutely, I It’s so beautiful, and I think you don’t have to be Berkman certified or therapist. Or, I really want to say, just watch. Okay, my slow down, slow down and watch and just recognize that what you’re seeing are clues. So my one son, since he’s been three, he’s been watching crime shows for forensics, CSI, whatever, yeah, always crime show. Those. And so I’m watching crime show, crime show, crime show. I’m like, What is this, right? And I would point it out, or what position they choose to play in sports. He was a goalie in soccer. And I’m like, you know, you don’t mind things coming flying at you, right? You’re in the moment on the Myers, Briggs, I call him a es, FP, right. Don’t mind things. And responding to things, like a fireman and a cop. So then you take these themes, it’s like you like to investigate you, like negotiation, this is your position in sports, and then you just show up with curiosity, like, tell me why they’re not going to have those insights at that young age, but right more grown up brains. So we can see it. My older son studied neuroscience, but he also the whole sports and teams and from a leadership perspective like you, just watch what they talk about. Look, what websites look, what movies look, what TV shows look, who their friends are like. Just watch their lives. Because as adults, in my first session with clients, I always go back to early childhood. What did you do in elementary school, high school? What sports? What movie? That’s when kids choose for themselves. Yeah, most of us let our kids choose those things until it gets to these more consequential decisions, big decisions, we start advising, but if we go back, we know what they chose. We know kids know what they like. They know what makes them tick. We just lose that as adults.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 26:28
Well, you know in our weekly newsletter that we send out, and I’ve sent one every week since May 2021 wow. And one of the things that we always include is a conversation cue, a conversation starter, because, and I’ve had numerous episodes where, like, people are doing really good work. I’m thinking like Rick Clark. He I used to be Director of Admissions at Georgia Tech. He’s not like about strategic enrollment or something. He has a book, and it’s all conversation based for families I love, and so this curating healthy, good conversations, instead of telling people what to do. Yes, I think that’s another thing too. When the when the stakes seem high, parents tend to and I’ve been prone to this myself, and I’ve worked on it a lot, tell instead of ask, or just talk,

Ilana Levitt 27:24
yes, yes, and listen, I’m a career counselor. I’m a therapist. I have my kids. I on one hand, I’ll be like, practicing what I preach, and then I’ll leave a career assessment on the desk, and I’ll run out right like, so we’re not perfect, because we still want to help and provide tools. There’s a difference. Now, they used to talk about helicopter parents, and now the new idea is snow plow parents. Yes, terrible. We’re paving the way. But I don’t know if it’s terrible, because once getting into the world, I want my kids to have my LinkedIn contacts, the world is tricky. The navigation I want, I think it’s a fine line, though, do you it’s a very fine line. It’s a very fine line. We don’t want to do it for them, right? If we have access, why not help our kids with our access? It’s a very fine line. Lisa, and you know, I think we don’t want to judge clearly, the kid has to get the job on their own. They have to get college on their own. We know that doesn’t work, right? The only time I was ever fired from a job was my son helping him with the college essay. Okay, so I overstepped, but it’s a fun but, but being a snow plow and also showing it’s again, showing them, and if you have access, sharing it, but they have to want it, and that’s another big thing. Some of our kids will come and ask for help, and then we can be all in some we’re not asking, and we have to be much more reserved. And even within the same family, different kids need different things. We know 100% right? So I think it’s really like, how much do they want, and how much are we giving? And then how do you recognize that if there’s a lot of fighting in the House about this, somebody’s doing something wrong, right? If they’re coming and needing something, I mean, in the workplace. Now, I cannot tell you the number of stories where a parent is in the Google Doc. We’ve we have fired people because the parents I’ve seen myself, yeah, parents are showing up to interviews this that’s not okay, right?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 29:25
Not okay, but I think that’s where my brain goes. With snow plow, like I always say, want to be a soft place where you can land. You know, we do in the course, we give students a framework to build out a really great LinkedIn profile, and the number of parents in our community who then go like, Oh, I need to up level mine. That’s right. And I say it the last two months during our group Q and A one in June, one in July. I should say we’re recording in August, even though I think this is coming out in September, I’ve had a parent reach out to me afterwards, connect with me on LinkedIn and say, Hey, because. To the Q, a and the resources and the course for my kid, I also used it. And, you know, let me connect with you. But I always say the your first five connections, let them be somebody that your parent, your parent, and then who their friends like start with that, because what we’re doing is teaching them how to naturally connect.

Ilana Levitt 30:21
If it’s positive snow plowing. Yeah,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 30:23
I think, I think it’s snow plowing. I just thought, like, I’m gonna bulldoze it all out for them that. Well, it could be an agreement of what it is

Ilana Levitt 30:33
totally and the same situation can feel like, one way or another, the same situation, depending on who the kid is,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 30:40
I agree. Well, in the season of life, the kids in like, I think about my 27 year old, and of course, you know, he’s my first so I made more mistakes with him than the twins, but I really was learning how, as a mom, to navigate. So let this inspire growth that you can change. If you are sitting here going like, Oh, I feel I’m listening this. I feel so convicted. Yeah, I was doing too much directing or snow plowing or doing for him, and we navigated that into a place where he was like, you know, I don’t need you to do it for me. Sometimes I just want to talk so and then it was so funny. There was a time, like, two years ago, he was navigating something at 25 and he called me, and he’s sharing, and I had gone so far the other way of just like, how are you feeling about that? And just, you know, being supportive and letting him vent to me, I thought he was just venting about something. He’s like, Mom, I am calling because I want to know what you would do. I’m like, oh, like, oh, okay, I’ve gone too far the other way. But I think, actually, I just took that and said, Okay, I need to ask when they start, right? That’s right. It’s okay to say, are you just, Hey, do you just need to vent? Because I get it I need to vent all the time. Or are you looking for

Ilana Levitt 31:57
advice, right? Or you’re teaching them to ask for what they need. Ask for what not all on Yes, to figure it out it’s on them that you have to teach them that it’s okay if you come for a and it’s okay if you come for B, right? I want to go back to something you started talking about a few minutes ago, about encouraging them to share and the stories. And it makes me think, like four people because of my book, sent me this article that came out in the New York Times. It was Mother’s Day. 25 questions to bring to your mom. I have it sitting right here, right? And it’s to deepen the relationship. And I think that’s another thing we could do as moms. You know, some daughters, adult daughters, say, Oh, my mom over shares, and I’ve heard these stories 100 times. Most people have not heard enough about how we as moms came to choose what college, even if it was because we were following a person, or how we chose our major, or how we got where we are. And I think to encourage that dialog, which is not a normal because, moms, we’re so busy parenting, we don’t think that these stories are important, but these questions that you can ask, and maybe I’ll put it, give it to you, and you could newsletter, they’re so wonderful because they open up the daughter, the mom. You moms, can really start opening up in a different way and sharing with your daughters, which will be so helpful, because daughters don’t know what our mothers have, what we have been through. And everybody has had trauma, and everybody has had what I call is sometimes things in our career timeline that trip us up, like, as you know, like I’ve seen people, let’s say your dad is an entrepreneur at a certain age, hit a real slump and went to a into a depression. I see people at that same age unconsciously slump. So sometimes, again, in the in the timeline of the family, or immigrant families when you came or having to choose a different career because you immigrated somewhere. Or in the book, I talk about sometimes immigrant parents or alcoholic parents created bootstrap daughters, where the where the daughter had to really pull herself up, and she’s high demand. But I really think it’s so important for us as women, for daughters to know our mother’s stories, and not just the stories that they’re choosing to tell, but the stories we need to ask,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:22
I love that well, and I have a New York Times subscription, so if I can

Ilana Levitt 34:28
get there’s a link, I could send you beautiful questions, put it in the

Lisa Marker-Robbins 34:32
show notes, for sure. Just goes back to Conversations being rich. And I think you hit on something earlier, like you’re so busy when you’re launching these kids, and it’s easier for you and me, we’re just, we’re a little bit ahead of most of, like, life stage wise, most of the listeners of the podcast, just a little bit, just a smidge. And it’s like I can sit here as an empty nester with five launch kids who are all right. Financially independent, doing their own things, and we get to see them, but they’re not messing up my house in a day.

Ilana Levitt 35:06
There’s no smelly sock. And exactly,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 35:10
I have a son, daughter in law and grandson visiting this week, and I’m doing a lot of picking up. You’ve got some smells. Yeah, it’s okay. I love it. I absolutely love it. But it’s like, the thing that I’m thinking about now. It’s like, yeah, try to create the space to breathe into that at the time. Like, yeah, let us who have gone a little bit ahead of you, go like, I wish maybe I would have slowed down a little bit more. And because you and I do this work, we probably did do more consciously at that. But our listeners, they’re, they’re not doing this professionally, right?

Ilana Levitt 35:41
Right? And also, Lisa, there’s, we’re talking about a lot of different kinds of parents, right? So most listeners are probably not the parents that have such high anxiety themselves. They’re that they’re literally spiraling. If their kids aren’t launching, like there’s a whole movement for this, natural consequences to our kids behavior, not You’re not going to finish go to class, you’re not going to finish the semester. What are you going to do with that extra semester tuition, whether the parents are paying it right? So there’s some real things as real consequences if our kids are not doing what we think. But then the majority of people, I think, we have to ask ourselves, how consequential is things at this moment, do I need to step in? It’s sort of like when they’re toddlers. I would try to say to myself, like, and you and I were just talking about this with the baby, yeah, if it’s about keeping them safe, we’re going to draw the line. That’s when you win as toddlers, right? My job is to keep you safe. So if your kids are starting to drive and you need to put, like, speed limits on your car or find friends. I said to my kids, you want me to pay for your cell phones you’re on? Find friends. It’s non negotiable, right? Right? So there are moments that are really consequential, but a lot of times in this career process, we don’t think of it in terms of these consequential decisions, right? So it’s what college, what major, first internships, first job. And these kids don’t know remember what age their brains form, right? Women more than men. They don’t really know they need us. But again, how much are they coming and what are we recognizing in them that’s not us, because that’s the biggest mistake we make, is putting on to them something from our experience, which is normal, but we really want to see them, let them explore, like they might come and be like, I want to try being an astronaut. You want to you don’t want to respond. You’re never going to be you

Lisa Marker-Robbins 37:41
don’t like, like, you can think it, but you

Ilana Levitt 37:45
Right, exactly we were talking about that. That’s an inside thought. Alana, I tell myself that, yeah, like, don’t say that. Explore it. What do you what do you like?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 37:54
I mean, that’s what we say. Like, hey, you can, because I don’t believe that you can be anything, right? The world’s telling kids, and I think it only creates more anxiety and stress for this age group. The world says you can be anything. The world’s your oyster. Well, that only serves the overwhelming I don’t believe it’s a true statement. We’re going to funnel it down. That’s That’s how we use the Berkman is to funnel down a list of jobs where like you look your personality DNA looks exactly like the people are thriving in these so now we have a more manageable list. Now, realistically, my manageable list that I get from my Berkman, not everything on there would be a good fit, and some of them even, I would go like I’m not smart enough in that particular way to be able to do that job. I’m very self aware, but if I don’t have that self awareness yet, then let’s use investigating. Yes, research, figure out what what is it really require?

Ilana Levitt 38:51
Yes, listen, you may disagree with me, because we do slightly different work. Yeah, I think Burke, it’s so amazing to help them get a direction. But honestly, we don’t know how these careers are going to unfold, especially the new world, right? Yeah. So it’s good to be grounded in this knowledge of your interests and skills, values, personality, but then it needs to unfold so. But a lot of my clients coming to me at 3040, 5060, 70, yeah. Wish so much that they did this when they were your client’s age. Wish so much so the gift of people coming to see you and parents investing at this age I cannot speak enough about because my clients are much older in career transition, and they wish they had that. So you are really doing such a gift. My favorite clients are the moms, yeah, but I cannot speak enough about the importance at that age of having the frameworks and the

Lisa Marker-Robbins 39:49
blueprints. Well, you can keep using, you know, one of the things I say is career advising that you and I do, and we can start to wrap it up. And if you have anything else you want to add, but like. I could talk to you all day, Lisa, I know I could, too, so that you know what that means. I always say that means you’re coming back for another episode or two. I’d love it, for sure. But career advising or coaching typically takes place at like, a point in time, right? Or for a period, a short period of time. So somebody might at all, if at all, right, if you choose to embark on it, which you and I, of course, would recommend everybody should do. But if you choose to do it, career coaching, career advising, it’s going to be like this, this blip on your timeline of life. However, the attitude, the mindset of career development being lifelong, yes, will serve you well. And so career development is very different from career advising or coaching, absolutely, I continue to take, I mean, I couldn’t even have an online course or a podcast if I didn’t invest in my own career development, oh, to do things for emerging platforms and occupation things like

Ilana Levitt 40:55
that. So that’s why you and I click so well, because we’re both like generating and new ideas all the time. So just in closing, I just want to say that, you know, some of us, the greatest jobs we have in the world is being moms, right, right? And we also don’t want to be it’s sort of like investing all your money in a bank, when you invest it on the kids, and then the bank will go bankrupt, and we’re left, right? So we really have to take care of them and take care of ourselves. And if you’re not happy with something that you’re doing, look at that for yourself, because you will. There is no better way to help your daughter than to help yourself, and that Amen, 30 years of experience, that is really the bottom line.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 41:38
But yeah, oxygen mask on yourself first. Yes. Oh, thank you, my friend, so much for having a gift. I know whether you whether our listeners have or the mom of daughters or sons, or maybe they aren’t. Maybe they work with this age group, but they, as you said, all of us, women, at least, are daughters. We have absolutely male or female. We all have moms. So

Ilana Levitt 42:03
if anybody has questions about the book, it’s like, you know, again, I still think of the book like, Would my mother have approved? Would she have liked it? I write about the workshops in the book because it’s like, it’s full rooted in her, you know, she was a great role model, and now she’s been gone 21 years, and I still think about that profound, profound impact. So

Lisa Marker-Robbins 42:25
glad that you guys did it when you did, because we just don’t know. We have to keep saying yes, yes to the to the opportunities that we have. So we’ll link to the book in the show notes. It’s amazing what’s, uh, what’s mom still got to do with it. I’m reading the exact title because the subtitle I do not have memorized. Breathe new life into your career by understanding your mother daughter relationship. So we will link to it in the show notes. If you can send me the New York Times 25 questions, we will link to those, right? And if people want to get in touch, how would they contact you. Um, my

Ilana Levitt 43:01
website is Alana levitt.com there’s also a what’s mom the book website with this little quiz of What kind of daughter you

Lisa Marker-Robbins 43:08
are. Oh, I haven’t taken it. I That’s what I’m doing next. But a lot

Ilana Levitt 43:13
of women have trouble identifying with one, but some of the girls might. But you can also put my email, Alana Talton Levitt at Gmail in but I’m on I’m online. I’m on LinkedIn. People are welcome. You’re easily found. I’m easily found. Connect to me on LinkedIn if you’re out there and you just want to see what’s doing. But thank you so much for having me. Lisa. This was awesome.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 43:35
Thanks a lot. I can’t wait till next time. Take care. You. Your career story matters, not because your daughter should copy it, but because it can help her shape her own if today’s conversation sparked curiosity about how your mother daughter relationships influence career paths, I encourage you to take the next step. Alana has a quick, insightful quiz to help daughters uncover which career type they are in relation to their mom. It’s a fun way to open up the conversations and deepen understanding. You’ll find the link to the quiz in the show notes along with the link to Alana’s book. What’s mom still got to do with it. Take the quiz, share with your daughter and see what you learn from each other the more you both understand the strengths, values and motivations you each bring to the table, the more you can cheer each other on as she builds a career that’s truly her own. If today’s episode was helpful to you, please share it with a mom who needs this too. Sharing, following the podcast, rating and reviewing helps us resource more young people to launch into a successful future. Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep taking those small, intentional steps that lead to big Career Clarity. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai