Lessons From Serena Williams Tennis Retirement
The ups and downs and transitions of life cycles impact us all.
In next month’s issue of Vogue, Serena Williams announces her plans to retire from tennis—a career she’s had her WHOLE life, and a career that has made her a legend, a GOAT, a household name, and an icon globally.
All career transitions are hard, even if we’re ready to move on.
Serena Williams makes it clear in the article that this career transition is painfully hard for her, one she wishes she didn’t have to make, “There is no happiness in this topic for me. ...I feel a great deal of pain. It's the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. .... I hate that I have to be at this crossroads… I'm torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I'm ready for what's next.”
On her Instagram she shares the reason why: “the countdown has begun. I have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals and finally discovering a different, but just exciting Serena.”
Her desire to grow her family is definitely a huge aspect of her making this choice. But she’s also got a project that she’s been building on the side that’s a new passion that probably helps her to step into this new career phase with excitement—her VC firm Serena Ventures.
A few years ago, when she learned at a conference that less than 2% of VC money went to women it motivated her to meet the gap, “I kind of understood then and there that someone who looks like me needs to start writing the big checks.”
To date, seventy-eight percent of Serena Ventures portfolio are companies started by women and people of color.
Serena’s story highlights the inevitability of making tough career choices throughout our lives—for family reasons, because we can no longer perform at the level required in our old career, or because have a new passion and purpose—the reasons are endless.
Nevertheless, it still takes courage and surrender to let go of the old, what we’re used to, what we are comfortable doing and step into a new arena.
It’s the nature of the transitions between cycles—that the evolution into the new is challenging, sometimes requiring a metamorphosis. Shedding the old and letting go IS hard.
Serena will be stepping into a new version of herself, one that will no longer cling to who she has been before. A version that will display a new way for her to inspire, champion, and support women and people of color that looks very different from what she’s done most of her life.
So it is in your own transitions and reinvention. Surrender, let go, and hold onto the new possibilities that await you in your new career chapter.
As "The Brilliance Unveiler," Natalie Jobity leverages more than a decade of experience empowering hundreds of women as an image consultant and now as a leadership and career coach of The Unveiled Way. She works with high-achieving women at career crossroads to unveil their brilliance, so they're empowered to be unstoppable leaders of change with ripple-making impact in their arena.
Natalie’s second book titled, It’s Your Time to Shine, Girl: Own Your Brilliance, Step into Your Influence, and Lead Like a Trailblazer, will be published in the Fall of 2022. This leadership and empowerment book will not only inspire women the world over to step into their purpose, but also give them the tips, tools, and techniques needed to succeed and thrive as a woman of influence.