Why I created Silver Reset
Viv Mowatt - Founder, Silver Reset
My own transition beyond a long career didn't unfold quite as I expected. Silver Reset grew from what I discovered along the way.
For 24 years, I worked in the NHS, eventually in senior roles involving major change programmes, service development, governance and significant responsibility.
I enjoyed being useful. I liked solving problems, making things happen and working with people who cared about what they were doing.
And, as happens almost without us noticing, work became woven into much more than the hours I spent doing it.
It provided structure, relationships, challenge, responsibility and a very clear answer to that familiar question: "What do you do?"
I thought I was ready
I hadn't expected my NHS career to last 24 years. I had originally taken a local operational management role that fitted better around family life, thinking I might stay for a couple of years.
Instead, I found myself working in mental health services at a time of considerable change and modernisation - and discovered work that mattered to me. It suited something in me: I enjoyed turning negatives into positives and had a tendency to fight the corner of people or situations I felt were disadvantaged.
Over the years I moved through increasingly senior management roles, often taking on difficult projects and responsibilities. Eventually, I became a Director responsible for major NHS redevelopment programmes, including helping to secure substantial government funding to replace an outdated hospital that desperately needed rebuilding for its patients and staff.
I had spent much of my career saying yes to difficult things and finding ways to make them work.
But long careers rarely end as neatly as their job titles suggest. Organisations change, leadership changes and priorities change. Towards the end of mine, responsibilities were being reshaped and I was being asked to take on considerably more, including an area of responsibility I didn't want.
After more than two decades of accepting challenges, I decided, for once, to say no.
I moved into another short-term Director role and then, in 2018, stepped away from my NHS career altogether.
I knew it was time to leave. What I hadn't appreciated was that knowing what you no longer want isn't necessarily the same as knowing what you want next.
There was a life waiting outside work
My husband had already retired. We had plans. There were things I wanted to do and, after years of a demanding career, having more freedom sounded rather appealing.
So I didn't leave work believing I was heading into some great unknown. There was a life waiting for me outside it.
But life rarely arranges itself into neat chapters.
Around that period there were significant changes in our family life. My father needed increasing support before eventually moving into a care home and later dying. We moved house, leaving behind familiar connections and settling into a much more rural life. My daughter and granddaughter were no longer close by.
And my health, which had already demanded attention during my working life, deteriorated significantly.
The structure that work had provided had gone at the same time as quite a lot else was changing.
I wasn't sitting at home wondering who I was - but nor did I immediately know what I wanted this new phase of my life to become.
There wasn't a dramatic revelation
For several years, I explored.
I thought. I learned. I tried things. I concentrated on improving my health and became increasingly interested in the part nutrition could play in our wellbeing. I eventually qualified as a Nutrition Health Coach and trained to become an NLP Practitioner.
Gradually, my health improved and so did my sense of direction.
What became increasingly clear was that I still wanted challenge, learning, contribution and purpose in my life.
I hadn't finished with any of those things.
I simply didn't want them packaged in exactly the same way as before - and that distinction became important.
I began to look differently at retirement
Retirement is usually discussed as a practical event - when you'll stop working, whether you've saved enough, where you'll live and what you'll do with your time.
All important questions.
But I began to see that leaving or changing a substantial career can affect much more than a working week - and that women experience that transition in very different ways.
Some are delighted to leave work behind. Some want another significant role. For others, change comes through redundancy, health, caring responsibilities or circumstances they hadn't chosen. And some simply know they want something different without yet knowing what that is.
I came to see how little thoughtful attention we give to this stage of women's lives.
Not because I believe every woman will experience the transition as I did, but because there is no single right way to live beyond a long career.
And then, at 70, I started a business
That certainly wasn't part of my retirement plan.
Silver Reset grew gradually from everything I had been thinking about, learning and experiencing.
Starting a business at 70 happens to be my version of what came next. It isn't evidence that everybody needs a new project, a second career or a dramatic reinvention.
Quite the opposite.
One of the ideas at the heart of Silver Reset is that reset doesn't mean reinvention.
You bring your experience with you.
Your judgement, skills, relationships, interests, values, curiosity - and all the other parts of you that may have had more or less room while work occupied such a large part of life.
The interesting question is what you want to do with them now.
Why Silver Reset exists
I created Silver Reset for professional women whose relationship with a long career is changing — or has changed — and who want to think thoughtfully about what comes next.
Not to tell women how to retire. Not to persuade them that they have a problem they hadn't noticed. And certainly not to suggest that everyone should follow my path.
Silver Reset brings together ideas, perspective and practical help across the different parts of life that can come into view when work changes.
Because greater choice doesn't mean unlimited choice. Money, health, relationships, caring responsibilities, circumstances and opportunities all matter.
But within those realities, there may still be choices to make about how you spend your time, where you put your energy, what you want to continue, what you might change — and what else you would like to explore.
For me, the question eventually became much more interesting than “What will I do in retirement?”
It became:
What do I want from this phase of my life - and what is mine to shape?
That's the question at the heart of Silver Reset.
And you don't need to know the answer before you begin.
Where would you like to start?
If you'd simply like to browse, The Silver Reset Journal brings together ideas, perspective and practical information about life beyond a long career.
If you'd prefer somewhere to take stock, The Silver Reset Roadmap is a free guided workbook exploring five areas of life that can begin to shift as your relationship with work changes.