“All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are.” ~Brianna Wiest
I’ll admit it. I stayed in a failed marriage for five years past its expiration date. I got especially good at faking smiles in public and relegating myself to my laptop most evenings.
I also sentenced myself to a career that stopped “lighting me up” about a decade before I was ready to wave the white flag of surrender. As in my marriage, I refused to believe its end for ages and tried everything I could think of to keep this dying flame alive. I switched positions and teams, constantly created new goalposts for myself, changed organizations, and even moved to Asia well before I was willing to let my career go.
And one day, without warning, my sister called from New York to say that our beautiful mother had just crossed over to the other side. On that soft green couch in South Korea, thousands of miles from family, my already deeply unsatisfactory private life imploded. So did the carefully curated and adventurous-looking life that everyone on the outside saw. I was broken.
Please allow me a “real talk” time out, folks.
Can we discuss the importance of using our persistent feelings as signals, or guideposts? I’m not suggesting we throw out logic. I’m also not referring to our typically loud and fleeting reactions to everyday stressors. I’m talking about an instinctive knowing, the quiet kind that’s easy to ignore.
Though I routinely taught this to my own two children and students, my intellectualizing didn’t mean I was actually practicing what I preached. Not by a long shot.
Not until a powerful wave of grief swept the rug out from under me, that is.
Deeply empathetic and sensitive, with a mother who was a counselor, I grew up learning how to accept and validate my feelings. I knew to listen to them, to manage them when they didn’t serve me, and to use them to identify opportunities to learn more about myself. So, why on earth would I work so hard to hide them from my own conscious awareness for years when I knew my marriage and career were no longer right for me? I’ve got thoughts on that.
Perhaps it was because ignoring my feelings and deeper knowing kept me safely in a socially acceptable family structure.
Perhaps it was because ignoring my feelings and deeper knowing made it easy to receive invitations to holiday dinners with other international families while living abroad.
Perhaps it was because ignoring my feelings and deeper knowing allowed me to continue to make good money, feel successful as a professional, provide for my children, and travel to new countries a few times a year.
Perhaps it was because ignoring my feelings and deeper knowing had predictable, albeit routinely unpleasant, results.
Perhaps it was because I had no idea who I would be if I wasn’t a wife or a teacher.
But when my mother passed away, my entire world went dark. Suddenly, nothing else mattered.
Losing my mother was the single hardest experience of my lifetime. It was also the catalyst for my own wake-up call on multiple levels. And perhaps this was what my soul needed to remember how to seek what did matter, and to recognize my own fulfillment as worthy of sitting at the very top spot of that list.
Layers of grief forced me to experience feelings I’d been bottling up for years. Grief pressed me to listen to my feelings and to ask what there was to learn from the patterns in my life. It begged me to create the space and stillness to finally accept that the career and life I had built were ones I had long outgrown. It also prompted me to finally ask for help.
I wasn’t happy living a life I had built decades ago because I was no longer that person, and accepting this realization was empowering.
Eventually, and with the aid of some irrefutable signs from the universe and some excellent coaching, I gave myself permission to pivot from my profession. I could also see that my resistance to change had been the only true thing standing between me and a much more fulfilling life and career. Not anymore.
Loss is a beast. But on the other side of it, there is inevitably gain.
If you find yourself at a crossroads in life and crave a pathway for building something new to fit the person you have grown into, I have an annoyingly obvious secret to share. The only person capable of carving this way forward is you. And while this may feel like an impossible and unwelcome challenge, I venture to say that this fact could end up being your greatest gift.
What if you could see beyond the endings and revel in the endless possibilities ahead?
What kind of work and contribution to the world would you pursue if none of society’s imposed limits existed?
If money were no object, what would you spend your time doing.
What type of life do you want to build for yourself?
What would future you, nearing the end of their life, look back on and smile contentedly about?
While I can’t give you any of your answers, my own failures and aha moments have allowed me to compile the following tips for folks like you who may be approaching a career transition.
If you’ve decided your fulfillment should be at the top of your life list and you’re ready to update your career to match the version of you who is reading this today, try these five tips on for size.
1. Create some space or spaciousness before life creates it for you.
Once upon a time, before my whole world stopped with a single sharp loss, my mind loved wasting entire days on unimportant details of daily life. The state of constant busyness I tended to wrap myself in had allowed me to bury the deep feelings of restlessness and dissatisfaction lurking faithfully just below the surface.
My incessant thoughts were part of my unconscious “living” and were a big part of what prevented me from being aware, present, and authentic in my current reality. I thought my thoughts were me, but I was so far from the truth.
I may never have stopped this incessant mind-drivel had I not been handed Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning and End to Your Suffering by Joseph Nguyen.
It taught me that if I didn’t choose to actively create internal space by taking up daily yoga and meditation (or another practice), I never would have gotten to know who I truly was. And without that, how on earth would I have created a career shift to match the updated version of myself? (News flash: I would not have.)
If you choose just one item from this list to try before making a career shift, please let this be the one. Commit to one practice that creates spaciousness in your life and refuse to let go. Because if your new career is going to match the updated version of you, you have got to start with getting to know yourself. And you’ll only achieve this by making space and staying there a while, routinely.
2. Take stock of the childhood dreams you (mistakenly) labeled as fantasies.
What did you want to do when you were seven? You may laugh, but this question is so useful in helping us to see what our soul has always been drawn to do (at least, before society stepped in with all of its “shoulds”).
When we’re young children, we’re not nearly as caught up in our own minds as our adult selves are. As a result, we’re much more easily opened up to our purpose, our desires, and joy-seeking behaviors.
Make a list of the things you enjoyed doing as a seven-year-old. Do you still do any of these things today? Do any of these things appeal or inspire new, similar ideas? Take stock, and please don’t laugh them off. The key to a glorious, fulfilling future may lie in these former hobbies and interests.
3. See yourself for who you are now (not for who you used to be).
Let’s also be sure to get to know the person we have become today.
If nobody in your family could see into your ballot box for career-choosing, where would your vote go? We no longer need to please our parents! We’re adulting, after all. We aren’t here to please our spouses or our children either (though we can and should darn well love the heck out of them). We are here to please ourselves, and once that’s in place, well, you know the rest.
For some of us, asking people who are closest to us for feedback can really help to get the ball rolling, too. What do our closest friends or colleagues see as our key strengths and weaknesses? What do they notice us bringing to any room we enter? Keep the feedback that resonates and leave the rest.
4. Notice what fires you up.
What do you find yourself getting passionate (either intensely interested or completely annoyed) about? What could you spend your whole day doing (if life wasn’t always “lifing”)? What comes easily to you and allows you to feel in the flow?
Herein lie clues about your interests and passions, and potentially some of your core skills or gifts. What makes time fly by for you? What conversations do you find yourself drawn to or searching for?
What do you realize you stand for again and again, regardless of circumstances? What values does this reflect that you hold? Once you’ve answered some of these questions, check to see if the career paths you’re considering would complement, jive with, or fall right in line with at least one of these things.
5. Test out potential careers before jumping.
A change as big as a career shift warrants some personal research. And according to professional research, humans are pretty terrible at predicting what will make us happy. We’ve simply got to test our ideas out.
What if I told you that you could create some ways to test out potential career pivots before making them? Have you considered volunteer work? What about emailing every contact you have to ask if they know anyone working in the field who’d be willing to have a career curiosity call?
Could you come up with a project that would allow you to test out/try out new skills? What about a job shadow day? Have you considered cold messaging someone via LinkedIn who works in that field?
Whatever ideas you come up with will inevitably be better than simply jumping at your best guess. Get in there! Get creative. And get started on updating your life and career to match who you are today, not the person you were years ago when you created the life you’re still living now.
About Alyssa Smith
Alyssa is a certified life purpose and career coach who came “home” to herself after a challenging wake-up call that led to multiple life and career pivots. Through a heart-centered, holistic approach, she supports her clients to reconnect with their inner knowing, upgrade their lives to align with their evolved values, skills, and desires, and ultimately land careers that light them up again. Grab her free resource 8 Questions to Nail Your Superpowers and Own Your Value today!