Listen Now

Feeling frustrated that you're not coming up with any answers to the big career change questions? When it feels like trying to squeeze water from a stone, here's the antidote.

Career change clarity often feels like two steps forward, one step back. When you're excited about an idea and then you find out it will take more than you expected to get there, it can feel like sliding way backwards. But you're actually still going forward.

When Kaitlyn Casso worked in marketing, she found a passion for photography when she took that on as part of her role. Later, after spending a year looking for a new marketing job to no avail, she felt she was trying to force a career to work that she no longer wanted. She decided to take a chance on her new passion and now she's an independent brand photographer (and much happier!). The dots in her story connect in a way she couldn't have predicted, but she says sometimes we have to be patient with letting the answers come to us over time - they aren't instant.

Have you ever set arbitrarily ambitious goals for yourself, then felt like a failure when you didn't meet them? High achievers tend to make things really hard for themselves, and be tough on themselves for not measuring up to their own standards. Why is that?! We've become suspicious of things feeling too easy, but sometimes the answer isn't doing more, it's doing less. 

In her 30s, Vanessa Awong decided she'd had enough in her finance career and decided to become a doctor while also starting a family. "Let's just say yes and figure out the rest as we go," she told herself, and that started her new path. With four years of commuting out of town, it wasn't an easy road. She's an M.D. now and has thrown some creative projects and consulting into the mix, because why not? 

"How do I get from here to there?" is the million dollar career change question. Sometimes you can get there in one big leap, but lots of career changes happen by strategically hopping between a series of lily pads. Here's how to know if you can make a shift in 1 move or if you need to lily pad hop, and real life examples of what hopping looks like.

Alejandra Molina is co-founding a language learning app, currently focusing on medical Spanish during the pandemic. She doesn't have a tech background, but believes in figuring things out with a willingness to learn, to find inspiring mentors, to see value in all of your previous experience, to put imperfect ideas out there and get feedback. "Take everything calmly," she says, noting a venture capitalist's advice that each VC would give different feedback based on their own backgrounds. It's a good reminder that when everybody and their uncle has an opinion on our professional goals, we have to be careful about who we listen to because everyone's opinion is based on their own backgrounds.

Overthinking is a thing, but so is underthinking. We dwell on some career change questions to the point of overthinking, and we skip over the useful questions by underthinking. If you find yourself drawing a blank, here's how to know which it is and what to do instead.

Claire Simeone is a marine veterinarian and 2018 TED Fellow who started her own conservation-focused company, Sea Change Health. She has carved her own way through her field by following subtle clues. In our chat she describes how she learned to listen to those sparks: by separating her self worth from her career, and by separating fear-based anxiety from anxiety provoked by deep misalignment between our careers and who we really are. 

As a coach I tend to hear similar themes in the fears and objections potential career changers have. We can take those thoughts as signals that we are weak and inferior, but they're often actually just behavioral economics at play. Here are 5 ways the difficulties of career change can be explained by behavioral economics. It's not you, it's your brain.

Thalia Patrinos found that being a teacher just wasn't for her. She knew she loved writing, and after a chunk of time feeling frustrated and confused about what was next, she pursued a science writing degree and today works at NASA. Thalia's message as a career changer and creative writer is that rejection is an inevitable part of the process and not something to be discouraged by, and that a "sort-of-but-not-quite-right" role can turn out to be the right move. (It's also possible that her fire dancing hobby may have helped land that NASA gig, so you never know where your hobbies can lead.)

Career change prompts a lot of lofty questions about what to do with our lives. As a coach, I find people are more blocked than helped with questions like that because they have no "right" answer and they make us freeze with existential angst (enter: indecision, inaction, general freaking out). Here are 3 examples of common questions career changers ask themselves, why they don't get us anywhere, and what to ask yourself instead.

Teresa Carey was a sea captain for years, and while she still owns a related business, she decided eventually to make a shift. She talked to other people about their careers and became a science journalist. One of the most frustrating challenges for career changers is getting new employers to value their previous experience, and that's what Teresa faced. It took a creative thinking company to value her previous experience, which has been invaluable in her new field. Still, it's a work in progress, and as a multi-passionate person Teresa is confident she'll change careers again in future because there isn't always one all-fulfilling path.

How do you know if you're ready to take the plunge and pursue a career change when there is, in fact, no such thing as being 100% ready? Those who pull it off have a few things in common in how they approach it. If these resonate with you, you might be more ready than you think. And if you're not there yet, it's ok  - you'll see what might need to shift first.

Natalie Wong quit her job as a software engineer when her health started to suffer. After being a stay at home mother for many years, she thought, "Let's see if I can start my own business." And so she did. At Pepsoap she makes natural soap by hand. She created the business out of a drive to just see what she can do and for the personal fulfillment of the growth that comes along with learning how to make it happen. Natalie talks about finding her own definition of success, giving herself permission to change careers - including again in the future, and how focusing on ease and simplicity helped her DIY her way to figuring out how to start the business.

Sometimes, there's nothing left to think about, talk about, or analyze. When we're stuck, it can come down to this one question.

When she got out of the Air Force, La Toya States went through a divorce and period of homelessness while she tried to find her way. She's a writer and a poet at heart, and today she's a writer and editor at the Marine Corps with creative endeavors on the side while she pursues her doctorate. La Toya is open and honest about how difficult the climb was to get there, and that it was her belief in herself and her belief in a better future that kept her going, one step at a time, until she got to a happier place. 

As people start to demand more from their careers, a lot of us are searching for passion and purpose which are, for most people, frustratingly elusive. I don't think they're bad things to want, but we sometimes need to shift how we think of them. If you're struggling to find passion and purpose, here's a perspective to help you see it from a different angle and start getting some answers that can lead you in the right direction.

Georgia Barnett pursued her plan to become a biotech researcher, only to find she didn't like it. During her time off to figure things out, she mostly went in circles, trying to find a new path in science so that her previous efforts wouldn't be wasted. She says it all felt so hard because she was forcing something that wasn't right, and instead she decided to go for something that made her happy even though she didn't know what it was. So she launched a new direction without much of a plan (read: scary), and through following one step that led to another, she found herself in an unexpected career that she loves.

Our thoughts, emotions, actions, and results are more closely connected than we often realize. When we see how they fit together, it's clear how much of life starts in our minds and how much can change if we take charge of our thoughts. This episode follows the recent one on cognitive distortions to show how those distortions fit into this pattern, for better or worse. If there's one thing that can help you pursue a big goal and change your life, it's understanding this cycle and learning to take charge of your mind.