How to Change Career Direction when you don't know what's next (yet!)

Most career change advice assumes you've already decided. You hate your job, you're done, you just need a plan. Or that you don't know yet, so here are some options based on your CV and skills.

In my experience it rarely starts there. It starts with a turning inwards and noticing.

Perhaps you're good at what you do. By most external measures, you're doing well. And yet somewhere along the way - perhaps after a restructure, a promotion that was a bit overwhelming or crunchy, a promotion that didn't arrive, a new leader, a move to another country, a break-up, a baby, a slow burn of exhaustion, or since you even started this career - work stopped feeling like somewhere you got your energy and started feeling like something you perform.

BUT! I hear you thinking... I get paid well, I can support myself and my family, I don't even know what I'd do instead, I don't want to start over at square one... Am I just not appreciating what I've got? Am I ungrateful?

This doubt and questioning is not a personality flaw to be stuffed down or managed quietly until it passes. It's information to be explored (because it's your instincts trying to tell you something), and it usually opens a far more interesting conversation than "what should I do instead?"

The NUANCED version of a 'Should I CHANGE career' crisis

The loud version - handing in your notice and moving countries to start your own creative small business - is great if you're on that road, yes. The loud version can also be a redundancy that leaves you with no other options - a fire gets lit under your butt and you need to get in to gear. This scenario is often more rare than the following though...

The quiet version looks like this: you're still delivering, still being told you're doing decent, and still feeling a small distance between you and the work. You care about wanting to enjoy your work, and doing a good job. You just don't recognise yourself in it anymore.

That distance shows up in odd places. You're one of the most capable people in the room but you've started doubting your competence. You got the promotion but felt flat or overwhelmed. You missed the promotion and felt relieved, then guilty about the relief. You moved countries for the job and can't tell whether the disorientation is the job or the move. You've started masking a little - performing enthusiasm you don't feel, then getting home in the evening and not having enough energy left for stuff you enjoy doing. (That can be a recipe for heading towards burnout).

None of that means you've lost your ambition or competence. It means the shape of your life and the shape of your work have quietly stopped matching, and you've been too busy, either literally or in your head, to acknowledge it and say so out loud.

Having coaching space where you feel safe enough to admit it and say it out loud for the first time, properly, is often one of the most courageous and emotional first steps. This is what I see frequently with my clients.

A better starting question than: "What do I want to do next?"

When you're already tired, "what's next?" pushes you straight to an answer: a course, a pivot, a title, a business. Anything that sounds like movement and action. Because having an action plan, of course, makes us feel a bit more comfortable because it means less uncertainty.

Note: often I find that people can't even imagine satisfying options of what's next, because you can't see what you don't have headspace, awareness or imagination to see.

The better first question is smaller, harder and, sorry, much less comfortable: what did I actually want when I chose this work, what brought me here, and what's still true now?

Some of what you wanted is likely still yours. Some of it was borrowed or moulded on to you: from your industry, your family, the version of success that was available when you started out and fed to you along the way.

Separating the two is the work. It's also why a career change that starts with a new job title, and nothing else, tends to land you in the same place with a different badge.

It's rarely one decision - BUT A SERIES OF MANY LITTLE STEPS

A career change reads like a moment in hindsight. In practice it's a series of small honest ones: saying what you actually want in a meeting, letting one ambition go, experimenting and testing something before you commit to it, telling one person the truth about how you feel.

Which is why the anti-hustle version of this matters. The goal isn't to rebuild your career at maximum speed while feeling awful. It's about creating and moving towards a version of success that supports who you are and what you want from your life - one that feels satisfying and that you can keep up on a random Tuesday in February, not just a flash in the pan that looks and feels great on one day and then drains you most of the rest.

WHO YOU ARE AND Where you are IN LIFE matters

Career and life decisions aren't made in a vacuum. In my coaching experience, it does not make sense to just pick a career title and then press go without considering the other facets of your life. I always take a holistic and therapeutic approach to career coaching.

Relocation, visas, a partner's job, a family you're closer to or further from, wanting to start a family, a country whose working culture doesn't fit you, etc. - as well as, your personality, traits, hobbies, energy levels and needs, ways your brain best works, environmental/work-culture preferences etc. - all of it sits in the room when you're trying to think clearly about work.

What coaching adds that self-study can't

There are so many brilliant books, podcasts and frameworks out there to try out. I also make use of these things in my coaching work because they can hand you a map. However, they can't notice that you keep circling the same three options, or that you describe every achievement as luck, or that you've narrowed your choices down to the two that would least upset someone else. Or that you keep talking getting really excited about something but then say it would be impossible for you.

That's what a coach is for: a place to think out loud with someone who doesn't need anything from you, who isn't your manager, your partner or your friend, and who will keep noticing what personal patterns or beliefs are beneath and keep asking the questions you've been sidestepping - at a pace that is more in line with your energy and identity change process, and one you can actually sustain.

Why I dont think you need a five-step plan

Career change, career direction, and workplace identity shifts is a crunchy and complex process that looks, feels, and happens differently for everyone, depending on their psychological development, past experiences, protective beliefs, personality, practical needs, and more.

I believe that you need a clearer sense of what you want your work to support, and the nerve (courage) to let that change the decisions in front of you.

Some people arrive there in a few conversations. Others need a season of them. Both are fine. Neither requires you to blow up your life first (unless that works well for you).

Whether you're coming to your career questioning via a louder or quieter path, if any of this sounds familiar, that's usually the right time to talk it through - before it becomes a decision you make in a hurry.

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