Making More Intentional Choices About Life and CAREER
Updated: Oct 9
Have you ever found yourself questioning your career, even though, on paper, everything looks like it 'should' be fine?
Perhaps you have a good job, a respectable title, interesting work or a career you once felt excited about. Maybe you’ve worked hard to get where you are. And yet, something doesn’t quite fit anymore.
You might feel restless, disconnected or unsure what you want next. You might be considering a career change but struggling to know where to begin. Or perhaps you know something needs to change, but you’re not sure whether it’s your job, your working environment, your ambitions
or your relationship with work itself.
Sometimes, the question isn’t simply What should I do next?
It’s How do I want to live and work, and what choices would help me get there?
As a career coach in Amsterdam, I support people to explore these questions, reconnect with what matters to them and make more intentional choices about their careers and lives.
What does it mean to make intentional career choices?
It’s easy to make decisions based on what seems sensible, expected or impressive from the outside.
We might choose a career because it offers security, pursue a promotion because it feels like the natural next step, or keep pushing ourselves because slowing down feels uncomfortable. We may find ourselves following expectations we’ve absorbed from family, colleagues, our industry or society without stopping to ask whether those expectations still fit.
There is nothing inherently wrong with ambition, stability or professional achievement. The question is whether the way you pursue them works for you.
Intentional career choices begin with understanding yourself more clearly: what you value, what energises you, what you need, what you’re good at and what you want your working life to make possible.
This doesn’t necessarily mean changing careers or pursuing a dramatic new direction. Sometimes it means finding a different way to approach your current role. Sometimes it means having a conversation you’ve been avoiding, changing your boundaries, exploring a new opportunity or giving yourself permission to want something different.
The point is to move from automatically responding to expectations towards making choices you can genuinely own.
Why can it be so difficult to know what you want?
Knowing what you want sounds straightforward. In practice, it can be surprisingly complicated.
Our professional identities are often built over years. We develop habits, learn what gets rewarded and become accustomed to measuring ourselves against particular standards of success.
Over time, it can become difficult to distinguish between what we genuinely want and what we believe we should want.
You might recognise some of these experiences:
You’re successful in your career but feel restless or unfulfilled.
You’re drawn towards a different direction but worry about losing the security or status you’ve built.
You have lots of ideas but struggle to commit to one.
You find yourself comparing your progress with other people's.
You know your current way of working isn't sustainable, but you aren't sure what to change.
You keep putting your own needs aside to meet the expectations of others.
You want more meaning, creativity, flexibility or balance, but feel guilty for wanting it.
These experiences don't necessarily mean you've made the wrong choices. They may simply mean that your circumstances, priorities or understanding of yourself have changed.
Rather than immediately trying to fix the discomfort, it can be useful to become curious about it.
What is this feeling telling you? What might you need more of, or less of? What have you been overlooking? What would you explore if you didn't have to know the answer straight away?
Sometimes, creating space for these questions is the first meaningful step towards change.
How career coaching helps you make more intentional choices
Working with a career coach gives you dedicated time to think, reflect and explore your options with someone outside your usual personal and professional circles.
My approach to career coaching is holistic, combining practical career exploration with attention to the personal experiences, beliefs, emotions and expectations that influence how we work.
Here are some of the ways coaching can help.
1. Understand what success means to you
What does a satisfying working life actually look like for you?
Not the version that sounds impressive at a dinner party. Not necessarily the next promotion, the bigger salary or the more prestigious job. Your version.
Together, we can explore your values, strengths, interests, ambitions and needs, as well as the conditions that help you do your best work.
We might look at the kind of environment you thrive in, the pace at which you want to work, the responsibilities you enjoy, the relationships you need around you and the role you want work to play in your wider life.
The aim isn't to arrive at a perfect, fixed definition of success. It's to develop a clearer sense of what matters to you now, so that you have something meaningful to navigate by.
2. Separate your own wants from external expectations
Many of us have learned to be good at meeting expectations.
We become adaptable, capable and dependable. We learn how to perform well, read a room and understand what other people value. These can be useful skills, but they can also make it harder to hear our own opinions.
Career coaching offers space to notice where you might be holding yourself back, over-adapting or pursuing goals that no longer feel like your own.
This isn't about rejecting other people's advice or assuming that every expectation is unhelpful. It's about developing the confidence to decide which expectations you want to honour, which you want to question and which you may be ready to let go of.
As you become more familiar with your own preferences and perspectives, you can begin to make decisions with greater self-trust.
3. Explore your options without rushing to an answer
When we're uncertain about our careers, it's tempting to jump straight into problem-solving.
Should I leave my job? Retrain? Start a business? Ask for a promotion? Take a break?
These questions matter, but sometimes we reach for answers before we've properly understood the question.
Coaching gives you room to explore possibilities without needing to commit to one immediately. We can examine different directions, challenge assumptions, notice what attracts or concerns you, and consider options you may not have taken seriously before.
You don't need to arrive with a clear plan. Curiosity and a willingness to explore are enough to begin.
From there, we can bring structure to the process, identify practical next steps and experiment with ways of moving forward.
4. Build the confidence to act on what matters
Clarity doesn't always make change easy.
Even when you know what you want, fear, self-doubt and practical constraints can make it difficult to act. You might worry about disappointing people, making the wrong decision, losing stability or discovering that a different path isn't what you imagined.
Career coaching can help you work with these concerns rather than simply waiting for them to disappear.
We can explore what is holding you back, identify the resources and strengths you already have, and practise approaching difficult decisions or conversations differently.
That might mean preparing to ask for a pay rise, setting boundaries with colleagues, exploring a career pivot or taking the first small step towards an idea you've been carrying for years.
The aim isn't to eliminate uncertainty. It's to develop your ability to make thoughtful decisions and take action even when you can't know exactly how everything will turn out.
5. Create a career that supports the life you want
Your career doesn't exist in isolation.
The way you work affects your energy, relationships, health, sense of identity and the time you have for the things that matter outside work.
That's why I believe career decisions benefit from a wider perspective.
Rather than asking only what you want to achieve professionally, we can also explore how you want your everyday life to feel. What do you want more space for? What kind of pace is sustainable? What are you no longer willing to sacrifice? What would a satisfying balance look like in this particular chapter of your life?
Sometimes the changes you need are professional. Sometimes they're about boundaries, expectations or the way you relate to work.
Often, they're a combination of both.
Career coaching in Amsterdam: space to think differently
Living and working in Amsterdam can mean navigating international workplaces, changing industries, ambitious professional environments or the complexities of building a life in a different country.
Whatever your circumstances, it can be useful to have a confidential space where you don't need to perform, have all the answers or explain yourself through the lens of your job title.
As a career coach in Amsterdam, I work with people who want to understand themselves and their working lives more deeply. You might be navigating a career transition, questioning your ambitions, developing as a leader, returning to work after a major life change or simply sensing that your current approach needs to evolve.
You don't need to be at breaking point to benefit from coaching. You don't even need to know whether you want to change jobs.
You can begin with a feeling, a question, a dilemma or a sense that something could be different.
Sessions can offer a space to slow down, untangle what's going on and consider what you want to do with what you discover. We can then bring in practical tools, reflection exercises and strategic thinking to help you move forward.
I offer career coaching in Amsterdam, as well as online coaching for people who prefer to work remotely.
What if you don't know what you want yet?
You don't need to arrive at coaching with a five-year plan.
In fact, not knowing can be a useful starting point.
Perhaps you've spent years working towards goals that made sense at the time, but you're ready to question them. Perhaps you have several possible directions and want to understand which ones feel meaningful. Or perhaps you're so accustomed to keeping everything moving that you haven't had much space to consider what you actually want.
You can start there.
Together, we can make room for uncertainty, explore what is important to you and gradually build a clearer picture of what you want your next chapter to look like.
This is not about finding a single perfect career or making every decision correctly. It's about becoming more aware of your choices, understanding yourself more clearly and developing the confidence to shape your working life with greater intention.
Ready to make more intentional choices about your career?
You spend a significant part of your life working. It is worth taking the time to consider how you want that part of your life to feel, what you want it to make possible and whether your current direction still fits.
You don't need to have everything figured out before you begin.
If you're looking for a career coach in Amsterdam and would like space to explore your options, understand what matters to you and work towards a career that feels more like your own, I'd love to hear from you.
Let's start with a conversation about where you are, what you're questioning and what you'd like to explore.
