Recently I’ve been thinking differently about career change

If you've followed my work for a while, you will know that over the years, I’ve talked a lot about career change.

Reinvention. Pivoting. Starting again. Finding work that feels more aligned.

And I still believe all of those conversations matter - and have a place in our career stories.

But lately, I’ve been thinking more deeply about something underneath all of that.

What happens when it isn’t your career that needs to change first - but the way you understand yourself within your career?

I’ve been sitting with this question (which has now become central to my work) because, when I look back at my own career, I can see that some of my biggest transitions were not really about changing jobs.

They were about changing what I believed was possible for me professionally. My career journey has been quite the ride! A series of different roles, in different contexts for different seasons.

Leaving optometry. Moving into international development. Becoming an academic. Leaving academia. Moving countries. And eventually letting go of the identity of “professor” that had become so closely associated with my expertise, credibility and sense of professional value.

At the time, I often described these experiences as reinvention. Because at the time, it felt like what I was doing.

But in hindsight, I see them differently. I now recognise that I was repeatedly expanding beyond the professional identity I'd previously built.

And that realisation has changed the questions I’m asking - not only about my own career, but about the people whose stories I encounter through my work and through the podcast.

It's also where my thinking around Career Identity Expansion™ has come from.

I use that term to describe the process of expanding who you are willing to be professionally -and, perhaps even more importantly, expanding what you believe is possible for your career without assuming that everything you've done before has to be discarded.

That last part matters deeply to me. Especially after everything I've built.

Because I don't think career change always means starting over. Sometimes the challenge is recognising that the experience, expertise, interests and capabilities you've accumulated can travel with you into something you haven't yet imagined.

And sometimes the hardest part isn't figuring out what to do next.

It's giving yourself permission to question an identity that once fit very well.

In thinking about how much my own understanding has changed since I first began talking publicly about these ideas, it's made me curious about you.

If you've been listening to the podcast or following my work for a while, has your own thinking about your career changed too?

Perhaps something I said a year ago resonates differently today.

Perhaps your circumstances have changed.

Perhaps you've stayed exactly where you were - but your understanding of what you want, what you value, or who you are becoming professionally has shifted.

I'd love to hear about it.

If something comes to mind, I'd love it if you shared your reflection on LinkedIn and tag me (@Dr Diane van Staden). It doesn't need to be a polished career story. I'm much more interested in the thinking reflected underneath it.

Because I increasingly believe that our career stories are not finished narratives. Sometimes, when we revisit them, we discover that we were asking a different question all along.

And I have a feeling there are many more of those questions for us to explore together...

As always, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me on [email protected]

Sincerely,

Dr Diane