The Career Questions You Keep Not Asking
And why suppressing them is not the answer...
Many mid-career professionals often assume their career dissatisfaction begins when they start asking themselves, “What else could I do?”.
But the more revealing evidence is found in the questions we've learned not to ask.
Maybe there's a subject you keep reading about. A type of work you are inexplicably drawn toward. A capability you wish you could use more. An idea you keep returning to... or a role you find yourself envying - not because you want that exact job, but because of what it seems to allow - that your current career doesn't.
And rather than exploring those questions, we dismiss them, saying things like:
That's just a hobby
It's too late
I don't have the credentials
It wouldn't be practical
I already have a good career
I don't know where it would lead
This suppression itself is data. Because there may be parts of your professional identity you've never allowed yourself to investigate.
How often have you caught yourself doing these things? Check off as many as apply.
I repeatedly return to a subject that has little obvious connection to my current career.
I find myself fascinated by the work other people do, even though I have no intention of pursuing it.
There are capabilities I would love to use professionally but rarely get to use.
I have an interest that I routinely dismiss as impractical, irrelevant or “just a hobby.”
I sometimes imagine what my professional life might look like if I weren't constrained by my current title or credentials.
When something genuinely interests me, my first response is to explain why I couldn't pursue it.
I have accumulated interests, experiences or capabilities that don't seem to fit neatly into my current professional identity.
I have become very good at talking myself out of exploring things that intrigue me.
If you checked close to half of these, there may be emerging interests or capabilities worth paying attention to, before deciding what comes next.
And if you checked off more than half, your curiosity may not simply be a distraction from your career. It may actually be evidence that your professional identity has already beginning to expand - essentially, you no longer want to be confined to the boundaries of your professional role or title and are ready to explore more ways your expertise can be applied to new problems or opportunities.
But before you can redesign your career, you often have to release the unwritten rules you've been using to decide what's worth exploring. And importantly, releasing is not quitting. Neither is it letting go of your career or abandoning everything you've built.
It's beginning to loosen the assumptions that tell you:
what counts as a legitimate career interest
which parts of you belong 'at work'
what you're “allowed” to explore
which possibilities are practical enough to deserve attention
and which questions you should stop asking.
If you've been asking yourself some of these questions and are unsure what it all means for your career, I designed a FREE Career Identity Expansion Assessment to help you understand what these internal thoughts may be signaling.
You can download your copy here:
Career Identity Expansion Assessment » Powered by ThriveCart
And if you've already downloaded the Career Identity Expansion Assessment, I'd genuinely like to know what you discovered. You can email me on [email protected] and share one thing it made you notice about yourself.
You don't need to have an answer or a plan. I'm simply interested in what surfaced.
Until next time, STOP suppressing your Expansion.
Dr Diane