What if your restlessness isn't the problem?
How to distinguish expansion from escape
There's a question I think we ask too quickly when our careers begin to feel uncomfortable:
"What's wrong?"
We start questioning so many aspects related to our discomfort at work through the lens of "What's wrong?":
What's wrong with my job?
What's wrong with my organisation?
What's wrong with me?
And this almost always leads to these follow-up questions:
Do I need to leave?
Do I need to stay?
Do I need a change?
But I'm believe there's a more useful question to ask, before going down this rabbit hole...
What is the restlessness trying to tell me?
Because restlessness is data. It tells us that something has changed.
The challenge is that it doesn't tell us what has changed. Sometimes restlessness is telling you that you're in the wrong environment; sometimes it's telling you that something in your work needs to change; and sometimes, I believe, it's telling you something more subtle:
Your professional identity is beginning to expand beyond the boundaries you've previously accepted for yourself.
That distinction matters.
Because if you immediately interpret restlessness as a demand to leave, you may make a career decision before understanding what's actually happening.
You might leave a perfectly good career when what you really needed was permission to contribute differently.
Or you might stay indefinitely because, on paper, everything's still working.
This is one of the tensions I'm increasingly interested in through the lens of Career Identity Expansion.
How do we know whether our restlessness is pointing us toward escape - or expansion?
One clue may be what happens alongside the discomfort.
Are you becoming curious?
Are you noticing interests you previously dismissed as distractions?
Are you imagining different ways of contributing?
Are you experimenting with things that don't fit neatly into your current professional identity?
Are you beginning to see possibilities that weren't visible to you before?
If so, the restlessness may not simply be something to eliminate. It may be information worth investigating.
And that requires a different response from immediately searching for the next job.
It requires curiosity before certainty. Exploration before resignation.
And perhaps most importantly:
the willingness to question an identity that has worked very well for you - even if it no longer tells the whole story of who you are becoming.
There's another question here that I think deserves much more attention.
Why is it that the people who've achieved the most can sometimes find it hardest to admit that something needs to change?
After all, success gives you every reason to stay. And sometimes, success itself becomes part of what keeps you there....
That's where we're going next on the podcast.
Episode 155 will answer the question, Why Do Successful People Feel Trapped?
Because perhaps the hardest career decision isn't deciding to leave.
Maybe it's recognising when the very thing you've worked so hard to achieve has become part of the identity you now need to reconsider.
Until next week,
Dr Diane
P.S. EP155 releases 7 September, so don't miss it!