You Don't Need to Hate Your Job to Have Outgrown It

We often assume that the desire for a different career must begin with something going wrong.

Perhaps we're burned out, or maybe reached a breaking point with a manager, lost interest in our work, or realised that the demands of our profession are no longer compatible with the life we want.

Sometimes that is exactly what happens.

But I think we overlook another possibility:

You can be good at what you do, appreciate what your career has given you, but still recognise that you want something more.

There doesn't have to be a crisis!

You may simply have changed, or your interests may have expanded.

The questions that excite you now may be different from the ones that motivated you five, ten or even fifteen years ago (depending on where you're at in your career). You may have developed capabilities that your current role gives you very little opportunity to use.

None of that necessarily means your career was a mistake. It may mean that the relationship between who you are now and how you work needs to evolve.

I know how easy it is to keep measuring ourselves against a path we once chose. When you've invested years in education, gained experience, established credibility and have become known for particular things, there is comfort in that familiarity. But it can also make it difficult to imagine ourselves outside the boundaries of what we already know.

This is one of the reasons I have been developing my thinking around Career Identity Expansion™. Rather than beginning with the question, What do I need to leave behind?, I'm interested in a more growth-focused question:

What might become possible if I allowed myself to recognise that I have more to contribute, and more ways to contribute it, than my current role allows?

You don't have to resign, change professions or make a dramatic decision to begin exploring that question.

You can start by paying attention to the interests you keep returning to, the problems you enjoy solving, the work that gives you energy, and the ideas you find yourself wanting to pursue.

Sometimes clarity begins not with the decision to leave, but with the willingness to look beyond what is familiar.

A question for you:

Have you ever found yourself wanting something different professionally, even though nothing was particularly wrong with your current work?

I'd be interested to hear what that experience looked like for you.

And if you're not sure whether where you are is where you still need to be, you can click the link to Take my Alignment Check

As always, I love hearing from you. You can email me at [email protected]

Until next time,

Dr Diane van Staden