Escaping Old Career Narratives
Super tools to find clarity and get unstuck
When I was a kid, if someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I had a different response depending on the day, my mood, and who was around. Some days I was a strong yes on being an artist, other days a writer, when my parents were around an architect or a lawyer. But when I sat alone with this question, the most honest answer was that I didn’t know. The life ahead seemed so long, and to have to pick one job and stick to it forever seemed silly. My parents and other surrounding adults referred to this forever job as a career, and they really seemed to think it was important to have it figured out as early as possible.
By my early 20’s I was already uninspired by the traditional career narrative that tells us our purpose in this life is to find a career, grow in the career, and retire from that career. Still, it took me time to accept and believe that my path could be different. And once I was able to do that, my challenge became sitting with the truth that I wasn’t exactly sure of what I wanted to do. The things I loved and felt purposeful about hadn’t been packaged into neat titles and job descriptions. I felt stuck between the absolute clarity of what I did not want, and the murkiness of what it looked like to support myself financially while remaining authentic.
What keeps us stuck? In my experience, it’s usually fear. Fear of what? In this situation, it was the fear of the unknown. A new discomfort. I was familiar with the discomfort of feeling unfulfilled by the work I did and I knew how to navigate that discomfort. I complained, I fantasized, and I told everyone I knew about how I could be doing something else without taking any action. In a sense, I was comfortable with my discomfort. Fortunately for my growth, that discomfort eventually developed more deeply into pain, and from there I became ready to step into the murkiness and toward a more honest version of myself.
Intentional action, rigorous honesty, trust, and patience have been my keys to clarity and freedom. These simple, yet not-so-easy tools continuously work to get me unstuck. Let me break down what I mean by each.
Intentional action
I take a lot of actions every day without putting any thought into them. There have been moments when I’ve looked up from my phone after scrolling through Instagram for some huge amount of minutes without even realizing how much time has passed. In moments of my life when I’ve felt stuck, taking new, intentional action has played an enormous part in creating a shift. Action builds momentum. Sometimes we feel that momentum immediately and sometimes it sneaks up on us, but trust me, it’s there.
When it came to navigating the unknown and working to discover an authentic livelihood, intentional action meant reaching out to people who had what I wanted even when they weren’t in my immediate circle, spending time every week exploring my interests regardless of motivation and finding ways to be useful to others despite sometimes feeling directionless.
Reaching out to people who had aspects of what I wanted
They didn’t necessarily have to be doing a job that I pictured myself doing. I looked for people who had taken the road less traveled in pursuit of their own happiness, fulfillment, and well-being. Often, when I met with these people they’d suggest an action I hadn’t thought of (some of which I’ve included in this writing), or they’d connect me with someone else. The result of these meetings, perhaps more than anything, was a stronger belief that what I wanted was possible, and belief is powerful.
A commitment to time spent every week exploring my interests
This sounds painless and fun in theory but after a “long day,” it’s easy to convince myself that binging Netflix, window shopping online, or really doing anything else is more important and appealing. I wasn’t rigid about the amount of time I spent each week, I just committed. Some days I spent 20 minutes, other days I got lost in the exploration for hours. But I always took some kind of action, especially when I didn’t want to, even if it seemed teeny tiny. If you want examples of what “exploring my interests'' meant for me, I detailed some below.
Morning pages: Three pages every morning, unfiltered to get all the gunk out and help me find clarity and direction. It didn’t matter what I wrote. Most of it felt like gibberish. But this incredible tool made space for the light of new ideas and creativity to shine in. For more on this, check out Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way.
Writing out a job ideal: A job ideal is exactly what it sounds like. It’s everything I wanted in an ideal job, down to the feelings. Since I wasn’t completely sure about what I wanted to be doing, I started with what I did know. I knew I wanted creativity, flexibility, a great paycheck, and an opportunity to lead and to help others grow. I knew that I didn’t want to feel sad on Sundays or dread the week ahead, and I wanted to work with authentic people who respected each other and who were building big, inspiring lives of their own.
Content audit: I started paying attention to the kind of content I was drawn to. What was I intentionally reading? What accounts did I follow on different social media platforms? And who did I admire? Finally, how were these things connected, what did they all have in common? I added my discoveries to my job ideal and over time it grew along with the possibilities I began to see.
Being useful to others (aka service)
Sometimes I hear myself giving sane and sound guidance to a friend in need of support and think to myself, whoa, I actually needed to hear that too. There have been times when I’ve helped someone with what seemed like an insurmountable task and left in awe of how much capacity we actually have as humans. Service lifts us out of ourselves, and then returns us, often with a clearer perspective. Eckhart Tolle says, “Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you’re withholding from the world.” Acts of service, even small ones, are often reminders that we have something to give, they can connect us back to an abundance mindset, and at the very least get us out of our own heads for a while.
I want to be clear about what I’m not suggesting. I’m not suggesting to hurl unsolicited advice at friends or project insecurities in the form of “guidance.” I’m also not suggesting that if you’re really tired you shouldn’t rest. It’s totally okay to say no and rest is incredibly important on any journey.
What I am suggesting is that we often have more capacity than we realize and because the work I do is about expanding, this is a great place to practice. Smiling at a stranger when you’re in a terrible mood, picking up the phone when your mother calls, and helping someone carry in their packages are small actions that can make a big difference for the people around you, and for how you experience yourself. You will be surprised at how something so seemingly irrelevant, like slowing down to help someone with directions, can lead you to a new door.
Rigorous honesty
Rigorous honesty is the practice of being honest with oneself and others in a thoughtful and empathetic way. It can be hard, but the juice is always worth the squeeze in my experience. If you’re reading this, you’re likely already practicing some level of rigorous honesty. You have realized through honest dialogue with yourself and potential others that you don’t want to participate in the traditional career narrative that’s been fed to you, you’re ready for more. I’m here to tell you that if you keep it up, that is, being honest with yourself and others, you will find yourself closer and closer to your thing, whatever it is.
Rigorous honesty is not the same thing as brutal honesty, it is conscious while being conscientious. It took me a long time to integrate rigorous honesty into my day to day and it’s still something I have to continuously practice. It is also the point from which I’ve seen some of the greatest changes in my life happen.
Before I got honest with myself about how uninspired I was by the work I was doing, I would often look for similar jobs at new companies telling myself a change of scenery would do the trick. After years of doing this, the honest voice inside of me got so loud that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I remember the fear and liberation that came with realizing I had to do something different, not knowing at all where to start. Looking back I can see that it started with honesty. I stopped looking for work that I didn’t want to do, and I started sharing honestly with the people around me.
Within 6 months I was hired for a job that was outside of the career I had spent 10 years in. It was a step in a direction that would eventually lead me to where I am today. When you don’t know what to do, take the most honest action you can. I have found that my inner compass is truly a failsafe piece of kit.
Trust and Patience
I believe that trust and patience work together as a super tool. When I try to rush my process, cut corners with inauthenticity, and push myself to figure it out, I’m not only being impatient, I’m also not trusting life.
Anne Lamott says, “A good name for God is: Not me.” Once I started to accept that I was not in control of all things life, and there was potentially something bigger at play, I was not only met with more ease and serenity, but I also stumbled upon possibilities beyond my greatest imaginings. Today I trust that if I’m taking action, something will shift eventually. I trust that there’s more to life than my eyes can see, and it’s good. I trust that there’s more to celebrate than there is to fear. I trust and I take action. Rinse and repeat.
Between getting in my own way, trial and error, and just learning the lessons that life wants me to learn, everything takes more time than I initially think it should or want it to. But I have witnessed again and again that if I show up, try my best to do the right thing, and don’t give up, things happen. Sometimes I’m redirected, and sometimes the thing I thought I wanted isn’t at all what I thought it would be, but more is always revealed, and a path emerges.
In the words of Cheryl Strayed, “You don’t have a career, you have a life.”
Life is too short to agonize over a career, and it’s long enough to change your mind and try new things. Those moments of complete uncertainty are special invitations to explore our inner world, align with our authenticity, and expand.
When I find myself in the hallways of life, stuck between an old door and not yet through a new one, these tools are my travelators. They restore my inner compass and help me get to the other side of fear and back to myself.
And when this stuff feels really hard, or I just can’t muster the enthusiasm to do any of it, which totally happens, I remind myself that tomorrow is a brand new day and I try to get a good night’s sleep.
