"I don't know what I want or need - but I know I don't want this!" (Saoirse's Story)
I hear a version of this line every single week.
When we don’t know what we need, it seems safer to wait for inspiration. To wait for the perfect, fail-safe idea. to magically appear. Before we make any moves at all.
At what cost?
Saoirse’s story of career change indicates the very powerful connection between our work and our mental and physical health.
She has kindly let me tell her story. Her name has been changed for privacy reasons.
Saoirse’s story: Burning out in the wrong industry, then re-lighting the fire in a new one.
Waiting for “the perfect day” to make changes in your career is a perfect recipe - for staying exactly where you are. Instead initiating movement by learning how to take the right kind of actions brings surprising results and opens doors you didn’t know exist.
Saorise knew she was burning out.
Every day-break, she felt the loss of yet another gram of precious energy seeping from her pores as she steeled herself for the daily work treadmill.
She'd achieved someone’s dream of becoming an engineer.
She’d then invested her adult work-life performing a technical engineering role.
But the work didn't suit her.
In her soul, she knew she couldn’t spend the remainder of her career as a technical engineer.
Her machine-self could keep going. Bill-paying. Being sensible and “safe”.
But her human-self needed something different. Something more. More her.
In her alone moments, she’d fantasised about “big change” for years.
Never knowing what “big change” she wanted or needed, Saorise decided to start with a smaller change.
She applied for and secured a new role in commercial engineering firm.
Without realising, she stepped deep into a giant pile of her personal Kryptonite.
Kryptonite is the word I use to describe the people, processes or environments that suck your soul dry. Read more about it HERE and access the free worksheet to uncover yours.
For Saoirse, the ultra-competitive, super-aggressive, more-more-more for less-less-less environment represented her Kryptonite.
And it began to nibble away at her happiness.
It scraped away at the edges of her self-esteem.
It scratched ridges into her self-confidence.
She'd tried many times to leave. But always ended up being "sucked back in".
Things were going in only one direction.
And each time, there was less and less of her golden energy to wage the war against the Kryptonite effect - of being in the wrong career and now also, the wrong environment.
Until she reached her now-or-never moment.
"I'm now confronted with the high mental health costs of staying in a career and work environment that sucks the life out of me and doesn't provide the meaning, joy or motivation."
Burning out happens at a slow and steady pace. But make no mistake, the drain is continuous and relentless. Even mediocre performance requires drilling down to dark depths of personal energy reserves - which over time becomes increasingly hard.
It became crystal clear to Saoirse.
Something had to change
The ongoing drain, combined with the parental juggle and her demanding emotional life meant that finding time and energy to focus on career change was going to be a challenge.
A challenge of grand proportions.
But such a necessary challenge.
For her work-life.
For her emotional-life. And her life-life.
She joined the free "Never too old, Never too late" community, and after a week or so she knew she'd found the right method to learn how to escape - with a plan.
And to get enough support to feel like she wasn't leading the battle alone.
The Fierce Emporium is a career redesign programme designed for professionals in their 40s, 50s and 60s who want change but don’t know where to start with it. Read more about it HERE.
She joined The Fierce Emporium programme.
"The discomfort of the unknown is a very challenging place to be in, but it's inevitable. This is why your support in that stage was so invaluable."
Unpicking what Saorise needed and wanted
One of the challenges in the first week of the learning phase was tricky.
It walked her through a method to imagine how she might feel if she was doing deeply fulfilling work.
She decided that she wanted to, no - she needed to :
"Connect to others, create change, create something new, collaborate and share".
If these things were happening, the world would be seeing her "at her best".
This became her personalised vision of success - even though she had zero idea how to make it happen - YET!
New skills open doors
In week three and four of the learning phase - networking skills became a focus.
Saoirse had hated traditional networking but fell in love with the Fierce method of networking.
It felt kind and came naturally to her.
Even better, she could squeeze it into her tiny fragments of available time.
Best of all, this networking method gifted her sparks of energy like nothing else.
Out of the Kryptonite frying pan…
In an attempt to slow her energy depletion, while working on the longer-term plan, Saorise secured a new engineering role - in a new commercial business.
Hope sprung anew.
Sadly, it was a situation of out of one Kryptonite frying pan into a new Kryptonite fire.
The environment was even more aggressive, even more depleting and even more dangerous to her mental health. They agreed to part company.
Opportunity came knocking
"I didn't know where the change could come from until it came!"
Opportunity came from an unexpected angle. As it does when you are on-the-move
A door from her newly-designed garden network opened - a valued friend came to know of a role that she felt would suit Saorise.
But fear set in.
At first glance it wasn't right for her.
A new industry? A new role? Out of her familiar environment?
She could see very few overlaps in skills and talents.
Self-doubt set in.
She wasn't sure it would play to her Superpowers.
She wasn't sure she had the energy to be successful in interviews - never mind make the role a success!
Help was offered.
She accepted help with the application and interview process.
And slowly, Saoirse researched the company, the role and its goals - in the sustainability and education field.
She noticed a tiny frisson of excitement starting to build within her.
Excitement about the problem this company - and ultimately this role - would contribute to solving.
She began to see how some of her human superpowers - not her engineering superpowers - could really make a difference.
She truly enjoyed the interviews - they felt like human-to-human conversations.
Not the aggressive inhumane machine-like demands on her soul that she’d grown accustomed to expect.
She hushed her inner critic.
And allowed herself to became excited about the potential.
To become enthusiastic about her potential to make a difference. In a new area.
To connect with and become connected to people she cared about.
To collaborate with passionate people with a purpose.
To share the talents of valuable humans.
To have her uniquely personal needs met at work.
Oddly, EXACTLY as she has imagined in that tricky week one challenge.
Cut to the end of the story
Saoirse performed so well in the interviews that, even if she hadn’t been selected, a seed of belief had been planted. She knew her world of work could be different in the future.
She was selected.
Saoirse relights her fire - in a completely new industry.
We spoke a few months into her new role.
As she had hoped, the role plays to her Superpowers, her talents and her interests.
She’s solving problems that she’d never quite dreamed she could get paid to solve.
And the company is filled with non-machine-like humans who support her - and she them.
They collaborate in their joint goals to solve a problem that matters. In ways that fuel each of them.
She's constantly using the insights and resources she accumulated in her time within the Fierce Emporium to design her tomorrows to be more enjoyable than her yesterdays.
Before and after…
We all love a Cinderella transformation, don’t we?
But career change at our age is far more complex and nuanced.
That said, it’s important to keep assessing your happiness at work.
Check out below for one of the speed-tools we use in The Fierce Emporium programme to assess progress and the impact your work-life changes are having on your real-life.
You can see Saorise’s progress in 9 months.
Saorise compared her life-satisfaction on the day she joined The Fierce Emporium and several months later.
Want it done for you? The mini-programme Derailed! is a diagnostic tool that assesses your life-satisfaction using 100 questions.
Fierce on auto-pilot?
Career design for Saoirse is still a very deliberate, conscious and dynamic process - she may never switch on her career auto-pilot. ( This delights me - here’s a story of how I switched my career autopilot on, for years! )
She’s in control of her satisfaction to a much higher degree than ever before.
She continues to focus on replenishing the energy that ebbed from her body and mind over years of standing in environments that proved to be her personal, powerfully-eroding Kryptonite.
Saoirse is on-the-move now, for sure.
"The Fierce energy is not stable in me yet, but I'm building it up every day. It's about moving towards a different work identity with little actions."
Interested in redesigning your career?
Dip your toe into career design - Derailed! (a mini-programme to assess your work-life-satisfaction)
The DIY career redesign programme for professionals in their 40s, 50s and 60s = The Fierce Emporium.
Schedule a call to discuss if this or my one-to-one programme is right for you.
