Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! There is a question we are taught to ask ourselves when thinking about our careers: What am I good at? It is a useful question. Especially early in our working lives. We look at our strengths, build skills, collect experience, and improve at what we do. Over time, we may become very good at something...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! Sometimes you don't even think about changing your career. You just notice that you don't feel quite right. You are tired.You don't sleep as well as you used to.You have less energy for the things you enjoy.You feel strangely disconnected from a life that, on paper, should be making you happy. So you...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! Writing a book is one thing. Finding the people who need it is another. Once the manuscript is finished, there is a whole new part of the journey: making the book visible and discoverable to the right readers. I knew exactly what kind of readers I wanted to find for Why Smart People Stay Too Long in the...
22 days ago • 3 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! Over the last three Letters, I've explored different reasons why smart people stay too long in careers that no longer fit them. Now, I'd like to share something that may be one of the most common reasons of all. At some point, many people already know they have very little reason to stay. And still, they...
29 days ago • 3 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! When we talk about career change, we usually talk about changing what we do. A new job.A new profession.A new business.A different direction. But sometimes the more difficult question is much more personal: Who am I if I stop being the person I've been professionally? I've experienced this question more...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! Last week I wrote about the Quiet Signal–the moment we recognize that something has changed inside us long before anything changes on the outside. This week I'd like to tell you about something that often happens next. About ten years ago, I became convinced I'd found the future. After years of...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! For years, I thought people changed careers because they found a better opportunity. Today, I don't think that's true. I think change begins much earlier. It often starts with what I now call a quiet signal. Sometimes it's as simple as realizing the coffee you drink every morning suddenly doesn't taste...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! This week, while sorting through old notebooks, I came across one I hadn't opened in years. As I started reading through its pages, I was immediately transported back to a very different chapter of my life. At the time, I was preparing to move to another country. I wanted to build an international...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Elena Agafonova Coach | Author | Career Pivot Guide 🌱 Letters of Change A weekly reflection on change, self-trust, and finding your way forward Begin where you are Hello and welcome, Reader! Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with people from many different professions. Engineers. Marketing executives. Leaders in the banking industry. IT specialists. Professionals in global health. Even psychoanalysts. On the surface, their careers looked very different. But when they started...
3 months ago • 2 min read