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:

I've experienced this question more than once.

Over the years, I've moved through several professional identities: translator, hospitality and business travel manager, corporate sales and marketing executive, entrepreneur, coach, and author.

When I was younger, changing direction felt relatively natural. I could leave one role and step into another. I remember working in a hotel in my twenties and feeling that, when my shift was over, I could simply take off the uniform, put on my own clothes, and become myself again.

Midlife transitions feel different.

By then, a profession is rarely just something we do.

It has become part of our story.

It represents years of experience, skills we've worked hard to develop, people we've built relationships with, achievements we're proud of, and perhaps a reputation we've spent decades creating.

Letting go can feel less like changing clothes and more like shedding a layer of skin.

And when you don't yet know what the new one will look like, that can be pretty frightening.

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When the old answer stops fitting

I've seen this many times in my coaching practice.

People tell me they want to change their career, start a business, move into a different field, or do something they have wanted to explore for years.

Then, as we talk, another layer appears.

What would you lose?

• Your status?
• Your expertise?
• The respect you've earned?
• The feeling that you are good at what you do?
• The sense of belonging?
• The certainty of knowing what you're doing?

These questions can keep a person attached to a career long after the work itself has stopped fitting.

One of my clients experienced this very clearly.

For most of his adult life, he had been a senior manager in a large company. He knew how to operate within that world. He understood the rules, managed complexity, built relationships, delivered results, and was someone others could rely on.

At the same time, he had started a business of his own.

The two worlds demanded very different things from him.

His corporate identity had been built around competence, stability, structure, and recognition.

His business required experimentation, risk, uncertainty, and the willingness to make mistakes while learning.

He was trying to hold on to both.

The problem was deeper than deciding which professional path to choose.

He was trying to become someone new while still measuring himself by the standards of the person he had been.

At one point, he asked me:

"Am I still good enough?"

At first, that sounded like a question about competence.

Eventually, it became clear that something else was happening.

He was asking:

Who am I now?

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The uncomfortable middle

This is one of the hardest places to be during a transition.

The old identity still works.

You know how to perform it. Other people recognize it. You know what is expected of you, and you have years of evidence that you can do it well.

The new identity has none of that certainty.

You may have a great idea.

A new, exciting direction.

Perhaps even a modest experiment that has started to work.

Yet you are still learning how to inhabit it.

The person you're becoming still feels unfamiliar.

And that can make the old identity very tempting.

You can always go back to being the person who already knows how to succeed.

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Identity can evolve through the transition

Over time, I've come to see that we don't always need to know exactly who we're becoming before we allow ourselves to leave an old professional identity behind.

The new one develops through the transition itself.

You try something.

You learn.

You make mistakes.

You discover what matters to you now.

You become comfortable with being a beginner again.

Little by little, the new version of you starts to feel more familiar.

When I left the corporate world and became an entrepreneur at forty, I had experience, skills, and plenty of professional knowledge. Yet none of those things automatically told me how to see myself in this new role.

I had to learn a different way of working, making decisions, taking risks, and defining success.

The same happened later when I moved from entrepreneurship into coaching, and then gradually into writing and building an identity around my books and ideas.

Each transition required me to carry some things forward while allowing others to change.

Looking back, I think this is one reason career transitions can become more complicated as we grow older.

We have more to protect.

And we may still discover parts of ourselves we haven't lived yet.

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Another answer to the question

Sometimes we stay where we are because we're afraid of losing something valuable we have spent years becoming.

We wouldn't simply be leaving a position.

We would be loosening our attachment to a version of ourselves that has served us well.

Perhaps this is another reason why smart, experienced professionals stay too long in the wrong career.

And perhaps that's why the question

“What should I do next?”

doesn't always take us where we need to go.

Maybe a more useful question is:

“Who am I becoming?”

And even if the answer doesn't arrive fully yet, you may have a feeling that can be enough to begin a new chapter.

The hardest part isn't deciding what to do next.
It's allowing ourselves to become someone for whom the old answer is no longer enough.

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Identity in transition is one of the themes I explore in Why Smart People Stay Too Long in the Wrong Career, and there are still more answers to uncover.

I'll share another one in my next Letter.

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Until next time,

Elena