Hello and welcome, Reader!

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how strangely private career uncertainty can feel.

You may look around and see people who seem perfectly settled in their careers.

Meanwhile, you're wondering why something that once made perfect sense doesn't feel quite right anymore.

You may not even know what you want instead.

And then you discover someone else asking almost exactly the same question.

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That happened to me recently while revisiting Herminia Ibarra's Working Identity, a book I first encountered years ago and still find remarkably relevant to career change.

Ibarra studied professionals going through career transitions and found that reinvention rarely happens through one grand decision. Instead, people tend to discover new possibilities through three practices: experimenting with new professional activities, interacting with new networks, and making sense of what is happening as their sense of what might be possible begins to change.

I find that fascinating because it connects with something I see again and again in my own work.

Ibarra is looking at what happens when we begin becoming someone else professionally.

My work often begins a little earlier.

With the moment when we start wondering:

Because before we can experiment with a possible new identity, we may first need to recognize that the identity we've been living with is no longer the whole story.

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Experiment

Ibarra's first practice is experimentation.

You don't necessarily discover your next direction by thinking about it until you finally feel certain.

Sometimes you discover something by trying it.

• A project.
• A conversation.
• A course.
• A small role that allows you to test a different part of yourself without abandoning everything you've already built.

This is one reason I have always been drawn to small experiments. They can give an idea enough contact with reality to become something more than a fantasy.

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People

The second practice is interacting with new networks.

This isn't simply about networking in the conventional career sense.

New people can introduce us to possibilities we couldn't see from inside our existing professional world.

They can ask different questions.

They can see abilities in us that we've stopped noticing.

They can also give us a glimpse of a professional identity we hadn't considered for ourselves.

Pretty often, a new possibility enters our lives through another person.

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Story

And then there is making sense of what is happening.

This one especially interests me.

When something in our career starts to shift, we often want an immediate explanation.

Why am I feeling this way?

What does it mean?

What am I supposed to do next?

But perhaps meaning doesn't always arrive first.

Sometimes we begin to understand what is happening only after we've lived through a few new experiences and started connecting them into a different story about ourselves.

The story changes.

And with it, the way we see our past can change too.

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Perhaps this is why career transition so rarely begins with a five-year plan.

It begins much earlier.

With a small experiment.

An unexpected conversation.

A new person entering our world.

A book that puts words to something we haven't been able to explain.

Or simply the realization that the story we've been telling about ourselves no longer quite fits.

If this sounds familiar to you, I’d like you to know: you're not the only one.

What feels like a private struggle is part of a much larger human experience: discovering that the person you have become can no longer be fully contained by the career identity you built earlier.

And perhaps that's where your new chapter begins.

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P.S. One small practical note before I go.

Starting Friday, September 25,

"Why Smart People Stay Too Long in the Wrong Career"

will be available free on Kindle through Sunday, September 27.

So if you've been curious about my new book, this weekend might be a good time to pick it up.

​
​Read the book on Amazon​

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Until next time,

Elena