You built a career before you knew yourself. Now what?
You got the order backwards. So did I. So did most people.You chose a major, took the job, chased the title... and somewhere along the way started wondering how the heck you ended up here. Not because you made bad decisions, necessarily. But because you made them before you had enough information about yourself to make good ones. That's what Elizabeth said in this week's episode that I haven't stopped thinking about. She works with early career professionals, so she watches this play out in real time — young people entering the workforce with firm expectations and no real sense yet of what actually drives them. But here's the thing she said that hit different: it's not just a young person problem. If you've been executing for so long that you forgot to check in with yourself, you're in the same spot. She calls it the expectations gap. And the part about this that stings a little is knowing what you want only works if you know yourself first. If you don't know what energizes you, what your strengths are, or what you actually value in your work, you're just advocating for things you've been told to want. You've been shoulding yourself, friend.
The fix she keeps coming back to is deceptively simple. Start tracking what gives you energy at work and what takes it away. Not the big existential stuff. The small daily (often mundane) stuff. The meeting that left you buzzing. The project you kept finding reasons to avoid. Track all that long enough and patterns show up. Then you ask why. That's where your values start to surface. And that's where self-awareness actually begins. Elizabeth reminds us that it's a staircase, not a leap. Talk soon, Tara P.S. If you've been wondering whether your current role is still a fit, the Career Pivot Playbook is a good place to start figuring that out (all in one focused weekend). |
