My Career Change Story Didn’t Start with a Plan (And Yours Might Not Either)

What if I don’t have a plan? for my career change story

People often think that they need a detailed plan before making a career change. I beg to disagree. 

“We like to think that the key to a successful career change is knowing what we want to do next and then using that knowledge to guide our actions. But change usually happens the other way around: through doing.” - Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity

When was the last time you wrote down a life plan and it all went exactly as expected, anyway? (if you have, please message me. I’d like to know your secret). 

Most of us don’t leap from insight to action in one clean move. We move forward through confusion, signals, listening, experiments, conversations - and slow, sometimes uncomfortable learning. 

expectations vs reality of career change stories

Planning is often a place we arrive at - not where to begin. 

This is how my own career change story unfolded, in a similar way to many other career changers.  

Trigger Points for my career change story

There were plenty of signals that it was time for a career change. 

I had loved my career - truly. But slowly, things had begun to shift. Small changes in the company - some more painful than others to accept. Rising stress. Fading creativity. A nagging sense of disconnection. 

And guilt. Guilt for wanting more when I already had so much. 

Like many people, I did not act on it straight away. For many career changers, the true “trigger moment” is often something seemingly unrelated - an external event that suddenly forces long-suppressed questions to surface. 

For me, it was my landlord raising the rent. Not the money per se, but the questions it prompted: “Do I still want to live here?”, “Am I still on the right path?”. 

These were questions that have been floating quietly in the background, and I hadn’t let myself explore them because the status quo was comfortable enough. 

Big changes often start with small, inconvenient nudges. If you’re paying attention, these everyday moments become mirrors. 

Mapping Possible Selves for my career change story

Whilst I had acknowledged the need to do “something else”, I had no idea what that was. 

I browsed job boards for a while looking for inspiration, but nothing lit me up. Every role felt like a remix of what I already knew wasn’t working. 

I was pulled into a dozen directions. 

There were the versions of me I knew well: 

The psychologist. The strategist. The tech leader. 

I also felt a pull towards versions of myself I’d never explored: 

The business founder. The travel blogger. The product designer. The small art café dreamer. 

Can you see a pattern there? I certainly couldn’t.

I could genuinely close my eyes and see myself being all of those things. 

So. I mapped them all out - the bold ideas, the practical ones, and a few of the silly ones too. 

Career Shapes Lab was already on that list (in all fairness, it has been on my mind for as long as I can remember) - somewhere towards the bottom, in the space where the really important ideas often tend to live. 

I gave myself permission to live with contradictions, to accept that I am not one fixed “true self”, but many possible selves worth exploring. 

Career change options on my notes app

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” – Walt Whitman

Redefining life priorities to build a compass

For many of us, our careers are tied to our identity - whether through the status or purpose, or financial means it provides us. It was definitely true for me. The process of changing your career is therefore also a process of rethinking identity, and questioning holistically other aspects of life too. 

There was tension: 

• between the life I had built and the one I now imagined

• between what felt practical and what felt true

• between the title I had… and the work I longed to do. 

  
  

I took a break to re-evaluate. I left and travelled for a year. It did not feel ‘brave’ and I do not believe everyone needs to do the same. For me, it felt lucky to have this opportunity and aligned with a life dream I had postponed for too long. Career breaks come with pros and cons - I’ll write more about this another time. 

What matters is to find “space” - to reflect, to reset. In whatever way it might look like, it is important to find an opportunity to revisit values, refresh your definition of success based on what mattered to this version of you - not your 22 year old self, not your community, not your CV.

Lingering between identities

I had a compass, I had ideas, I needed to find a route. Welcome to the messy messy middle. 

I set out to test my “possible selves”, to try them on for size and see how they fit. 

• Some learning came from failed attempts ( → I tried to keep a travel blog, and realised I actually hated everything that was required to monetise it)

• Some came from observing others doing ( → I spoke with boutique hotel owners in Sri Lanka to understand their realities)

• Some came from volunteering my skills ( → I signed up for every hands-on volunteer experience in Hong Kong to understand what made me feel “purposeful”)

• Some came from needs ( → I was asked to help consulting my family business to prepare it for the next stage of its growth)

• Some came from chance ( → I met a guy on a delayed layover that was building an app and worked with him on a Go-To-Market strategy for it)

• Some I tested by telling the story and seeing how it felt and what it opened. This is how Career Shapes Lab was born. 

And look, as I write this now I realise that it might all sound very strategically defined and calibrated. The reality is that in the middle of it all it was very emotional - and it always is. All my insecurities were coming up like a tsunami all in one go. Fear of failure, impostor syndrome, and procrastination have been my faithful companion. Some days I would wake up with a plan, hit a moment of friction… and within minutes I’d find myself updating my CV and applying for a role in my old field. 

It was through this time - for myself - that I built the first version of the materials that are part of Career Shapes Lab today, through a combination of research and lived experience. I built the product I needed.

There Was No Grand Reveal

Many people expect a single, cataclysmic moment when everything finally clicks. But for most of us, it doesn’t happen that way. 

There was no single “aha” moment for me, but hundreds of small moments teaching me something. Every time you introduce yourself or try something new it is data, clues and lessons to construct new meaning from. 

Some of those moments dated back years, and were in fact early experiences that shaped my understanding of working identities - my father losing his job at 52 and having to reinvent himself, for example. 

Some were about opportunities unfolding - like a friend asking for career advice, finding it helpful, and referring me to others. 

Career Shapes Lab was born as a labour of coherence, a meeting point of all the parts of me: 

The psychologist who helps people grow

The strategist who sees patterns in complexity

The tech enthusiast who believes in building tools that shift thinking

The dreamer who believes work can (and should) feel energising

If You’re in the Middle — Without a Plan — I See You

Careers are not linear paths, they are more like ecosystems -  living, evolving, made up of interwoven choices and seasons.

You might be thinking: “I just need to make a decision and stick with it!” and feel awful when you can’t.

Please don’t beat yourself up for that. It’s meant to be messy in the middle. 

You don’t need to build a roadmap, you need to build momentum - and let yourself follow it. 

Your discomfort is data. 

Your curiosity is a compass. 

And if you don’t want to do it alone, book a free 30-minute Career Roadmap call and let’s figure it all out together.