When it’s time to move on but you still cling
If you don’t feel excited and motivated about your work anymore, but there’s no obvious reason why — because ‘technically’ everything is fine, and you’re even quite successful…
…it could simply be that you have fulfilled your purpose here and evolved as a person, and your work no longer reflects your identity and true aspirations.
In other words, it could be that you’ve *outgrown* your job/career/business so it doesn’t ALIGN with you anymore, and it’s time to find a new challenge and a new source of meaning.
Yet, from what I’ve observed, a lot of accomplished founders and leaders don’t actually realize this.
Instead, they find SURROGATE PROBLEMS to solve – those that are more obvious, tangible and within our control – over those that appear abstract, elusive and hard to define such as lack of alignment.
Specifically, they either:
1) blame themselves for feeling this way and conclude they must be spoiled or unreasonable for wanting more, often seeking therapy or working on their mindset…
2) …or they turn to obvious/easily available solutions such as meditation, motivation and productivity tools, or reinventing parts of their business or career to reintroduce novelty. This reinvention often takes the form of frequent job changes, pursuing new degrees and accreditations, or launching new products and services.
This is completely normal, because our brain is a very ‘economical’ organ: it tries to conserve energy and it likes quick rewards.
Besides, when you’re highly accomplished, you prefer to stay in control rather than accept you’re in some kind of liminal stage where you don’t even know what the hell you want from life.
Which is why it’s often easier to blame yourself rather than the circumstances (quite the opposite of how most people function, right?).
But when these strategies don’t work, or when they work only for a brief period, it’s usually because those were NOT the fundamental problems that needed to be solved in the first place.
It’s more likely that those problems were only *symptoms* of a bigger underlying issue, which is the misalignment.
All of this reminds me of that moment when couples start to realize they’ve grown apart – either because they fight all the time or the connection just isn’t there anymore.
But the idea that the relationship might actually be over is too hard to face, so they pin it on the usual suspects: bad communication, lack of intimacy, too many arguments.
And for that, they try the usual fixes — some communication trick they read in a couples book, a romantic weekend to bring back the spark, getting into shared hobbies or projects to feel closer, etc.
And sometimes those interventions *can* save the relationship – if those were the fundamental problems that needed to be solved in the first place...
But if the real reason why the relationship feels so stale is that they stopped loving each other, these interventions will likely not bring it back to life.
Instead, what they need is to start having an honest, vulnerable conversation about how they feel and what they truly want and need from one another, from a love relationship in general, and from life itself.
They need to face the question:
Is the relationship worth fighting for, or is it best to part ways?
The same is true when you ‘grow apart’ from your work – either because it’s a constant source of friction, or because you’ve lost that spark you used to feel (or both).
That’s the time to start having an honest conversation with yourself about how you feel and what you truly want and need from work, from your career in general, and from life at this stage.
It’s time to face the question:
Is it worth putting in the effort to make your business or career work in a more meaningful and fulfilling way, or is it time to ‘part ways’ and choose a different direction?
Now, I know that when you aren’t drawn to any new career direction in particular, or you have too many ideas and no reason to choose one over the other…
… and on top of that, you’re strongly attached to the career you already have and/or you’re afraid of change – it can be really hard to even imagine leaving it, no matter how unfulfilling it’s become (just like leaving a long-term relationship).
And what makes this situation even more complicated than a breakup:
Unlike in a relationship, there’s no other person across the table to talk to.
You are the one - the ONLY one - making the decision. And you are the one holding both the grief of leaving and the unhappiness of staying.
So deciding what you’re gonna do about your work situation isn't just a matter of business or career strategy.
It’s really a matter of SELF-RECONNECTION.
What I mean by that is that you need to get so clear about who you are at your core, and what you truly want and need (from life and work) – that the answer about what you should do next with your business naturally answers itself.
And there are 2 things you can do to reconnect with yourself and get to that answer in a matter of weeks or a couple of months, rather than years:
You need to reassess how you’re wired for meaning and fulfillment.
That means: identifying the exact elements required for your business to feel exciting, meaningful, and overall aligned with who you are and the life you want to live.
This includes your Zone of brilliance (the activities that energize you and draw on your natural strengths), your true values, the kind of impact that makes your work feel worthwhile, and the non-negotiable needs that must be honored in your day-to-day life and work.
(Research on wellbeing at work has consistently shown that these elements play a crucial role in how we experience our work.)
You may have known the answers to these questions long ago — or, even if you didn’t know them explicitly, the career and business choices you made reflected what you intuitively understood.
But if you’ve evolved as a person in the meantime, those answers may no longer be relevant — and you may need a new vision of work that truly excites you and makes you happy.
2. Notice and upgrade the story that’s shaping how you experience your work and what you believe is allowed or possible
Because if you can’t see clearly what needs to change in your business or career (or you keep making changes that don’t bring back that excitement) — there’s a high chance there is something about that story (I call it the “inner narrative”) that obscures clarity.
That story is often shaped by old (often limiting) beliefs and various internalized rules (about what you should/shouldn’t be like and do), which you didn’t consciously choose, but they end up limiting what you’re even able to consider as a next step.
So it could be, for example, that you believe that “stepping away from something successful makes you ungrateful or flaky” – so even considering a bigger change feels selfish or reckless.
Or that “wanting more excitement and meaning makes you entitled” – so you discount your own dissatisfaction as unrealistic or indulgent.
Or maybe you tell yourself you’ve “already invested too much to back out now” — so instead of evaluating whether this current path still fits, you double down to justify the effort you’ve already put in.
These are just a few examples of the countless inner narratives that are rigid and limiting, and that unconsciously shape how you think about yourself in the context of work. And they distort your perspective, and sabotage you in your efforts to make better aligned choices.
That’s why it’s important to articulate and examine your inner narrative.
Otherwise, you accept it as the objective truth of reality, instead of seeing it for what it is: a perspective that *you have constructed* with your thoughts and mental habits.
Which is great news because then you can break free from that narrative – you can change your mental habits and construct a more accurate and more helpful perspective, which will allow you to notice new opportunities where before you saw only restrictions.
When you fully reconnect with yourself — by understanding in depth how you’re wired and reshaping your inner narrative to support your best work and greatest life — you begin to access your Highest Self:
an inner state of calm and intuitive knowing about what your most aligned career/business path looks like.
That is, you begin to see clearly whether you should stay and redesign your job/career or business so that it better aligns with who you are and what you need in this stage of life — or pursue a new direction that will give you a greater sense of excitement, meaning and purpose.
If you’ve already tried the usual fixes to reignite your spark for work but still don’t feel excited about it…
…and you’re ready to stop blaming yourself for that…
…because deep down you suspect your current path no longer fits the person you’ve become or the needs you have — then my 6-week private coaching program may be exactly what you need.
It’s a program for accomplished leaders and founders who feel empty or unfulfilled by their work, and who are unsure what to do about it — whether to stay and rediscover happiness, or to shift into their next true calling.
The essence of this program is to help you reconnect with yourself in the way I described above, and the outcome is a clear and confident decision about the next chapter in your business/career, with a detailed vision of that future chapter and a plan to make it happen.
You can find the full details here.
If this sounds like something you’d want to explore, DM me on Facebook or LinkedIn or send me an email and we’ll have a quick chat to make sure it’s a great fit. Alternatively, you can schedule a free 30-minute call over Zoom.
If it turns out it is, we could start as soon as next week :)
