710: How to Make a Career Change in Your 40s: Midlife Crisis or Midlife Clarity?

[00:00:00] Scott Anthony Barlow: Society has a name for what you're feeling right now in your career. They call it a midlife crisis. But that isn't actually what's going on. After 20-plus years of hard work, what you do and who you are become the same thing without you even noticing. The promotion, and the title, and the salary, and recognition from people whose opinion you respect, well, it all gets grouped together as part of your identity.

[00:00:22] This is not a crisis. It's a lack of clarity, which is the first hidden trap of changing your work in your 40s or beyond. The other traps are even more difficult to see, and they're the difference between making the move now and being 10 years even deeper into a job that doesn't fit.

[00:00:38] This is Happen To Your Career. Most people let their career happen to them, falling into jobs by accident, staying longer than they should, and wondering if this is really all there is. But a few people decide to stop settling and do something different. This podcast is for you to take control, get intentional, and design your work to fit the life that you want to build.

[00:00:57] Real stories and real research so that you can stop waiting and start making it happen. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and wanting more in your 40s is not a crisis. Turns out, it's actually really valuable information that can lead to clarity. Just think about it for a second. The work that you chose in your 20s was chosen by someone who didn't yet know who they were going to be, so the fact that it stopped fitting isn't a sign that you got something wrong.

[00:01:20] It's a sign that you have kept growing, which is actually a really wonderful human thing. But here's where it gets harder than it feels like it should be. Most people in your position never see the actual obstacles between them and the work that they actually want to do. Instead, they see what appear to be obstacles, things like the job market not being all that great, or it's bad timing, and instead, they spend years focusing on those, allowing them to stop any type of change.

[00:01:47] I want you to meet Charity. She'd spent years in a role that looked from the outside like it should've been her dream job. It was a very senior position, very respected, and the kind of job that you're supposed to want. And then one day, she looked up and realized something had very quietly shifted.

[00:02:03] Charity: I was looking at my to-do list every day. I didn't wanna do any of it. I did not want to do one thing on that list, and also recognizing none of those things played to my strengths. I was really, for me, I'm a community person. I need to be active, and community-building, and what that looks like, and, you know, cultures of belonging and having some level of influence on, you know, creative teams, and there was none of that in my job, not one thing. I like, I was this trapped, caged bird, you know, that I was not allowed to fly, and that was really devastating.

[00:02:48] Scott Anthony Barlow: Being in the wrong role or the wrong situation after 40 can be disorienting. You spent a couple decades becoming someone, and when the work that defined that someone stopped fitting, then you look at your to-do list and you just feel nothing sometimes.

[00:03:04] The challenge here is that most people think that they need to go get a new job. In reality, part of what you need to do is figure out who you are without the job. Here's what Charity said about the moment she finally got clear.

[00:03:15] Charity: I think just the amount of time I had spent working on my level of awareness around what I need, what I want, you know, getting very clear on those things, then made it so apparent where it was... I really felt like my insides were screaming at that point. Like, "You have to get out of here. You are not doing what you were put here to do."

[00:03:43] Scott Anthony Barlow: What Charity was describing was information that she'd been ignoring for many years, and most people in their 40s spend years ignoring the exact same things. This brings us to the reason that most of us try to quiet that signal in the first place, and we call this the identity trap, and it's the moment that your job title becomes who you are.

[00:04:01] Now, on the surface, this trap sounds like it shouldn't even really be a problem, or that it might not be a problem at all. What happens for most people is that after a few decades pass, then as the work is happening, every time you take a harder role, every time you get a promotion, every time somebody trusted you with a bigger call, every time the budget came back in your favor, the answer to who you are becomes a little bit more tied to what you do, until one day the two are the same thing.

[00:04:29] Haley built her career in a male-dominated industry as a first-generation college student, and the thought of walking away from any of that felt impossible to explain to anyone, especially herself.

[00:04:39] Haley: We take so much out of the success and the things that we're able to do. It's really tangible. The rewards of working and doing that are very tangible. You get paid. You see, you get praise. You get, you see the results on a budget, on a sales sheet. You can really touch and feel those... the success of what you're doing. And so it's a very tangible way to see that what you're doing matters. I think we tie so much of our worth into that, when especially me, being a female a more male-dominated area for so long.

[00:05:10] Being a first-generation college student. I mean, all of these things, there was just so... I think, I remember thinking at some point, "I'm done. I don't have to prove anything to anybody else anymore. "

[00:05:22] Scott Anthony Barlow: "I don't have to prove anything to anybody anymore." That sentence marks the exact moment the identity starts to separate from the role. The moment you realize the things you've actually built, the judgment, the strengths, the relationships, none of them disappear when you walk out. They go with you.

[00:05:39] Haley: My job was my identity, so I had to figure out who was I without this job and what did I wanna do. And there was some work... there was some work for me to understand that just because I left that role, I didn't leave all of my strengths behind, and I didn't leave, you know, who I was behind. All of that was still me; I just needed to look for the next place to apply it.

[00:06:04] Scott Anthony Barlow: Now, of course, this work is more difficult than updating your resume. But what's on the other side of it is something Haley described very well. Yes, the identity work is hard, but once you've separated who you are from what you've been doing for many years, a second challenge swoops right in, and this one feels rational because, well, in some ways it actually is.

[00:06:24] This is the responsibility myth. Here's how it shows up. You feel like you're too busy. You have too much to lose. You have a mortgage to think about, kids who are going to need college tuition. You can't afford to take risks right now. Maybe in a few years, when things settle down, maybe when you have more runway.

[00:06:43] This is the very convincing story that people in our 40s tell ourselves, and it's one of the most effective ways to spend the next decade staying exactly where you are. Haley knew this version of the story. Before she had kids, she was climbing very fast. She was traveling. She was taking on anything, building at full speed, and then her priorities shifted, and the version of herself who was going to do everything all at once had to make room for a very different kind of life.

[00:07:07] Haley: I think my priorities shifted a little bit. Before I had kids, I was doing a lot of this exciting climbing and traveling and all of that, and then... when you start to bal... when you start to have to balance, you know, a marriage and kids and all of this stuff, you just have to reprioritize a little bit.

[00:07:24] Putting my Superwoman cape on, I was going to spend half the time out of the country and do this amazing job. At the same time, my kids were starting to need more from me in terms of activities and feeding, and whatever it was, you know? So I think it was a little bit of a perfect storm in terms of... it was the ultimate challenge.

[00:07:42] Scott Anthony Barlow: Here's what Haley didn't say in that clip, and part of what she told us separately, she actually didn't wait until things settled down. She made the change while things were very full because things are always full at 40. That's just what life looks like at this stage for so many of us.

[00:07:58] Once you get past the waiting, once you decide the cost of staying is real, even when nobody else can see it, the questions you ask yourself start to shift as well. You stop asking, "Can I afford to do this?" and start asking, "What do I actually need to do to make this happen?" This is where most people in their 40s dramatically underestimate themselves.

[00:08:17] At any given point in our lives, we tend to think about what we've experienced in the past. For example, my, you know, 17-year-old tends to think about what he's achieved in the past, not where he's going to be a year from now in terms of development. Well, the same thing happens when we're 40. We tend to think about how we have done things, how we've been successful in the past.

[00:08:37] And what we don't realize some of the time is that as we get into those later stages, then we've accumulated 20-plus years of experience, judgment, hard-won understanding of how organizations actually work. And all of this is incredibly relevant when you're changing directions. But the real piece that people miss is that now that you're building from this foundation, it's what makes that next role possible.

[00:09:01] In Travis's case, he was pretty burned out on nursing, and when he reflected on what those years had actually given him, he said something that is very remarkable.

[00:09:11] Travis: You are the only person in the world that has your unique set of experiences, which is what makes you who you are and provides the value that you can provide to this world.

[00:09:19] And if you don't have those really challenging and really hard and really shitty times in your life, you're never going to be able to hit the mark that you could make. And, you know, looking back, knowing what I know now, could I have approached that differently? The answer, I think, is no. I think that if I had known now what I knew then, I would have never done it.

[00:09:39] And then, who knows what I had to learn during that time of my life that gives me the ability to do what I'm going... what I'm doing right now, and even more exciting, what I'm gonna do in the future. Having that kind of experience on your resume opens a lot of doors.

[00:09:55] Scott Anthony Barlow: You're the only person in the world with your exact set of experiences. Once you stop seeing your past as a sunk cost and start seeing it as something nobody else can replicate, the doors that open are completely different from the ones that you're knocking on. What this looks like in practice is a level of self-knowledge that takes decades to earn.

[00:10:14] Erin experienced this after eight years at Dell, climbing to the highest level of independent contributor, with her leaders pointing her towards people management as the obvious next step. This also meant that she had a decision to make about what she wanted to come next.

[00:10:29] Erin: I was gonna need to go into people management, and my leaders were saying, you know, "You should be a people leader. Obviously, you should do it." So what I learned was that I was going to really need to begin eating, breathing, and sleeping Dell if I was gonna move into a people management position.

[00:10:51] I just was like, you know what? I just can't do it. I'm just... Dell's a great company, but I don't want to talk about or think about storage or servers anymore. I don't care about them. That's just the truth.

[00:11:07] Scott Anthony Barlow: What you just heard is clarity. Erin knew exactly who she was and what she wanted, and that clarity allowed her to say no to the obvious path that was someone else's prerogative so that she could go build a very different future for herself.

[00:11:21] Now, the fascinating thing for me is, in doing this work since, you know, 2013, is what happens when somebody starts to recognize and name the hidden challenges here. So what does this look like in reality? What happens when somebody begins to recognize these hidden challenges? They begin to separate out their identity from their work.

[00:11:39] They are no longer waiting. They are using everything that they've already built as a foundation. What happens? Well, Charity, whom you met earlier, she was going through entire interview process very convinced that the things that made her her weren't actually what employers were looking for; that community building, and culture, and creative influence might be great qualities, but not hireable ones.

[00:12:03] Charity: Just go ahead with the interview. Just be curious. Just show up as yourself, as Charity. And within two hours after that interview, they had written me and said, "We need to fly you out here." And I was like, "What?" Going through this experience with this whole interview process here and really meeting people and board members and, you know, a nonprofit that has really abundant thinking that is not enthralled with this scarcity mindset.

[00:12:37] You know, this entire situation has just blasted through so many erroneous beliefs that I had around myself. You know, being here and just having people be so validating and supporting around who I am, about how I show up, about, you know, that those things were what they wanted. And like, who could imagine a better place, you know, to be in with that level of support and acknowledgement?

[00:13:11] Scott Anthony Barlow: Haley is now a fractional CMO with multiple clients and full control over her schedule and her income. Everything she built at previous companies became the credentials that made the move into fractional work possible. And Erin, after eight years at Dell, well, she went back to real estate, but this time as someone who finally knew what she wanted from work and also from herself.

[00:13:32] Erin: The biggest difference is probably that I am 100% in charge of what I do every day, as well as what I see come into my bank account

[00:13:49] Scott Anthony Barlow: This is what becomes possible when you stop accepting the version of work that you've been living is the only one available. The question now is how you actually make the same move for yourself.

[00:13:59] Well, Charity, and Haley, and Erin, and Travis all used the same set of framework to be able to make this move. Let me share some pieces of that framework.

[00:14:08] Step one is about getting specific in what you actually want, and I'm not talking about, like, vague language such as, "I want more flexibility or more meaningful work." I'm talking about specificity in real terms. What does flexibility mean for you? You know, for me, just a quick example, it meant ... When my kids were small, it meant that I was able to attend not just the, you know, the plays, but some of the everyday things, too, as well. I'd be able to go into their classrooms and volunteer.

[00:14:37] And, you know, now, much, much later, it means that at a moment's notice, as my kids are starting to move out, I can hop on a plane and be able to go and be there for those things that are gonna come with college or with my son, you know, playing higher level hockey or anything like that. You have to figure out what this specifically means for you.

[00:14:57] This might mean hours, location, schedule. And we have to do this across every single area, not just flexibility. We're looking at what kind of impact do you want to make. How do you contribute in a way that is good for you as well as for other people? What are non-negotiables that aren't up for negotiation in the next role? Those are just a few examples.

[00:15:16] Step two is designing small experiments. Once we have specificity, that's a hypothesis, an educated guess. So we have to be able to, before making a jump, prove that where we think we want to go is actually where we want to go. The biggest mistake that most people make in their 40s is treating a career change like a binary choice between staying and leaping.

[00:15:38] Instead, the way to make it much more palatable, and much more doable, and much more realistic is actually a series of small, low-risk experiments that build evidence over time, so that when you do make a change, you're making a change to something that is much more likely to be right for you. You've probably heard some of our other episodes where we talk about one type of experiment as an example more so than any others, and that's the social Goldilocks.

[00:16:03] The way that that looks is having a series of conversations to try and figure out, you know, what, what is the right work? Much like Goldilocks was, you know, looking at this type of porridge is too hot, this type is too cold. You know, this corner office is too big. You know, this type of flexibility is too restrictive.

[00:16:20] Okay, in all cases, what we're really trying to do here is hone in on what creates the right situation for you. This is not a networking call. It's not a job interview. Instead, what we're trying to do is generate short, low lift, genuine conversations about what someone's actual Tuesday looks like. Another type of experiment might be taking on a small project in the [00:16:40]direction that you're curious about, or auditing a course in something that you've wanted to explore for years.

[00:16:44] There's many different ways to do this. The important part is each of these is going to show you something specific about what the actual work would be like. What this does is it gives you an enhanced understanding and allows you to get even more specific about what you want.

[00:16:59] Step three is leveraging your experience as the asset that it actually is. You're not starting over. You're the only person in the world with your exact combination of experience, judgment, self-knowledge. I think something else that people don't think of here is that the higher degree of clarity you have about yourself and what you want creates a situation that humans are attracted to.

[00:17:23] One of the reasons we're all searching for different levels of clarity is because specificity is something that is desirable for us. We tend to respond to that. That means that you can leverage that by knowing what you want, what you bring to the table, and why you're trying to make this particular type of move.

[00:17:42] And that gives you an advantage over everybody else who doesn't, and certainly somebody who has less experience to bring to the table. Charity walked into her interview as herself, her full self. She's a community builder. She's a culture creator, someone who needs to fly, like absolutely needs to. When you meet her, like, she's very much this person, and they flew her out within two hours.

[00:18:04] That's leverage. That's an example of leverage happening at its best. The moment she understood she was exactly what they needed and could communicate her strengths and who she was and how that would elevate the team, the company moved immediately to make sure that they didn't miss out an opportunity to have her there, and that's what happens when you stop apologizing for who you are and start looking for the place that aligns with who you've become.

[00:18:29] If you really enjoyed this episode and you want further examples of how people are actually making real changes, we put together a career change guide. It walks you through how real people that are similar to you have discovered their ideal career and moved to work that actually fits them, as meaningful and as well-paid.

[00:18:49] You can actually get the guide for free. Just click into the show notes and description. We have the link right in there, and you can, from there, go over to our website, read it on the website, or you can download the PDF. I just wanna point out, though, that even though society calls what you're feeling a midlife crisis, we wanna help you embrace what we call midlife clarity.

[00:19:08] It's the moment when everything that you've built, everything you've learned, everything you've earned finally starts working for you instead of holding you in place, not away from something, but towards something you've actually wanted from your work. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is Happen To Your Career. Adios. I'm out.