621: Is Career Change in Your 40s Just a Midlife Crisis? Or Career Awakening?

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:00

Society calls a career change during your 40s a midlife crisis.

Charity 00:04

I was this trapped, caged bird, you know, that I was not allowed to fly, and that was really devastating.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:15

The real challenge isn't just a midlife crisis. It's also not just about what job you're in. The real reason career change in your 40s is difficult is because many of the challenges are hidden.

Haley 00:26

My job was my identity. So I had to figure out who was I without this job, and what did I want to do.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:33

The conventional wisdom says that your 40s are the worst time to make a career change. You have so many responsibilities, mortgages, kid activities, college tuition, financial obligations, you should just be grateful for what you have. But what if your 40s were actually the best time to make a change?

Haley 00:52

I did this for a really long time. I've banked all this. This is my experience, and no one can take it from me, and I don't need to feel bad about making this decision for myself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:04

On this episode of the Happen To Your Career podcast, we'll break down the stories of five different people who made major career changes during their 40s. People who went from feeling stuck and questioning everything to creating careers that actually fit who they've become and the life that they want to be living. You'll hear about the specific roadblocks they faced, what made a difference in their successful transitions and why most people fail at career change in their 40s. Also, maybe most importantly, how you can avoid some of those same mistakes. But first, let's cover a few messages I hear from countless people in their 40s who do feel trapped by society's expectations and a lot of times their own success. They've climbed the ladder, they've checked all the boxes, and yet they wake up each morning wondering if there's something more here that they might be missing. Some of those comments, "Well, I'm too old to start over." "It's too late for me to change careers now." "I don't think I can find a situation that pays what I currently make and also fits what I actually want." And by the way, if any of these sound familiar, I'm here to tell you that this is a very normal human response, and it's also complete nonsense. Wanting more in your 40s isn't a midlife crisis. It's actually midlife clarity. The work you chose in your 20s or 30s likely feels out of alignment with who you are now, you've outgrown it, and that's not failure. That's actually natural human growth. Here's what most people don't realize, that by your 40s, you have more skills, more experiences, a clearer sense of who you are, and better ideas about what you actually want than you've ever had before. And this can make it the best possible time to make a transition because it's also the time when you're the most marketable.

Erin 02:55

I'm the kind of person who... I really love to know, like, I love to see, like, what's the next thing I'm going for. So for me, it was promotions. I, you know, as an independent contributor, and there's several levels of independent contributor, and I had moved up to the highest level of independent contributor at Dell.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:17

Erin realized the career that she had spent so much time building, the eight years that she'd spent climbing the ranks at Dell, was no longer a path that was really exciting to her.

Erin Szczerba 03:26

I was going to 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 going to move into a people management position. So 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.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:08

Okay. I've had conversations with very literally thousands of professionals in their 40s. And many of them have this same moment that Erin described– when the weight of pretending everything's fine, or everything is heading in a direction that you really actually want just becomes absolutely unbearable. Charity had that exact same moment, and it made her feel trapped, and she had thought this should be her dream job.

Charity 04:34

I think for me, there was just this understanding that I did not, like, I was looking at my to do list every day, I didn't want to 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 in 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. Like, I was this trapped, caged bird, you know, that I was not allowed to fly, and that was really devastating. You know, 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. 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." Whatever, you know, you believe. But yeah, I just, I really was acutely aware that I was totally out of where I needed to be.

Scott Anthony Barlow 06:08

Society, and maybe even your friends and family, are going to tell us that questioning your career path in your 40s is dangerous. It's risky. We should stick with what we know. We should just, you know, keep with the same thing because we're too busy, our skills won't transfer. That we'd be starting over. But what if those exact limiting beliefs are, in fact, what's keeping us stuck?

Charity 06:30

Just go ahead with the interview. Just be curious. Just show up as yourself, as Charity. And you know, that's exactly what I did. And within two hours after that interview, they had with me and said, "We need to fly you out here. And I was like, "What?" I was in a total state of shock. And so, you know, 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 in thrall with this scarcity mindset, you know, this entire situation has just blasted through so many erroneous beliefs that I had around myself, you know, nonprofit where everything, you know. So I think, and 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, that they wanted my personal brand that I had built. I mean, I can't, like, who could imagine a better place, you know, to be in with that level of support and an acknowledgement.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:03

One of the most challenging aspects of career change in your 40s is unraveling our identity from our job titles, our achievements. Success becomes this tangible sort of measurable thing with salary bumps, praise, promotions, budget wins, the whole works. But when you've spent absolute decades proving yourself, it can be hard to completely separate from that. So here's what Haley had to say about her realization.

Haley 08:33

I think at the time, because you spend so much time building these things, and you're so committed, you know, and I think there's just so much, maybe 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 success of what you're doing. And so it's a very tangible way to see that what you're doing matters. It's not always tangible to see that I made chicken for my kids and they're super happy. That's not as tangible.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:19

Sometimes they're not super happy.

Haley 09:20

Yeah, actually, I guess they don't really like my cooking. But no, I think it can... I think we tie so much of our worth into that, and who we are into that. And, you know, and especially me being a female in a more male dominated area for so long, 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." Like, I'm done. I can be done with that, you know. And now it's about what works for me in this part of my life, and I only have eight more years till my kids go to college. What do I want that next eight years to look like?

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:11

Okay, I mentioned earlier that one of the biggest fears, or maybe even misconceptions, that people who are in their 40s have about career change is that they're too busy between work demands, family responsibilities. Career change just feels like this other impossible item on an overwhelming, already too big to do list. So here's what Haley had to say about juggling her role with all of the shifting priorities of her family.

Haley 10:41

I think my priorities shifted a little bit. I went through, you know, when I didn't have, 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 balance, 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 and change, you know, you have to kind of realize that, "Okay, I can't do everything like I thought I was going to do it" and 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 eating 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.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:31

Another massive fear that we encounter when people think of career change during this time period is this irrational fear of starting over. The thought of losing seniority, status, salary, lifestyle, that all took decades to build, tends to terrify people. Now, the interesting thing here is it's not true.

Haley 11:53

My job was my identity. So I had to figure out who was I without this job, and what did I want to do. And 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... I can do... I could take that with me, and then I just needed to look for the next place to apply it. So I think it was an unraveling that idea of, you know, am I a failure for leaving this role? Was it because I couldn't handle it? Was there something wrong with me that I couldn't do this? And kind of getting to the point where, "No, that's absolutely not the case." And I think there was also a really... There was a positive feeling the day that I posted on LinkedIn that I had left that role. So many industry contacts had complimented the work I had done to that point. And I think that was a learning too, to say, "All right, I did this for a really long time. I've banked all this. This is my experience, and no one can take it from me, and I don't need to feel bad about making this decision for myself. It's okay, it's good." These, and again, life has phases. You make these changes, you don't have to stay at the same place your whole career, and sometimes it's okay to do that for yourself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:28

That validation that Haley received wasn't just about the work that she'd done, it was confirmation that she had built something valuable that she could take with her into the next opportunity, and maybe even the next, and the next after that, wherever she's going for the rest of her life. Today, she's actually working as a fractional CMO with multiple clients fully in control of her schedule and her income. The skills she developed over the years, they didn't disappear, they became the foundation for something even better. Vivi also faced the challenge of untangling her identity, that we mentioned earlier, when she decided to leave a company where she'd spent 12 years and she'd created five different roles for herself several times over.

Vivi 14:13

My first move to leave the company was actually back in 2019. That was the first wake up call, I would say, that I no longer fit in that environment. I needed to do something different. But at that time, I had a five year old kid, and I'm glad I didn't leave at that time, because soon enough, we had COVID. And actually that was what kind of helped me to move a little bit away to put aside that feeling that I was, it was so intense for me that I didn't fit any longer in that space because we had to help so many people to navigate through COVID. So it was an internal battle over at least four years. But I think that when the conflict started getting more intense and into 2023 and I saw myself shrinking, waking up... I was never the person to wake up in the morning and dread going to work. And that's what it was happening to me. And I have always been a person who, look, I strive for balance. I'm not a workaholic, but I'm not a stay at home mom. I'm not, you know, the gym guru, but I need a little bit of everything. So balance for me was really important. And when my professional life started being unbalanced in the sense that I was not getting the excitement that I had, it doesn't mean that it was not hard sometimes, that I didn't struggle, that I had all the challenges that any person has in a professional life, but I was okay waking up every morning and go to work. When that was not happening, I knew that the pain of staying was bigger than actually the fear of living. That was the moment where I realized no matter what happened, I have to go.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:33

Vivi's experience shows us that sometimes the timing has to be right, both internally and externally. But when you finally make that leap, the results can exceed your expectations. Here's what she discovered in her new role.

Vivi 16:47

But just for the nature of my role and what I've been doing for this last two and a half months and how much I have already learned, and things just keep coming and saying, "You're gonna have the opportunity to do that. If you are interested, you can grow that." So the feeling I have right now is that it's an unlimited situation where I can keep exploring and just growing.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:17

That sense of unlimited potential, well, that's what becomes possible when you align your strengths with work that actually fits who you are. Vivi found an organization that not only values her creativity and problem solving skills, but actively seeks her input on new initiatives. By now, you might have arrived at the conclusion that you're not actually starting over from scratch, and that would be 100% true. All of your experience, your skills, everything you've learned, it doesn't disappear when you leave a job, and especially in your 40s, wherever you go, you're building on decades of experience, which is very valuable. I do constantly hear people in their 40s worrying about skills not transferring or translating over. They think they're too specialized, or everything they've done in their past is now a waste. But there's something powerful about having lived through multiple career situations– you develop judgment and self awareness that can't be taught. In addition to that, so many more skills actually transfer. For most people, it might be someplace between 80 and 85% of what you're doing, no matter how specialized you've come from. Travis was pretty burned out in his nursing position. But when he reflected later on his time there, he had a great outlook.

Travis 18:39

I think that's just my general framework in approaching life, like, you're in each moment of your life for a specific reason and to learn something, and 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. And if you don't have those really challenging and really hard times in your life, you're never going to be able to hit the mark that you could make. And you know, looking back in the context of, like, knowing what I know now, could I have approached that differently? And the answer, I don't think... I think it's 'No.' I think that if I had known now what I knew then, I would have never done it. 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 doing right now, and even more exciting, what I'm going to do in the future, and allowed me to have the connections. And just, you know, having that kind of experience on your resume opens a lot of doors. And between those experiences, and just like the resume fodder, you know, who knows how that impacts my trajectory in the future? So I think that you know, as with most hard things in life, if you knew they were going to be hard, you might not start them. So it's best you don't know, so that you work through them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:00

Okay, so I've got to tell you that this is actually one of my favorite things about the work that we get to do every day, with helping people figure out what creates a fit for them, and making transitions to essentially not just better work, but better life. We get to come in, we get to help people put together all those sets of experience, the great stuff, the bad stuff, but it's all experiences and tie it together in a really useful way to proceed forward. And ultimately, that work, every single time, creates a clearer sense of what you want, who you are. You've tried enough things to know what doesn't work. You've developed your taste. Vivi realized this when she compared her thinking between career changes.

Vivi 20:45

I would say that it's not that it's different, it was just incremented. I think I added more aspects into what I had as a basic thing. Still the... And then we can use the example of the minimums, the ideals, and the non-negotiables. So I think that my non-negotiables haven't changed. I still need the flexibility. I still need to be able to join my son's martial art game.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:14

Still need to go to Brazil on a yearly basis.

Vivi 21:17

Every year. Exactly. And but then I start adding other aspects. As I recognize, as I learn about my top strengths, this is where I understood that I needed a place that I can be independent, but also I can work in collaboration with others. We can brainstorm together, and we are in an environment where creativity is valued and is celebrated.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:51

I see it with every successful career changer in their 40s. They don't just want a job. They want the right job, the right situation, and they know they're non-negotiables. They understand what makes them thrive. The challenge here is that's actually really difficult to do. It's really difficult to figure out with a high degree of specificity in order to make that type of change. So what's the solution? How do you actually make a successful career change in your 40s without throwing everything away? Remember Erin from earlier? After eight years at Dell, she did make a transition back to real estate, which she never thought she would do. But this time, she did it to someone who truly understood what she wanted. Here's how she describes life now.

Erin 22:36

Well, I would say the biggest difference is probably that I am 100% in charge of what I do every day and as well as what I see come into my bank account.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:57

That autonomy she craved, that sense of ownership over her daily decisions, that was important to her, she found it. It might be different for you, but for her, she did it without starting from scratch. She took everything she learned at Dell, she applied it into building a real estate practice that serves others while giving her the life that she's looking for. These stories, they're not unique. They represent what becomes possible when you stop accepting that work has to feel like drudgery and start designing a career around who you've become and the life that you want to live. So what's the solution here? How do you actually make a successful career change in your 40s without throwing everything away? Well, I mentioned earlier that part of that solution is getting very specific with what you want, but the next part is validating and experimenting with those ideas before making major moves. That way, it's reducing the risk. If you've already validated in the real world, you've already proved out in the real world that the change that you're making is going to be useful to you, then it lessens that overall risk as you're making any type of change. By the way, if you want more about career experiments, we'll link up several episodes about career experiments and how we conduct those and how those can be possible to make sure that you're actually heading the right direction. You'll find those in the show notes in the description. But think of it this way, in your 20s, you might have jumped blindly from job to job. In your 40s, you can't afford that luxury. You have responsibilities. You need to be strategic. But you also have advantages– advantages your younger self didn't have. You have much more experience, which we covered. We have much more wisdom and a clearer sense of what fits. It becomes much more possible to do something completely different that wasn't possible even just a few years ago.

Scott Anthony Barlow 24:55

Here's what a successful career change in your 40s actually looks like. First, you get crystal clear about what you want, not vague wishes, like, a more flexibility or meaningful work, but instead specific details. What does flexibility actually mean for your life? Is it being able to pick up your kids at school, or is it actually being able to just at any moment, fly across the country and then go visit your daughter who's in college? What does that mean specifically? What kind of impact do you want to make? What kind of contribution does that impact relate to? So all of those with a high degree of specificity are a prerequisite. Next, we have to design experiments. Often we do small experiments to test your assumptions before making those big moves. We're talking to people about the work that you think that you want, we're asking them targeted questions, we are finding ways to validate creatively without putting in tons and tons and tons of effort, or without completely jumping ship without a life raft here. So we could, for example, just take on a project that gives us a taste of what this role would be like, something that is short term. There's many different ways that are only related to our creativity. But third, this is where you leverage your life experience. You know yourself better than you ever have. You can recognize your patterns, trust your instincts and make decisions based on those decades of learning. Every person that I shared with you today faced that moment of question, they're like, "What am I doing? Is it too late? Should I just stick it out?" But they chose to listen to that inner voice telling them something needed to change, that they wanted to do work that was more meaningful. They got specific about what they wanted. They experimented before making big moves, and they created careers that actually fit who they become and the life that they want to be living in the future.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:49

If you're feeling that misalignment, or you're wondering, "What am I doing?" That's not a crisis. You just outgrown your current situation. You are in the place where you're actually ready for what's next. That's a great place to be. By the way, if you want help with that, it's what we do. It is absolutely the reason we exist as an organization. If you're ready to stop settling, start creating the work that fits your life and where you want to go in the future, just email me, Scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put 'Conversation' in the subject line. And what I'll do is I'll connect you with someone on my team, the best person on my team, who can help you design experiments, figure out what is going to be a fit and figure out, honestly, the very best way that we can support you. Just open right now. Pause this. Scott@happentoyourcareer.com.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:36

All right, here's what's coming up next week, right here on Happen To Your Career.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:41

At 25, a career change feels exciting. At 50, it feels terrifying.

Speaker 6 27:47

I've been doing the same job for about 18-19 years, and I'm like, you know, I'm getting towards, you know, an age where people don't normally switch jobs unless they're forced out the door.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:02

It's not normal to change work after 50 because people fear they'd have to start over, or that it's risky, or that employers won't value their decades of experience. But what if those fears were just distracting you from a far greater game?

Speaker 7 28:16

I'm reaching my, you know, into my 50s now. What did I want to do, right, with the last 10 years? What do I want to do next? What's going to fulfill me? And it just kind of keeps building momentum. Building momentum.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:32

What if the experience you've accumulated at this stage in life meant that it was actually the best possible time to make a change that benefits you?