624: When Your Career No Longer Fits Your Life: How to Make a Meaningful Change

(00:00) Scott Anthony Barlow: What if I told you that you've been introducing yourself incorrectly, your entire adult life? Think about it at networking events, social functions, family gatherings, people probably ask, “What do you do?” And you say, “I'm a lawyer,” “I'm an engineer,” “I'm a teacher.” But here's what most people don't realize. Those three little words–"I am a"–might be the very thing keeping you trapped in a career that no longer fits.

(00:24) Karen Guttentag: I think it's being willing to really radically reexamine the role that you want work to play in your life, what your needs are, and really recognize how many of your life needs have you assumed were going to be met through your work.

(00:38) Scott Anthony Barlow: You are human. We grow. We change, our priorities shift. What energized you at 25 might drain you at 45. What's most important to you changes as your life develops and evolves.

(00:50) Karen Guttentag: I just felt like I was an absentee parent. I felt like I was really, really… Like my child was number 227 that I was responsible for. And that just was not okay.

(00:59) Scott Anthony Barlow: On this episode of the Happen To Your Career podcast, you'll hear the story of Karen who learned this lesson through a major life upheaval and how restructuring her identity around who she is now, and also not what she did completely transformed her relationship with work.

(01:16) Karen Guttentag: This is actually the healthiest that I have ever been. I used to joke for years about, “Oh, look! It's five o'clock. I think I'll close down my computer and leave it here and come back the next day and not think about work. Ha ha ha.” And now that's my life.

(01:33) Scott Anthony Barlow: The question, of course, is how did Karen Guttentag go from perpetually moving up over and over and over again in her career for the sake of doing better to living a much more meaningful life and doing work that fit the life that she wanted to build? It is not an easy question, but let's see if we can get to that answer.

Karen had built an impressive career over 30 years. She started doing college admissions, worked in the Peace Corps, became an Associate Dean at Middlebury College for 18 years, and then moved to Dean of Students at a private boarding school. By all external measures, she was wildly successful. Then life happened. And she had to make a choice that challenged everything she thought she knew about career success.

We chose Karen’s story because it'll show you why the most successful people often also struggle the most with career change, and how a simple shift in how you think about yourself can unlock possibilities that you never imagined.

(02:27) Karen Guttentag: I think in my previous job exploration moments and job shifts, my primary questions had been, ”What do I most want to be doing now? What job is going to be the closest to the optimal reflection of work that matters to me, that I think is important, that allows me to use all of the skills that I love the most in a community that is, you know, that's gonna be a great environment to work in, with a salary that's gonna allow me a certain lifestyle that I want?”

But, really, the work itself being optimal for me as an expression of who I am as part of my identity. And this time around, I realized that that could not be. I think I wanted it. I think when I first started the job search, that's what I was aiming for. And I realized that that calculation was just not reflective of what my needs were at this stage in my life.

(03:35) Scott Anthony Barlow: Did you catch that shift? Karen had always approached career changes by asking, “What job will express who I am?”. But this time, she realized that approach wasn't serving her anymore. She'd fallen into the identity trap, defining herself by the role rather than by her characteristics.

When we start working with people to make a career change of any kind, almost everybody goes through some kind of mindset shift about the role that they want work to play in their lives. On top of that, each of us must figure out how all of the areas of life work together to create what we think is true fulfillment. That includes family, hobbies, health, relationships, anything that plays a role in your life that can add or take away from your own personal fulfillment. Karen’s identity crisis happened when life forced her hand.

(04:24) Karen Guttentag: And I think for me, it also came down to… I just felt like I was an absentee parent. I felt like I was really, really… Like my child was number 227 that I was responsible for. And that just was not okay.

(04:36) Scott Anthony Barlow: The stress became, shall we say, overwhelming. Karen realized she needed to take a step back and completely rethink her approach. But this wasn't easy for someone whose identity had been built around career achievement.

(04:49) Karen Guttentag: I bought into the model of career ascension. You go from better to better to better. And that's the direction things are supposed to go. And it's always heading up and it's always heading bigger, more responsibility, better title, and more money. So, going from being a dean of students to being unemployed and kind of losing that work identity was hard for me.

(05:13) Scott Anthony Barlow: This is life design. Consciously crafting a life that aligns with your values, passions, goals. It involves designing various aspects of life, including career, relationships, health, personal development, so that you're creating an overall fulfilling existence.

The tool that we use to do this is called the Ideal Career Profile. It helps you define your must-haves and also your aspirations or ideals in different areas of life so that you can figure out what you actually need at your next job, not just what you've always done or what sounds impressive on paper. Karen’s breakthrough came when she realized she needed to separate who she was from what she did.

(05:55) Karen Guttentag: I really needed to take into account my health, my emotional health, my physical health, my child, and the level of availability that I wanted and needed to have for her, after school and in the evening, and on weekends. Both sort of temporal availability and emotional availability.

(06:15) Scott Anthony Barlow: This realization led to another profound insight about how much she'd been asking her career to provide.

(06:22) Karen Guttentag: We look to work to meet so many of our needs around our sense of efficacy and our social agendas and our political agendas and our professional growth and our sense of purpose. And when we put all of those eggs in one basket and the basket falls, then all of these different dimensions of your life are implicated. Which was exactly what I had experienced in the last 20 years of my career.

(06:53) Scott Anthony Barlow: Karen realized she'd always had an all-encompassing job and found much of a fulfillment from having an important and impactful career. But in this next stage, what she needed was a job that fit her life better, not one that consumed it. She actually took what many would consider to be a step down: from dean to student development coach. But I want you to listen to how she describes her life now.

(07:17) Karen Guttentag: This is actually the healthiest that I have ever been. I mean, you know, I used to joke for years about, “Oh, look! It's five o'clock. I think I'll close down my computer and leave it here, and come back the next day and not think about work. Ha ha ha.” You know, as though that were sort of a fever dream. And now that's my life.

(07:35) Scott Anthony Barlow: Karen’s new role allows her to still be the type of person who enjoys developing students, but in a way that fits her current life needs. She didn't abandon who she was. She simply found a new way to express it. Here's her advice for anyone who's feeling trapped by their career identity.

(07:53) Karen Guttentag: I think it's being willing to really radically reexamine the role that you want work to play in your life, what your needs are, way beyond what your work needs are, you know, and really recognize how many of your life needs have you assumed were going to be met through your work.

(08:14) Scott Anthony Barlow: You are not your job title. You're not your occupation. You're not even your career. You're a unique collection of characteristics, experiences, values, and strengths that can be expressed in countless ways. When you shift from “I am a” to “I'm the type of person who,” you build what we call resilient identity.

One that can adapt and evolve as your life circumstances change. One that gives you permission to want something different without feeling like you're betraying who you are. The Ideal Career Profile helps you make this shift by focusing on seven key elements of fulfilling work that go way beyond job titles– things like your signature strengths, your values, how you want to contribute, the type of growth that energizes you, and yes, how work fits into your overall life design.

And if you're currently in that space where you feel trapped by how you're thinking about your career, remember, past success doesn't obligate you to future misery. You can honor what you've accomplished in the past while choosing something that fits who you're becoming in the future. Ask yourself if your current situation serves the life that you want to live right now, or the life that you want to live in the future. And if it doesn't, that's okay. It's not a failure, it's growth. It's normal, and it is not only okay to want something different, it's necessary for your well-being.

By the way, if you're ready to explore what different and what your own personal version of extraordinary might look like, we can always help. Just send me an email. Just pause this, send me an email at scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put “conversation” in the subject line. I'll connect you with the right person on my team who can help you start creating your own version of your ideal career.

Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search