Why "find your passion" might not be good advice

Since school, I believed I needed to find "the thing" - my passion. The ONE thing I was meant to do. I tried to convince myself I was deeply passionate about different things - and only those things. But honestly? I wasn't. Not in the way I thought it should feel. And I felt wrong for it. Like something was missing. Like everyone else had figured something out that I hadn't.

Years later, working with senior women in career transition, I see the same pattern playing out - only with higher stakes.

A client of mine - accomplished, successful, with a long and linear career behind her - had known for a while that something was off. She knew she needed to acknowledge it and do something about it. But instead of mapping options and experimenting, she searched. She searched for THE ONE thing she was meant to do next. The perfect answer that would justify “leaving behind everything she had built”.

And in that search, something happened: she went in circles. Everything, when analyzed long enough and in enough depth, can be questioned. Certainty - which is already hard to come by in life - became impossible to find. Her busy schedule got more overwhelming. The time she did invest in planning her transition? Spent going in circles, instead of designing small experiments to test real possibilities.

This is what "find your passion" does when taken too literally. It can paralyze.

The problem with making passion the goal

To some extent, I understand the appeal of the advice. Work does feel easier when we enjoy what we do. Time goes faster when we are immersed in a topic we find interesting. We tend to be better at work we actually like.

But where it becomes problematic is when passion becomes the prerequisite. When we decide, we cannot move until we have found it. Especially for accomplished professionals in significant career transitions - what I call "career redesigns" - the pressure to identify the passion BEFORE making any move creates a particular kind of trap.

Because if a career built over one or two decades is to be changed, that change should be for something that makes sense. Something they are passionate about. Something they are meant to do. And ideally, it should all be figured out in advance.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but it doesn't work that way.

Why passion cannot be figured out in theory

As David Epstein writes in Range, the most successful people often have the most winding paths. What looks like a distraction or detour from the outside is often exactly the experience that prepares them for what comes next. Passion, more often than not, is not where the journey starts. It is where it leads.

Take a concrete example. Someone convinced that her passion is to own and run an artisanal bakery - boutique, natural ingredients, that specific place in the city that people who care about quality come to. So she tries it. Asks the owner down the road if she could help on weekends. And then she discovers the not-so-pretty parts of the business: the very early starts, the difficult customers, the parts of the business that have nothing to do with bread.

What she thought would be her passion turns out, in practice, to be not quite what she imagined.

A client of mine - entrepreneurial, creative, many side projects - had tested several business ideas she loved in theory. In one case, she genuinely enjoyed buying and restoring antiquities. But she hated having to sell them. And to have a business, it has to be sold. The passion did not survive contact with reality.

This is not a reason to stop trying; it is just a reason to try differently.

The analysis paralysis trap

There is another dimension to this: the pressure to find the passion leads directly to ‘analysis paralysis’. Evaluating (in theory) different potential passions, weighing each one, trying to determine which should be pursued - at the expense of actually pursuing any of them.

And as Bill Burnett and Dave Evans write in Designing Your Life (a very much recommended read!): happiness is not about finding your "one true calling." It is about building a life where multiple good things are possible. You do not need one perfect answer. You need options.

This is particularly relevant for the women I work with - accomplished, experienced, with skills and interests that rarely fit neatly into one box. Many do not have a single passion. They have several interests, multiple areas of competence, and no desire to spend the next chapter of their career doing only one thing. And that is not a problem. That is actually a strength - especially in a world where portfolio careers are increasingly not just possible, but a desirable path.

We are not the same person we were

There is something else worth considering: we change. Not just our circumstances or our careers - we change as people. Different experiences, places, and relationships permanently alter who we are, what we believe, and how we see the world. The person who started that linear career twenty years ago is most likely not the same person sitting at the desk today, wondering what comes next.

And with that change comes something important: interests change too. What did not interest us at 25 might genuinely fascinate us at 45. What felt irrelevant before a particular life experience might feel deeply meaningful after it. We discover new things through new places, new people, new chapters of life - and those discoveries can become genuine interests, and eventually, with time and engagement, real passions.

Which is another reason why searching for THE passion right now, based on who you are right now, with the experiences you have had so far, is inherently limited. The version of you that exists in five years, after new experiments and new experiences, might be passionate about something you haven't even encountered yet.

This is not uncertainty to fear, but rather a possibility to embrace.

What to do instead

Herminia Ibarra's research on career transitions shows something important: we do not think our way into a new kind of work - we act our way into it, and experiments precede clarity.

Which means: instead of waiting to find the passion first, reverse the process. Map the things you are genuinely curious about - not necessarily passionate about yet - and identify the smallest possible next step to test each one. Not a career change. Not a full commitment. A test. A conversation. One weekend.

Passion, when it comes, tends to develop through engagement. Through mastery. Through discovering you are good at something and that it matters. It is rarely the starting point - it is what builds over time when curiosity meets action.

What I have found working with senior women is that instead of searching for passion, a more useful question is: what actually matters to me in THIS season of my life? Meaningful work means something different to everyone, and it needs to be clearly defined - not in the abstract, but specifically. Meaningful to you, in your current circumstances, with your particular values and needs.

That intersection - of what you enjoy, what you are good at, and what people will pay for - is a more reliable guide than passion alone.

Questions to ask yourself

So instead of asking "What am I passionate about?" - try these:

• What am I genuinely curious about, even if I wouldn't call it a passion yet?

• What work have I done (in any context) that gave me energy rather than drained me?

• What actually matters to me in this season of my life? What do I need my work to give me - and what am I no longer willing to compromise on?

• What is one small experiment I could run in the next 2-4 weeks to test one possibility - without committing to it forever?

• If I stopped waiting to find the perfect answer and just picked one thing to try, what would that one thing be? And finally: what is actually stopping me from starting it?

The permission you are waiting for is this: you do not need to find your passion before you begin. You begin, and through beginning it, through trying, adjusting, and learning, clarity comes. The passion ( if it comes) tends to follow.

Stop searching for the one thing. Start with curiosity. Design small experiments. See what emerges.

Because more often than not, that is how it actually works.

You can only connect the dots looking backwards

My last article was about failure and fear, about how the only real failure is not trying. This week, I want to talk about what happens when we DO try, and it doesn't go according to plan.

Last week, I spoke to two intelligent, well-educated young women in their late 20s and early 30s. Both wondering what to do next, both afraid to make a mistake, and both wanting to figure out "the thing" - the right path, the right choice, the one that will make sense (for the rest of their lives).

We know the world and work have changed. Our lives are getting longer. The world is unpredictable. Yet somehow, somewhere, many of us still follow unconscious and deeply ingrained scripts - that we should figure it all out, ideally for life. That we should map it all out in advance. That making the "wrong choice" means defeat.

The fear is strong - fear of making a move, a change, and fear of it all not working out the way we thought it should. Fear of having to admit we chose wrong.

Steve Jobs summed it up perfectly in his Stanford commencement speech: "You can't connect the dots looking forward - you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

I understand that fear because I have been there too. I was a big planner and, at times, almost a control freak. At 23, I had the "perfect" career path mapped out… None of it went according to plan - not the job, not the city, not the career trajectory I imagined.

And I am sure you have your own examples as well, perhaps more challenging than the ones I faced.

Because that is life - it often does not go according to (our) plans. It is filled with ups and downs, the good and the less good, and sometimes with very bad. And it has this habit of throwing us a curveball when we least expect it!

At the moment of happening, it often makes zero sense. But looking backwards, we can see the patterns that are simply impossible to see when things are taking place.

Why does it make no sense at the time?

Why does it happen? Why to us? Why, when things were starting to take off, or were going so well, or seemed to get better?

This comes down to our human nature - disliking change and wanting things to stay the same when they are good. Or what we perceive as good for us at that very moment.

Over life and especially looking backwards - which is the title and the theme of this article - I have come to learn that things indeed do happen for a reason. Only a reason might not be immediately obvious to us, especially not at the moment it happens.

The job we were fired from

That job we were fired from? In most cases, if we are actually honest with ourselves - which is not easy in itself - we will admit that we were not particularly happy in that one workplace.

Yes, perhaps it was a mass redundancy (which unfortunately happens these days at an increasing rate). And maybe the entire thing caught us fully by surprise.

I will dare to say, though, that more often than not, this is not the case.

What seems bad at first might turn out to be the best thing in our lives. Because it pushes us further, to do what we thought about, and dreamed about - but did not dare to try because we chose to stay in our comfort zone. When someone or something else decided for us - a decision we might have even wished for but were not ready to admit, even to ourselves.

Maybe for you, it was a project that didn't get funded. A promotion that went to someone else. A partnership that ran its course. Whatever it was - can you see now, looking back, what it made space for? What new direction does it open?

The move that changed everything

Moving to Munich, where I knew no one, just to end up without a boyfriend two weeks before COVID hit. At the time, it felt like literally everything was falling apart.

But it sent me on my big self-discovery journey of understanding my own relationship patterns and choices. It allowed time (forced it, really) to figure out what I want and need, to admit to myself some hard truths. And only then was I ready to meet my husband.

Today, I am incredibly grateful for it all. For the lows and the downs, the tough times and disappointments, and for all the things that did not go as per my plan, because life really had a better one for me.

Telling me that at the time of happening would have just pissed me off. But we can only connect the dots looking backwards, can't we?

Maybe for you, it wasn't a breakup during lockdown. Maybe it was a relocation that didn't go as planned. A relationship that ended differently than you hoped. A chapter of life that closed before you felt ready for it. Whatever it was - what door did it open that you couldn't see at the time?

Life has ways of proving us wrong

As David Epstein writes in Range: the most successful people often have the most winding paths. What looks like failure or distraction from the outside is often exactly the experience that prepares them for what comes next.

Case in point: At 17, leaving Serbia for university, I swore I'd never touch the German language again. My least favorite subject - I was done with it.

Twenty years later? I live in Germany, married to a German, and speak that very language every single day. And I enjoy it!

Life indeed has its ways of proving us spectacularly wrong.

What second-time founders know

We have all heard that second-time founders do better than first-time founders. It makes sense - they have likely learned from mistakes the first time around and hopefully do not repeat them.

But here is what is interesting: most start their second companies in completely different industries and sectors. So it is not just about the specific learnings they carry forward.

What seems to happen is that they have more confidence after the first time. After having dared and "failed" to achieve the desired outcome. When we try, and it does not work out, especially as time goes by and the initial disappointment subsides, what stays is the fulfillment of having tried. For having dared, for our own courage. And for being a person who has the courage, which in turn informs our sense of self-worth and confidence.

This is what the two intelligent young women I spoke with are missing. Not a perfect plan. Not a certainty about the right path. But the confidence that comes from trying, from making moves, and from trusting they will figure it out as they go.

Questions to help you connect the dots

So how do we actually do this? How do we connect the dots when we are standing in the middle of uncertainty?

1. By looking backwards: What experience from your past seemed like a setback at the time but prepared you for where you are now? What did it teach you that you needed to know?

2. By looking around: What in your current situation feels difficult or unclear - and what might it be teaching you that you will need later?

3. By looking forward: Instead of asking "What is the right path?", ask "What is the next step I can take without needing to know the entire path?"

Herminia Ibarra's research on career transitions shows that we don't figure out our next move by thinking harder. We figure it out by trying things, by experimenting. The path reveals itself as we walk it - not before.

What I know now, and what I wish I could tell my 23-year-old self planning the "perfect" career path, is that the detours matter. Unexpected turns matter, and plans that don't work out matter too. Not in spite of being unplanned, but because they are unplanned.

They indeed teach us what we cannot learn any other way, take us places we would never have chosen, but turn out to be exactly where we need to be. And they prepare us for opportunities we cannot yet see.

Questions to ask yourself

So I want to leave you with a few questions:

• What in your life right now feels like it is not going according to plan?

• What past "detour" are you now grateful for?

• If you looked at your current situation from 10 years in the future, what might you see differently?

• What step could you take today - without having to know where it leads?

So if you are standing where those two young women are - trying to figure out the perfect path, afraid to make the wrong choice, wanting certainty before you move - let yourself off the hook. You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only do it looking backwards.

Take the next step. Trust that it will make sense later, even if it does not make sense now. Trust that the dots will connect, even if you cannot see how yet.

Because looking back, they always do.

I will finish with a beautiful quote by Lao Tzu: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

What if there were no such thing as failure?

A year ago, my business coach told me I would start posting on LinkedIn. My response was immediate and clear: no freaking way.

I had made exactly two LinkedIn posts in my entire life, and both about other people. The thought of putting my own writing out there? Terrifying. What would people think? What if it was not good? What if no one read it?

Fast forward two months, and I found myself publishing my first article.

The key was finding a format that resonated with me. As a passionate high school writer and reader, I found that the essay style made the most sense. So I went for it. Did it feel scary for someone who had no social media except LinkedIn? Very scary indeed. But once I did it a few times, it became more natural. The fear of what people would think subsided. The excitement about finally writing again after 20 years, and about sharing my thoughts and learnings, surprisingly grew with each article, outweighing the fear.

Then I even dared to create a newsletter. People get this directly in their inbox - bypassing the LinkedIn algorithm. Many people from my "past lives," different chapters of my life, now read these articles. That felt scary at the beginning, too, but also slowly became exciting, and a way to reconnect with people I hadn't had contact with for many years.

This is my own proof that our biggest potential lies where our biggest fear is.

So, what if I told you there's no such thing as failure? And the only real failure is never trying at all?

How we learn to fear failure

When you observe small babies learning to crawl and then walk, they fall an infinite number of times. They get up and continue. Try again, and again. Until they manage it, first quite shaky, but eventually every healthy baby walks.

Somewhere in our childhood - often through our parents and the conscious or unconscious messages they send us, and then later at school - we pick up the notion that failure is … well, failure. It is something to fear. If it happens, we should be ashamed of it.

So we reach adulthood terrified of failure, and sometimes, even of things that might only be externally perceived as such.

Carol Dweck's research on mindset shows this clearly: people with a "fixed mindset" see failure as proof they are not good enough. People with a "growth mindset" see it as information and insight into what to do differently next time. The difference? One group stops trying, the other keeps growing.

But here's what creates that label of "failure" in the first place: we have a specific idea in our minds of how things should turn out, which in turn informs what success should look like - to be considered success. There is a desired outcome, and every outcome is then judged against that one - and the bigger the gap between what we expected and what actually happened, the more likely we are to call it a failure. Things rarely go exactly according to our plan anyway, yet we're essentially judging reality against an imagination, and then calling ourselves failures when reality doesn't match what we made up in our heads.

In addition, today more than ever, there is a need to portray that everything is going well. If you are not sure, just have a look at your social media. Successes - a new job, promotion, successful startup fundraise - are announced, celebrated, always in the front. Failures, or whatever we perceive as such, not so much, if ever.

A friend recently said something along the lines: "Burnout, layoffs, and problems don't make up for a good dinner topic." And that is, unfortunately, true.

Regardless of what your career looks like - a straight, linear line with a consistent climb, or a zig-zag path - there was a moment (or a few of them) where things did not go so well. Moments you might not be proud of and might not talk about at dinner.

But why? Failures are an inevitable part of life. But somewhere along the way, we picked up a belief that failures are negative.

What successful people think about failure

I remember reading an interview with Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx and a self-made billionaire. She mentioned how her father would ask her and her brother every week what they had failed at. He would express disappointment if they did not have a failure to report, and at the same time, celebrate their failures with a high-five.

This way, he taught them that failure is not a bad or unwanted outcome - and that the real failure is actually not even trying. What a wonderful gift and a life-changing lesson he gave his children, one that most likely significantly shaped their personalities and lives. So perhaps not so accidentally, both of them went on to become very successful entrepreneurs.

A legendary quote by Nelson Mandela says it all: "I never lose. Either I win, or I learn." Every setback is indeed an opportunity to learn and grow.

Most of us, however, did not have a parent who encouraged trying without fear of failing in such a way. Directly or indirectly, we picked up the belief that failing is bad. And when it inevitably happened, we internalized it as our mistake, as our personal failure, or perhaps even as something not being good enough about ourselves.

Through my own experience as well as the experience of my clients - with whom I also work through reframing negatively perceived events in their careers - I have come to believe that there really aren't failures and mistakes. There are only learnings along the way. Lessons we take with us - some we master, some still need to be learned to a full extent, and we apply them later in life.

A few useful things to ask yourself when reframing the (perceived) failure:

1. What is good about what happened? (shifts your focus from negative to the positive aspects)

2. What did I learn from this experience? (helps you to synthesize learnings, especially the non-obvious ones)

3. What would I do differently next time? (sums up key lessons and takeaways)

4. How did this prepare me for what comes next? (directs your mind towards the future)

When things we did not want or expect happen, it is actually good to be upset, sad, angry, and to grieve - whatever was not and/or will not happen. But the sooner we can start reframing the experience, the earlier we can start connecting the dots. We might realize that, although quite unpleasant at the time, that might have been exactly the type of experience we needed in our career or life to learn whatever we needed to learn - and to take us to that next step, stage, or season.

The cost of playing it safe

So if we know all this - that failure is learning, that successful people embrace it, that it's not something to fear - why do so many of us still not try?

I was listening to people share recently about why they don't do the thing they've been thinking about. Why don't they write that book? Why don't they start that business or side hustle? Why don't they try the career shift they've been dreaming about?

The answers? Fear of being judged, fear of being criticized, fear of failing publicly, fear of disappointing others. Notice: none of these fears is about the thing itself. They're about what other people will think.

We're not afraid we can't do it. We're afraid of what happens if we try and it doesn't work out the way we hoped. We're afraid of the story others will tell about us. And so we don't try. We keep the dream safely inside, where no one can judge it, criticize it, or watch it fail.

But here's what happens when we do that: We might stop trying altogether. We might stop believing that something more or something really big is possible for us. Over time, especially if these "failures" happen a few times, we might even stop dreaming bigger.

Because deep in ourselves, we all have desires and dreams, whatever those are. Something different than the present, something special we would like to do or achieve. And something we, along the journey, pushed aside and stopped thinking about.

Because why risk failure? It is uncomfortable. We don't like it. But the truth is: it is the only, really the only, path to doing anything we consider meaningful.

There is also a saying that "our biggest potential lies where our biggest fear is." To go to places that scare us, to see what is there, and then to go for it - until the fear subsides. It is not easy, but it is so worth it.

What becomes possible when you let go of fear

My LinkedIn writing journey is proof of this. The fear was significant. But once done a few times, it became more natural, and the fear of what people would think subsided.

And this is the case with almost anything new we do, anything that scares us at first.

And the so perceived failures? My first company turned out not to have the potential I thought. Having to close it felt terrible at the time. I went through it 10 years ago and still vividly remember the feelings of quilt and shame for “not making it work”. Today though, I can see why everything working out exactly the way it did was indeed for the better - and how that experience was the crucial stepping stone for everything that came later.

Working at a toxic workplace and then being fired from it? At the time, it seemed like the worst thing ever. Looking back, it was a blessing in disguise. It pushed me to do what I had thought, read and dreamed about - but did not dare to try while staying in my (unhappy) comfort zone. Sometimes, when we cannot decide, other people or circumstances make a (right) decision for us.

And in today's environment - the changing work landscape and lots of uncertainty about what is coming- the ability to let go of the fear, embrace the change, and move into the excitement about what is coming and what could be possible will be, in my view, crucial.

Questions to ask yourself

I want to leave you with a few questions:

What would you dare to want if you knew you could not fail?

What would you dare to do if you knew no one would judge you?

What would be possible for you if you thought there was no such thing as failure?

What is the one thing you would do if you were sure there was no way to fail?

Then start by doing that one thing. The one thing, small or big, that you have been avoiding doing because you might fail. And notice what happens - you might get genuinely (positively) surprised!

Your career can have seasons

I had a different plan for today's article. But inspiration comes from the conversations I have, and lately, I have been thinking about something I hear more and more from accomplished, successful women: the decision to slow down and put their personal life ahead of their professional life, often for the first time after decades of career.

It often does not come naturally, and it can still feel strange - even when it is the right decision. I have written before about how life has seasons - different periods with different responsibilities, priorities, and what matters most. But we rarely, if ever, talk about seasons in our careers.

So why don't we? How come that our careers, such a large part of our lives, are expected to stay the same throughout different life seasons? Unaffected, unchanged, and steady?

The all-or-nothing culture

Linear careers - climbing the corporate ladder within one company or industry - became the prevailing expectation in the mid-20th century. And while the world of work has drastically changed over the past 15 years, in many industries this expectation is still alive and strong.

In these industries, it is expected that our jobs stay the same - regardless of what's happening in our lives. Single and in your 20s? 80-hour weeks. Juggling young children in your 30s? Same. Caring for aging parents in your 40s? Same intensity expected. Covid? Just a break with a whole new set of challenges. Health issues, fertility struggles, life crises? The job does not change.

How does that fit with the modern world, with an ever-changing and evolving workplace? The answer is: it mostly does not, but many companies have not yet caught up with it.

And if you are a woman working in a demanding industry? You might be lucky - your company might even offer to freeze your eggs as a benefit! Generous indeed, but it does have a rather selfish side to it: extend the "lifetime" of an employee whose main focus is work. It is how industries with 12+ hour days function. The culture becomes all-or-nothing: you are either in, or you are out. And when life changes and enters another season, especially at the start of the season when everything is still new and lots of adaptation is needed, the all-or-nothing culture on the other side does not exactly help.

This brings me to an important point: what are we optimizing for? Or for whom? Are our lives supposed to be optimized to fit our jobs and the expected way of working? Or should it, ideally, not be the other way around?

Because, as it happens, we do have only one life. There are many jobs, many careers, and many ways to work. Yet most of us do not stop to question whether things might be inverted - skewed toward optimizing life for work, rather than work for life.

I hear this constantly from clients: successful, high-achieving women struggling to do everything, be everything, have everything. Ultimately, it does not work - as it happens, we all have 24 hours in a day. Something has got to give. I always say: as long as it is a conscious, thought-through decision, all is well. The issue is when it is not. In those cases, we tend to keep pushing along until a breaking point happens - in whatever shape or form.

And no, seasons are not just about motherhood (or fatherhood, for that matter). They are also about health, energy levels at different life stages, aging parents, and simply wanting different things, or whatever used to fit before not fitting anymore, for whatever reason.

This might sound dramatic. It is not, though. Because it might be useful to remember: nothing is forever, because life changes, seasons pass, and change.

This is primarily about giving ourselves permission to change and redesign our work in line with our life and its current stage.

The guilt of slowing down

In my experience, high achievers - especially those in more linear careers - feel guilty about slowing down. It feels like defeat, maybe even failure. Even when they are exhausted, even when life demands change, and even when continuing at this pace is clearly unsustainable.

But it is not just guilt. There is also fear - fear of slowing down when you have always kept it at a specific intensity - and when that intensity has become your default, your autopilot. When you have had such an intense career, especially one focused on the climb, there has rarely been time, if any, to stop. To reflect, to ask yourself questions, to examine whether this is right.

And stopping to ask creates ambiguity. Opening one question can open a Pandora's box. Questions you might not want to touch and answers you might not want to hear.

I have even heard the fear expressed this way: "If I question things, will that mean I have gone down the wrong path altogether? Made wrong choices, sacrificed too much? Done it the wrong way? Better not touch the subject - because it might wake up all the demons, and the questions might not stop."

And sometimes it is a journey without return. Because once we start asking these questions – actually stop and question what we are doing and why - it might turn out we are indeed a lot less happy with it all than we have thought, or convinced ourselves and others around us that we are.

And will we cross a point of no return? When will the change eventually have to happen? It can feel like throwing everything away. The climbing, the promotions, all the effort - almost for nothing. The framing becomes zero-sum: stay and keep climbing, or leave entirely. And if you leave... then what? What are the options?

The more linear the career has been, the less obvious the options seem. Strangely enough, sometimes it can even feel like there are no options at all. Especially when there have not been big changes along the way - when it has always been this expectation of upwards ever, backwards never. It can be really scary. "What else can I do?"

The unrealistic expectation of constant climb

We are told we should climb. Get higher. Get promoted. Move analyst to manager to director, or whatever applies. In some industries, this is so emphasized that if we are not following the prescribed path, something must be wrong. We are not performing as expected.

I would like to challenge this by asking: Is it realistic to be constantly climbing, constantly growing, constantly rising?

Let´s look at nature for a comparison. Plants do not grow year-round - they have seasons for growth and seasons for dormancy. Animals do not stay active constantly - they have periods of intense activity and periods of rest, and even hibernation. Trees do not produce fruit every month. Even the sun has cycles. Nothing in nature sustains constant growth. So why do we expect our careers to?

It does not have to always be up, up, and up - actually, it is not really sustainable. So why do we have such a problem with periods of slowing down, even temporarily?

Another, somewhat unexpected parallel comes to mind: financial markets.

This expectation that companies need to exceed earnings every quarter, year after year. Constant growth, constant climbing. And while technology and innovation do enable a lot, there is no silver bullet. Our Earth´s natural resources are limited - yet, there is this pressure on the management of any public company to grow constantly and infinitely. How this has served us, our world, and climate, I will not go into this time, as we are all becoming painfully aware of the answer.

This is unrealistic. Companies cannot grow infinitely. Neither can we work with the same intensity for decades. Yet, we expect that from ourselves - upward trajectory, quarter after quarter, year after year, for 40+ years.

The truth is: there is time to speed up, to give it all. Then there is time to slow down, even if only to an extent, and to optimize for other things. And that does not mean failure or giving up. It is optimizing for our life and building our career around our life - not the other way around.

Giving yourself permission

This article is about examining the whole upward culture - and the fact that it is simply not aligned with the seasons of our life, with how priorities change and how life demands different things at different times.

To adjust and change this - especially in up-or-out industries, and when something feels off - we need to take a macro view of our lives. It means being honest with ourselves about what we want, what we are striving for, and what our priorities are.

If this resonates, take a pen and paper (yes, old-school first - discuss with your AI friend later) and answer these questions:

• Which season of life am I in right now?

• What matters most in this season?

• What would my career need to look like to fit this season?

• What's one thing I could change in the next 3 months?

• What do I actually want? (Not what I should want - what do I want?)

• Ideal scenario: what does life look like now, in 5 years, in 10 years?

The advice that does not travel

When career skills fail you as a new mother

I was alone in a hospital room with my newborn son. He was born a month earlier and picked up an infection that had to be treated, so we were back in the hospital.

Nurses came in and out. Each one, and I mean each of them, gave me a different piece of advice. They had the best intentions and shared what they had seen over the years, while I thought I was going crazy - who to listen to?

Then one nurse said something I'll never forget: Well, you seem like an accomplished career woman, just apply here what you do in your work.

Kindly said - and largely misleading, at least in my experience. In months to come, almost everything that served me well in building my career, among others - the need to control, the drive to optimize everything, the self-criticism I believed pushed me to go further - just did not work as a new mother (or mother in general). It made things worse. It added to the confusion and overwhelm of that early phase.

And here is the thing: even the most well-meaning advice, when it is contradictory and comes from all directions, does not help. It makes the already present confusion worse. Because everything is so new, you are already overwhelmed, unsure, and doubting yourself - and now you have ten different people telling you ten different things.

What helped was deciding who the one or two people are I will trust and listen to, and seeing the rest as noise. Deciding is the keyword here - there is no such thing as absolute truth and right way, we can just at any point of time, and in every aspect of life, decide what is best for us (and our family).

How the same pattern shows up in our careers

The same confusion happens with our careers after we have children.

Not long after giving birth,  especially if you were considered driven and had a successful career before, questions start: Are you going back to work?When are you going back?Are you sure you want to go back so soon?Why are you waiting so long?

And the issue is: you might not even be sure yourself yet. You are in the middle of the overwhelming early phase of motherhood, and you are supposed to have full clarity about your career?

And here is what makes the career confusion even worse: the expectation we have of ourselves about what we should want.

If you have spent 15-20 years building a successful career, there's often an unspoken expectation - from yourself - that you should want to go back, and soon. That you should be excited about it. That you should still be as ambitious and as driven.

And when you do not feel that way - when you realize you would rather stay home for a bit, or scale back, or redesign your career completely - it can feel like a failure. Like you are letting down the version of yourself who worked so hard to get here.

The guilt is not just about the baby. It is about yourself. About the expectation that you should be the same person you were before, when actually, nothing is the same - your world has literally changed.

I have worked with women who made career decisions during this time - decisions based on what they thought they should do, or what they had planned before they became mothers - back when they could not yet comprehend how they would actually feel.

The emotional complexity

Every choice is okay. Going back after three months, staying home for a few years, something in between - all of it is fine.

But here is what often gets overlooked: it is not really about the choice itself. It is rather about the complex emotions that come with it, no matter what you choose (and no matter how much you ignore them).

The confusion, the mixed feelings. The overwhelm, the guilt. And often, the surprise at your own feelings about work and career - feelings you did not expect to have.

I have worked with many high-achieving women who were surprised by their own reactions. Women who thought they would rush back to work and feel relieved to use their brains again - only to find themselves crying in the office bathroom, wanting to be home with their baby instead. And women who thought they would absolutely love being home, only to realize they desperately miss work, their professional identity, and the feeling of being themselves.

The guilt goes both ways. If you go back to work, there is guilt about leaving your baby. About missing milestones. About not being "present." And if you stay home, especially if you have spent 15-20 years building a career, there's guilt about betraying everything you worked for - and fear about becoming “less relevant” the longer you take.

And here is what makes it even harder: for high achievers, a career is not just a job. It is normally a large part of your identity. So whatever choice you make, it can feel like betraying one part of yourself for another. Go back to work, and it feels like you're betraying your maternal instinct. Staying home feels like you're betraying your professional self.

A friend who has been in VC for years said recently, "It must be toughest for women trying to do both - be in these, by definition, very demanding careers, and navigate the early years of their children. They must feel like they are failing at everything."

And he is right. That is often the reality: not feeling like you are doing either thing well. Not present enough at work, not present enough at home. The invisible cost of "having it all" - which is not that invisible at all to the women living it.

Not always a choice

And it is important to emphasize: it is not always even a choice.

Some women go back to work because, financially, both parents need to work. Because of the cost of life and childcare in some cities, the numbers simply do not add up with one income. Some women stay home because their partner's job is so demanding that someone needs to be flexible - and it defaults to the mother. Some women can not work due to visa restrictions, even if they desperately want to.

The women I know who stayed home for 6-7 years? They had the financial cushion to do that (often earned during previous years). Not everyone does. The women who went back after three months? Some wanted to, some had to. It is rarely as simple as "I wanted and chose this."

So when we talk about these decisions, we have to remember: they are not made in a vacuum. They are shaped by various factors - the financial reality, partners' job demands, and what is even possible given the circumstances.

The pressure

And then there is the external pressure, which varies wildly depending on where you live.

I recently saw a post that summed this very well: when she went back to work after four months, her German colleagues said, "Why so early?!" while her French colleagues said, "Why did it take you so long?" Same choice, opposite reactions. Different cultures, different expectations - and it all adds to the confusion, especially in a European context with its multitude of strong traditions.

I know women who went back to work earlier than they wanted - worried about losing clients, losing momentum, losing their place. Women who made childcare choices that reflected what "everyone does" in their city or industry, more than what felt right for them.

And I know women on the opposite side who stayed home longer than they wanted, even though they missed work and interactions with people, because they live in a country or city where going back "too early" gets you labeled a “bad” mother.

Why it matters to everyone

This is not just a woman's issue, by the way. Luckily, most of the men I know are married to equals - women they met at university or an exchange, at work, through their professional circles. Which means their partners are facing these same questions and complex emotions.

And increasingly, men are more involved in these decisions. They see the price their partners pay, whichever choice they make. They see the guilt, the identity crisis, the feeling of failing at everything when trying to do both.

So this matters to them too. Not just as partners, but as people who care about the women in their lives, navigating tough choices in a system that was not built and optimized for them.

Whom to listen to, and whom to ignore

So here is what I've learned - and it might seem obvious, but I will share it anyway:

Be careful who you take advice from. Ideally, it should be someone whose life you respect and admire, and not just their career achievements - rather, all of who they are and what they stand for, and whose life you would gladly live.

And remind yourself that each of us is unique. Each motherhood journey is unique. And despite what you thought before you became a mother, things can change.

Plans can change. You might think you will rush back to work, only to realize you want more time at home. Or the opposite. Both are okay.

You might realize that the career that used to fit, sometimes for many years, does not fit anymore. And that is not a bad thing.  You have more options than you see right now. It is actually not all or nothing - go back to your old role full-time or stay home completely. There are paths in between. You can redesign your career to fit your life today, and not the other way around.

This might be the beginning of a new chapter. The one you get to create with the maturity and self-awareness you didn't have 15-20 years ago when you started. And isn't that a wonderful thing!

Why going out on your own brings up every money belief you did not know you had

She has negotiated million-pound deals for her company. She has led teams through complex acquisitions. She sat across the table from CEOs and held her ground.

But now, sitting in front of her laptop trying to write a proposal for her own consulting services, she freezes.

What should she charge?

Each number she types feels wrong. Too high feels greedy. Too low feels desperate. She deletes it and starts again.

This is the woman who just spent 15 years proving her worth in boardrooms. And now she cannot put a price on herself.

If you have ever worked for yourself or thought about it, you know this moment. The moment when every money belief you did not know you had comes flooding to the surface.

Why self-employment surfaces what employment hides

When you work for a company, your money beliefs can stay quietly in the background.

You might choose certain paths because of them - the "safe" corporate job over the risky startup. You might stay longer than you should because of them - the golden handcuffs. You might overwork because of them, believing you have to earn every penny through exhaustion.

You do need to negotiate at the beginning of your employment and in between promotions and bonuses, but this does not exactly happen daily. So, you do not have to face your money beliefs often.

And then, you go out on your own.

Maybe you start your own business. Maybe you will become a consultant. Maybe you build a portfolio career - multiple income streams, multiple identities, nothing that fits into a neat job title.

And suddenly, everything changes. Now you have to set the price.

Every client conversation becomes a moment of: "Am I worth this?"

Every proposal you write asks: "Can I really charge that?"

Every invoice you send whispers: "Will they think this is too much?"

There are no comfortable career paths with attached salary bands to hide behind. No title to justify your rate. No company is absorbing the risk & reputation while you collect a steady paycheck.

It is just you. And your beliefs about what you deserve.

This is when everything surfaces. All the beliefs you absorbed before you were seven. All the patterns you have been running for decades without noticing.

The patterns that emerge

You underprice yourself

When you work for a company, your salary is typically set within a specific range. Your “worth” is determined by role, title, and market rate.

But when you go out on your own, when you have to "put a price on yourself", all the beliefs surface:

• "People won't pay that much."

• "Who am I to charge this?"

• "What if I am not that good?"

• "I should make it affordable" (translation: I do not believe I am worth more)

Beliefs like these cause so many (especially) accomplished women to underprice their services. It is not about the market and economy. It is about the belief, the “self-worth” belief. And the underlying question is essential: how do you value yourself?

I have seen it over and over: The woman who earned very well in corporate now undercharges dramatically when she goes out on her own. The executive who negotiated significant budgets now feels guilty asking for what her expertise is in real money.

The skills did not change. The context, however, did.

You only feel you "deserve" money if you have worked very, very hard for it

When you're employed, hard work is expected. You work hard, you get a paycheck. Simple.

But when you build a portfolio career - with multiple income streams, some active, some passive - a new belief surfaces: If the money comes easily, it doesn't feel legitimate.

A quick consulting project that takes you a few hours but pays well? You feel guilty. As if you are somehow cheating. Passive income from a course you built once but now sells itself? It doesn't feel "earned."

You have to work for it. Suffer for it. Prove you deserve it.

You sabotage yourself right before success

You are about to launch your product or service. You have prepared everything and told people about it.

And then, suddenly, you make a "mistake" that delays everything. Or you do launch, and it goes well, and immediately afterward, something happens (an unexpected expense, a crisis, a bad decision) that takes the money away. Or you are about to close a big deal, and you say something that torpedoes it.

You are sabotaging yourself. And you do not even know why.

When you're employed, there's a ceiling. You can only earn so much. The company structure limits you. Your beliefs never get tested at the upper range. But when you go out on your own, there's no ceiling. You could earn significantly more than you ever did in corporate.

And if somewhere deep down you believe you're "not allowed" to have that much - or that having it makes you greedy, or unsafe, or different from your family/community - you will find a way to keep yourself small.

The money story you have been living

The beliefs we picked up in those early years do not stay there. They carry forward into adolescence, adulthood, and careers. Mostly without us noticing, they shape what we expect to happen - because our expectations are always in line with our underlying beliefs.

We expect things to 'always go a certain way' for us. And so, they do. Which proves the belief was 'true.' And the pattern repeats. Before we know it, we have a money story - the expected way money works in our lives.

Actually, we have a story about every aspect of our lives. Who we are. How things go for us. And once beliefs solidify into a story, we stop questioning them. They become a core part of who we are.

My own story: what surfaced when I had to price myself

I was born in Serbia, just before the Balkan war broke out. I always thought that, as we were luckily not directly affected by it, I was not really affected by it. That said, the years that followed, the 90s, were filled with embargo, hyperinflation, and stress. That meant your parents got the salary in the morning, and the same day, in the afternoon could not buy anything with it.

Today, when I am a parent, just thinking about the scenario of potentially not being able to afford the basics for my children makes me shiver.

I am sure they did their best to hide it, but that level of stress and anxiety, present everywhere, is felt in various ways by children. It cannot be hidden.

Later, they became entrepreneurs, self-made, working incredibly hard in a country where corruption was everywhere and running a business meant navigating constant ups and downs. We ended up having more people living around us than we had. Eventually, my parents supported my intention to study in the UK at 17 (an enormous financial commitment and sacrifice, which I only fully recognize today).

So, I thought all this meant I had no money issues. I was privileged, after all. I should be grateful. What right did I have to struggle with money beliefs, compared to so many who had less?

But privilege of any form does not erase money beliefs - it just hides them better.

What I absorbed as a child wasn't the privilege. It was that money equals stress. The ups and downs. The sense that it "comes and goes." The unspoken belief is that when things are going well, you never know for how long. The post-war mentality of "save everything, you never know what might happen."

I did not examine any of this for years. I went into finance, the "safe" choice - good salary, clear path. I worked hard, believing I had to earn every penny. I stayed longer than I should have in roles that did not fit because leaving felt financially risky.

The first sign that something was off came years later when I started that company in Brazil. The financial plan has no salary for me. But even then, I did not question why.

It was not until I had my first baby and decided to redesign my career - to build something that would actually fit my life, personality, and talents - that everything finally surfaced.

Suddenly, I had to price my services. And I froze. What if people thought it was too much? What if no one said yes?

All the beliefs I had been carrying - about deserving, about worth, about safety - came flooding up. I realized I had been underpricing myself, not because of market conditions, but because of beliefs I had formed in childhood about what I was "allowed" to have.

And here is the thing: this is the work. Not just the strategy of "what should I charge?" but the deeper question of "what do I believe I'm worth?"

Why this work matters, especially if you have children

I think about this often with my own two small children.

They are growing up in different circumstances than I did - a different country, different economy, different world. But that matters less than I used to think. Because unless I work on my own money beliefs (the ones I inherited and then reinforced over decades), they will pick up exactly those beliefs from me.

Children do not do what we tell them. They do what we do. They model us. They absorb like sponges.

Which means: unless we break the cycle, often generational, unless we model a different, healthier relationship with money, we risk passing these beliefs to our children.

The reframe

Here is what I want to emphasize:

Going out on your own should bring up all your money beliefs. This is not a sign you're doing something wrong. It is a sign you are finally doing the real work.

When you were employed, those beliefs could stay hidden. They could run quietly in the background, shaping your choices without you noticing.

But when you go out on your own - when you have to price yourself, build something, claim your worth - there is nowhere left to hide.

And that is actually a great opportunity.

Because now, for the first time, you can see them. You can examine them. You can decide which ones are true and which ones you are ready to let go of.

The beliefs that kept you "safe" in childhood (such as: do not ask for too much, work hard, money is dangerous) might be keeping you stuck now.

The hardest part of becoming self-employed and building a portfolio career is not the strategy. It is not the business model, the marketing, or the operations.

The hardest part is learning to believe you are worth what you charge.

To believe that money can come easily and still be legitimate.

To believe you are allowed to have more than your parents did.

To believe that success does not make you greedy.

To believe that you - yes, you - deserve to be paid properly for your work.

No straightforward answers

I will not tell you how to "fix" your money beliefs. This work is messy. It takes time; for me, it has taken years.

But if you are building something of your own, or thinking about it, this is the work that matters.

Not just the external work - the business plan, the pricing strategy, the marketing.

Asking yourself questions such as:

• What do I believe I am worth?

• What do I believe I deserve?

• What am I afraid will happen if I succeed?

Those beliefs will determine whether your self-employment, company, or portfolio career thrives or whether you stay small, underpriced, and exhausted.

So if you are in the messy middle of building something, and the money stuff is coming up - embrace it!

The Money Beliefs Running Your Career (Without You Knowing It)

I was presenting my chemistry dissertation at St Andrews University, about to graduate with a degree in Chemistry and Mathematics. When the formal part was over, one of the professors asked me what I would do next. I tried to avoid answering. He asked again, wondering if it would be Master's studies in Chemistry, and where exactly. I finally said I was going to London to do a Master's in Finance.

No answer, no comment.

To this day, I do not know if the judgment was real or if I imagined it. But I do know that I wished I did not have to answer. Part of me felt guilty for "leaving science for the money." For passing on the opportunity to potentially do something great (not that I thought I was destined for a big scientific breakthrough, quite the opposite!), and contribute to research of some kind, all to go down the more lucrative path.

It does not matter in the end. What matters is what it represented: the guilt and the shame around money. I did not recognize it back then, though - too young, too all over the place.

Arriving at Imperial, where applications to banks and consulting firms started in September, the moment the semester began, and where the daily conversation became "Where are you applying?" and "Where are you interviewing?", it quickly felt like there was no choice at all. You went with it. London is expensive, after all. If you wanted to live in a good location and enjoy what the city offered, your options were finance and consulting jobs - and then, most other jobs, if you wanted to earn half the salary.

Yet I did not examine those money beliefs then, either. It would take more than 10 years, after giving birth to my first baby, and deciding to redesign my career and create one that would actually fit my life, personality, and talents. Once I had to put a price on my own work, I realized that money was about something far deeper than career strategy or lifestyle choices. That is when my own journey began - understanding my relationship with money, the patterns I had been running for years, my beliefs about it, and how those beliefs had shaped my life and work choices.

Where money beliefs come from

Current research points to our early childhood for the formation of money beliefs - specifically, by age 6 or 7. There are a few tricky things about this:

• At this age, our conscious brain is not fully developed yet, and we are absorbing everything like sponges, learning incredibly fast (anyone with small children knows how fascinating it is to watch them connect dots every single day)

• We have not yet fully understood for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, and we take things at face value

• We generally trust our parents and caregivers, and whatever they model often becomes our template

We absorb feelings, not facts

This is the crucial part: It is not about how much money your family actually had. It's about how they felt about money.

You could have grown up in a relatively well-off family and still have scarcity beliefs, because what you picked up was not the state of bank balance. It was the stress in your mother's voice when bills came. Potential tension between your parents about spending. The unspoken anxiety that "it could all disappear."

Or the opposite: You could have grown up with very little money but never felt scarcity because your parents were relaxed and creative, and they modeled abundance even with limited resources.

What we pick up as children:

• How parents talked about money: stressed? relaxed? never mentioned?

• Whether there was "enough" or always a sense of lack

• Whether money was easy to earn or "it did not grow on trees."

• Whether having money made you good or bad

• Whether you could trust it to be there, or "it always comes and goes."

And unless we question these beliefs as adults, they run invisibly in the background, silently shaping most career decisions we make.

How money beliefs show up in your career

Most of us do not even realize that our money beliefs are driving our careers. We think we are making rational decisions based on ambition, fulfillment, opportunity, or "what is next."

But underneath, we are often making decisions based on a 6-year-old's understanding of money and safety. Here's how it shows up:

Why do we choose certain paths

The career you chose at 22 was probably not just about "following your passion" or "what you are good at."

It was also about: Will this pay well? Will I be financially secure? What will people think? Is this a "safe" choice?

Those questions are not neutral - they are loaded with the beliefs you absorbed about money:

• If you learned "money = security," you chose the corporate path over the risky one

• If you learned "money = status," you chased titles and prestige

• If you learned "you have to work very hard to deserve money," you picked the most demanding and exhausting path available

Why do we stay in jobs that no longer fit

The golden handcuffs are not really about the money.

Yes, the salary is good. Yes, you would have to take a pay cut to leave. Yes, there are bills, and mortgages, and childcare costs.

But the real reason you stay is the belief underneath:

• "If I leave, I will never earn this much again."

• "I will not be able to support my family."

• "Money is hard to come by; I cannot risk losing this."

• "I should be grateful for what I have" (even if it is making you pretty miserable)

These are not facts. They are your beliefs. And they have the potential to keep you stuck for quite a long time.

Why we overwork

If you learned that "money does not grow on trees" or "you have to work hard for everything you get," guess what?

You work hard. Very hard. Even when you do not need to anymore. Even when you are earning well, and have substantial savings too. Even when you have "made it" by external measures. You cannot shake the belief that if you stop working this hard, it will all disappear.

Signs your money beliefs need examining

How do you know if your relationship with money needs examining?

Here are some patterns to look for:

1. You spend what you earn (no matter how much you earn)

You get a promotion. Your salary increases. And somehow, your spending increases to match it.

There is always something that "needs" buying. The nicer apartment. The better nursery. That great holiday your friends recommended.

You are not bad with money. You just have a belief running underneath: "Money is meant to be spent" or "I do not trust myself to have money, so I get rid of it."

2. You hoard and never feel like it's "enough."

The opposite pattern: You save obsessively. You track every expense. You feel anxious about spending on anything "unnecessary."

Even when you have quite significant savings, you do not feel secure. There is always a voice saying, "It could all disappear" or "Money comes and goes, you cannot trust it."

3. Your self-worth is directly tied to how much you earn

When you earn more, you feel valuable. When you earn less (or take time off), you feel worthless.

Your identity = your income. And that belief underneath: “My value is measured in money”.

4. You believe having money makes you good or bad

Money carries moral weight for you.

Having "too much" makes you greedy, selfish, or out of touch. Not having enough makes you virtuous, humble, or good.

You might downplay your success, hide how much you earn, or feel ashamed of wanting more.

5. You avoid looking at your finances

You do not check your bank balance. You put off opening bills. You have a vague sense of what you earn and spend, but avoid the details.

6. You forget to include yourself in the financial equation

When I started my company in Brazil, I built a detailed financial plan. Revenue projections, costs, expenses, everything - except my own salary.

I did not forget it by accident, though. I simply did not even think to include it. The company had costs. But me? I would just rely on my savings to finance my personal life.

It did not occur to me that I, the founder and the person actually running this business, should be paid properly. What I would have earned working for someone else was not part of the equation.

This specific one shows up when you are building something of your own - whether a company, a side project, or a portfolio career. You invest in everything except yourself. You pay everyone except yourself. You treat your own time and expertise as if it has no value.

Over the years, I have observed other founders do this more often than expected - and unfortunately, without wanting to generalize, even more when it comes to female founders.

Why examining money beliefs is essential to career redesign

I have seen it time and time again: people staying in jobs where they are unhappy because they "have to." There is seemingly no other choice. No other industry will pay that much. No other city will pay that much.

This is particularly true in London, where most of my clients are based - I hear this argument constantly. And interestingly, people only look at the top line, when what actually matters is what is left after all the costs are paid (and if you live in London and have a family there, you happen to know how high those costs are!)

Staying, then, is a choice - one justified with a long list of reasons.

Any significant career transition requires looking at different aspects of your life, including your beliefs about work, success, and money. You cannot make free choices about your career if invisible beliefs are running the show, and this is especially true when you're considering self-employment or building a portfolio career (I'll explore this more in the next article)

The career you have is not just a result of your choices; it is also a direct result of your beliefs about what is possible, what is safe, and what you deserve.

And until you examine these beliefs, you are not the only one designing your career. Your childhood is.

Suggestion

I will not try to provide any specific answers, as everyone, anyway, has their own. Nor provide a formula to "fix" your money beliefs overnight (for expectation-setting purposes: this money work takes months, sometimes years)

But if any of this resonated, ask yourself:

• What did I learn about money before I was 7?

• How did my parents feel about it?

• What beliefs might I still be carrying?

• Which of my life and career decisions might have been based on those beliefs - and not on what I actually wanted?

• How is this showing up in my life today?

The answers might surprise you!

Portfolio careers: an identity story, not just an income strategy

When the job ends - whether through layoff, burnout, or your own decision - something unexpected happens.

Not just the loss of income or routine, but the fracture of identity.

After years of compressing yourself into one role, one title, one version of who you're supposed to be, you're left asking: Who am I without this?

I’ve seen this pattern over and over in my work with clients. There is letting go. There is mourning, grief - many emotions we do not expect to associate with “just a job.”

But it is never just a job when that job has become your identity- friends, routine, conversation starter, purpose...

The more the decision was ours, the easier it tends to be—and it is still far from easy. The more abrupt the end, the tougher. Sometimes it feels like being left by something you were loyal to, just when you thought it was going long-term.

This is the identity trap. And it exists because of how traditional careers are structured.

The compression problem

A single role compresses our identity into what we do. The longer we stay, the tighter that compression gets, until we identify so completely with the job title that we are no longer sure who we are without it.

We have more than one identity, of course—daughter, friend, wife, mother, athlete, finance director, lawyer, and so on. The issue is when one identity takes a disproportionate amount of space. Which is exactly what happens when we spend most of our waking hours at work.

So what happens when that job ends? The fracture.

And it tends to be far tougher than anyone expects. “It’s just a job; there are others out there.” That is not what I have seen in my work with clients.

What portfolio careers actually are

A portfolio career is a deliberately designed mix of roles, projects, and income streams.

It is often explained as a way to diversify income, following the logic of building an investment portfolio and not putting all eggs in one basket. Interestingly, most people never have a problem doing exactly the opposite and placing all eggs in one basket when it comes to their careers!

That definition is true. But it misses the deeper reason portfolio careers work.

Portfolio careers solve an identity problem that traditional jobs create.

Traditional jobs create one self, the one doing the job. Portfolio careers let us integrate many different selves.

It is not reinvention. It is integration.

Early in my work with clients, I use what I call the potential selves exercise: write a list of your potential selves. The longer the better. Anything you have ever thought you could be or do.

What happens next is telling. They walk me through the list and, one by one, explain why each version of themselves is not really possible. The less obvious the option, the more defensive they often become.

The goal is not to integrate every potential self into a portfolio career. It is to open the aperture—because we can almost always integrate far more of ourselves than one job ever allows.

The integration advantage

Portfolio careers are not for everyone.

But for multilayered people who have never quite fit into one box, they are not just a career model. They are an identity solution.

If you never felt you truly belonged in just one thing—and found yourself pursuing side projects, parallel interests, or different paths simultaneously—you will recognise yourself here.

And for those of us with non-linear careers, there is something else: portfolio careers allow us to integrate our old selves in new ways. All those roles, positions, skills, and experiences that were hard to explain—and sometimes even felt like something to apologise for—can finally be brought under one umbrella and told as a coherent story.

This is the moment, often after years, when it all starts to make sense. When we become grateful—even proud—that we followed our gut when no one around us quite understood why.

The reality - and why it is worth it

Is this easier than a traditional job? It is not.

A portfolio career mostly means being self-employed—your own boss, with no company behind you, no logo next to your name, nowhere to hide.

You sell yourself, your services, your expertise. You put a price on your own worth. Again and again.

It requires growth, as a person and as a professional. The beliefs you have never questioned - about what you can do, about money, about selling, about success - will surface. And they will need to be confronted, because left unexamined, they will sabotage you.

You set your own goals, your own targets, your own definition of success. And when something goes well you will need to be your own cheerleader, because there is no boss to praise you, for better and for worse.

Building the income streams takes time, as building any business does. It requires strategy, trial and error, and knowing why you are doing it in the first place.

But here is what you gain: the ability to finally integrate all your selves. The multilayered person you have always been gets to show up—fully—in your work.

The safety question

Jobs are not as safe as they once were. Most of us know this. Restructuring, cost-cutting, AI-driven optimisation—the list goes on. And yet, many people still do not quite want to see it that way.

Meanwhile, people with non-linear careers have long been quietly judged as those who “cannot hold a job long enough,” or worse, as disloyal.

Which raises a question worth asking: who decided what the right way looks like? Who decided that a person is supposed to fit into one box for most of their waking hours—and to pursue everything else in the margins?

Who portfolio careers are for

Not every potential self on that list is worth pursuing. Not every idea is feasible or worth testing. But testing is an important part of the process.

Often, the selves that eventually enter the portfolio were not even on the original list. They emerge as the thinking evolves.

Our biggest talents are frequently invisible to us—they come so naturally that we take them for granted. Our less mainstream interests, the ones we rarely give serious consideration, often hold the key to some of the most valuable and generative parts of a portfolio career.

Portfolio careers are also not exclusive to white-collar professionals. Living in the Bavarian countryside, I have started noticing them everywhere—just without the label. The office worker who tends the family farm part-time and does handyman work on weekends. The combination of intellectual and hands-on work is often a choice rather than a necessity.

Substitute handyman with gardening, hairdressing, ceramics, or anything else—the principle is the same.

Portfolio careers show up wherever people refuse to compress themselves into a single identity.

The payoff

Portfolio careers are not a trend. They are not just a safety net. They are a way of working that honours the full complexity of who you are.

They let you integrate your old selves in new ways, tell your story differently, and build something that fits—not just your skills, but your identity.

For those of us with non-linear paths, this is often the moment the story finally reveals its "plot", the narrative thread that eluded us so long.

Why career redesign is not the same as career change

I recently wrote an article The messy middle of career transitions - the ambiguity, uncertainty, and confusion that often accompany them. That piece, however, only scratched the surface of a process that is frequently far more complex, surprisingly lengthy, and more unsettling than most people expect.

Today, I want to go one layer deeper: into why this phase exists, what makes it so difficult, and the patterns I keep seeing again and again.

No straight lines

When I look back at my own path and the four major transitions I’ve gone through, one thing stands out clearly: none of them happened in a straight line. Each was a process that took time, with detours, false starts, and quite a few moments that felt like failure.

Things rarely worked out the way I had envisioned them at the start. The “ideal” next step, the seemingly logical move, often didn’t materialise. And at times, it felt as if I had settled for something that was not the plan at all. Looking back, though, it all makes sense.

• Not getting my ideal role at my ideal bank took me to Brazil

• Banker turned entrepreneur - but not the company or product I had first imagined

• A future I pictured in Lisbon became a life in Munich (close enough, right?)

• An almost accidental venture capital entrepreneur-in-residence role turned into years in the industry

• The decision to "throw" everything I have done so far away and become “just a coach,” which then evolved into a portfolio career spanning advisory, coaching, and investing

• Trying to decide upfront on a narrow focus, only to have my clients lead me to the right niche

Planning meets reality

What does this show?

There is a limit to how much we can plan on paper. We can think, brainstorm, decide, and design - and that work matters too. But at some point, every plan meets reality. And for it to be viable and sustainable, it has to survive that test.

Circumstances change. Things do not work out, or turn out very differently. People leave. And perhaps most importantly, we change along the way. Sometimes, once we finally reach what we thought was the finish line, we realise we don’t want it as much as we once believed.

This is why career transitions are rarely simple.

What we really mean by transition

When I talk about career transitions here, I mean significant ones: moving into a different industry or sector, changing the nature of your work, shifting from corporate to entrepreneurship (and everything in between).

Usually, it starts quietly. We are doing something that looks right on the outside, but something feels off. Often for a long time. The real question is not whether we feel it, but when we allow ourselves to acknowledge it.

Between that recognition and actual change, there is often a long lag. Sometimes we do not yet know what else we could do. Sometimes we know exactly what we want, but not how to get there. Either way, the process is far more complex than it appears, because it is not just an external change.

Identity, not direction

The inner change is the hardest part.

At the deepest level, this is about identity. We build a strong sense of who we are around what we do, and letting go of that is deeply uncomfortable. The messy middle is, in essence, a transformation of identity: the old one no longer fits, and the new one (or ones) has not yet fully formed.

In my work with clients navigating significant career transitions and redesigns, I see this again and again. Beyond encouraging them to envision, try, and test different possible versions of themselves, something else inevitably surfaces in this identity (re-)work: deeper beliefs.

Beliefs about what work should look like. Beliefs about what success means to you. Deeply ingrained beliefs about money, security, and what seems possible.

These beliefs are often invisible at first, yet they quietly shape every decision, hesitation, and internal conflict during the transition.

The cost of letting go

This is where things get difficult.

We don’t like letting go. It feels like a loss, and we are naturally loss-averse. It’s not only about losing a title or role, but about what we have invested: years of effort, experience, and hard work.

When I tried to “ditch everything” a few years ago and become a coach - a calling that is still ambiguous, poorly protected, and not always respected - I tried to let go of all my previous experience and expertise. Everything in me resisted. I sabotaged myself constantly.

I did give it a serious attempt. I spent a year doing everything I could to take it off the ground (next to having a newborn), until it became clear that something was not working. Completely discarding who I had been and everything I had done before simply did not work for me.

Only when I revised the plan, when I found ways to integrate my experience with my newly acquired skills, did things start to fall into place.

That lesson could only be learned by trying. By testing ideas in reality. By talking to people. By offering my work and hearing feedback, including many no’s.

Because when something does not resonate with us, it will not resonate with others either. Our uncertainty shows. Our insecurities leak through. And no amount of preparation can fully hide that.

Between selves

In searching for a framework that explains why this phase is so difficult, I found one of the clearest descriptions in Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra. She writes that “the period in-between is not a literal space between one job and the next but a psychological zone in which we are truly between selves, with one foot firmly planted in the old world and the other making tentative steps toward an as-yet undefined new world.”

What I appreciate most is how this normalises the turmoil. The confusion. The back-and-forth. And the fact that this phase can take months, sometimes years.

We oscillate. Some days, we want to hold on to the old. We look for reasons to stay, to make it work, even when we know it no longer fits. The longer we’ve been in a role, the more tightly our identity is tied to it, especially if we once imagined it as a long-term or even lifelong path.

Our future self-image is often still anchored in the past.

A similar dynamic exists in relationships we’ve outgrown. We may know, deep down, that something is not right, yet we stay because it feels safer. After all, leaving means letting go of who we thought we would become.

Letting go of an old professional identity is no different. And yet, this letting go is precisely what allows reinvention to begin. It creates the space for new options to emerge, and eventually, for a new identity to take shape.

Career redesign is not about choosing the next thing faster. Rather, it is about allowing that deeper shift to happen.

Rewriting our own career story

Until relatively recently, I was not particularly proud of my own story. I also did not see anything special in it. And despite others actually admiring parts or all of it, on some level, I was somewhat ashamed of the clearly non-linear path I have taken over my 15-year career. Of illogical choices. Of not following the prescribed and the obvious.

I also did not see myself as particularly employable. Employers tend to look for more linear careers, for paths that follow logical steps and progression. And mine didn’t.

Now, I have chosen a different path, and I do not plan to be employed in a traditional full-time role anytime soon - but had I tried to apply for a role where the fit wasn’t obvious, and struggled to get one, it would have been easy to assume what the “problem” was. Me not ticking specific boxes. Not having the “right” experience. Not enough leadership positions or people I directly managed. Or something along those lines.

It would have been easy to assume that the outcome had everything to do with facts, credentials, skills, and circumstances - and nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with the way I see myself, how I think about my career, or the story I tell myself and others about it.

And this is what I want to explore today: how the way we see, value, and tell our own story influences career outcomes, especially during transitions.

The “Lucky Ones”

In my experience, we tend to focus on the outside parts of the equation. It is easier that way. There is usually not much we can do about those factors, and so they do not feel like our responsibility.

But when it comes to job searches and career transitions, the truth is that there are people who consistently land great opportunities. Often unannounced ones. Opportunities others never even hear about. People who seem to “have it easy.” You know, “the lucky ones.”

So what is it about them? Are they smarter? More capable? More qualified? Or are they really born under a lucky star?

One of my favourite quotes is Henry Ford’s: “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” I would like to build on that. Because it’s not only about believing we can do something. It’s about the belief we hold about ourselves, our abilities, and, crucially, about the career path we’ve taken so far.

Are we proud of it? Do we see it as coherent, valuable, and meaningful? Or do we see it as something we need to justify, explain away, or apologise for?

That belief defines what we consider achievement, what we label as success or failure, and how harsh or gentle our inner critic is allowed to be. This applies to most people, but it is particularly characteristic of high achievers, whose standards, for themselves and others, tend to be high.

When Belief Shrinks

How does this show up in practice?

We play small. We don’t recognise our strengths enough. We don’t celebrate our achievements long enough, if at all.

We start believing the story that was told to us, directly or indirectly, by others: their perception of us, our abilities, and what they consider achievement. Over time, we internalise it.

If we were lucky enough to start our careers surrounded by supportive people and encouraging managers, people who could see our potential and were willing to grow us, that belief can shape an entire career trajectory. At such an early and vulnerable stage, when we are fresh out of school and know little about the job market, that kind of belief is priceless.

But what if that wasn’t the case?

What if (for internal or external reasons) we repeatedly ran into managers who were not secure enough to let others thrive? Or who were driven by the wrong values? Or who themselves had been mistreated earlier in their careers and did not know differently?

We might collect a few scars along the way. We might retreat. We might give up on opportunities before we even pursue them.

And slowly, our belief in what we’re capable of doing shrinks - sometimes from a place where it wasn’t particularly strong to begin with. If we’re told often enough that something about us - the way we work, think, or are - is not good enough, we start believing it. Especially if it comes from superiors. Especially if it repeats.

Without much resistance - because we’re busy working, striving, building careers, chasing promotions - we internalise it all. It filters down to the identity level and becomes part of how we define ourselves professionally.

Most of the time, we’re not even aware that this story exists.

How It Shows Up in Transitions

This becomes very visible during job searches and career transitions.

We apply for a role we want, often having already identified all the boxes we do not tick. We prepare. We research the company. We rehearse answers. And yet, something still feels off.

The issue is rarely competence. More often, it’s that we are not at peace with our own story.

We may feel uncomfortable about a gap on our CV. Ashamed of a role we stayed in too long. Worried they might think we have changed jobs “too often.”

Even if we don’t speak about these things directly, and sometimes we actively avoid them, they still show up. In our energy. In our confidence. In hesitation. In how we frame our experience.

And that influences outcomes. Not only whether we get the offer, but which offer. Not only whether we win the client, but which client.

Sometimes we do get the role, the deal, the opportunity - but it’s not the right environment, team, or partner. Because the story we told did not fully reflect who we are.

Reframing the Story

So what is the way forward?

It’s not rewriting facts. It is reframing meaning.

It is acknowledging the achievements we have minimised. Giving weight to experiences we have dismissed. Integrating both the good and the difficult, because all of it shaped us into the professionals we are today.

From my own work, research, and experience with clients, I’ve learned that we are so often not even aware of the story we keep telling ourselves - yet it quietly runs our careers. Only once we acknowledge it, work through it, and consciously reshape it can we move forward with clarity and confidence.

Because our story doesn’t just explain where we’ve been. It defines what we believe is possible next. And once that shift happens, the path forward opens, with more ease, self-trust, and alignment than before.