How to Find the Answers You Need

Published on August 1, 2024 in

On a Thursday afternoon in late 2014, I left work early to have my first call with a new coach.

Once we got settled, the conversation turned towards my purpose for hiring her: I wanted a new career. She asked me to tell her more and listened to my thoughts and complaints for a while. Eventually she asked what other options I saw for myself.

I felt dread in my body.

I told her how I had interviewed at a few purpose-driven companies, all of which had left me feeling nothing. As a result, the only other options I saw were staying at my job, getting another one like it (which I had done before) or leaving and going to work at Lululemon or Starbucks while I figured it out.

While the latter felt the most freeing, it also felt really tricky given that my identity was so wrapped up in my high salary. I also couldn’t wrap my head around how that would even begin pay for my lifestyle. Rent alone for my one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan was $3,000 a month.

I was stuck.

My coach offered me a few suggestions, and one by one I shot them down. I was starting to feel defeated as despair and frustration slowly replaced any hope I’d had at the beginning of our conversation. We weren’t getting anywhere, and I sensed that my coach was also growing impatient with me.

Finally, I said, “look, people keep asking me what I want, my bosses included, and I have no idea. What I need is TIME to figure it out, but I don’t have any. I work constantly, entertain clients after work, I can barely make it to physical therapy for my fractured pelvis, let alone look for new jobs, go on interviews or explore a new career path. My schedule is completely out of control.”

She listened, paused and then said this:

“Well, if you need more time, you can either quit your job or find a way to work less.”

I felt anger rising inside me. After all, this woman had worked in ad tech previously. She knew what it was like, and here she was telling me to work less? I worked at a startup, of all places. There was no way to do that, to which she said:

“Then, Karen, I can’t help you.”

I was silent.

Then she told me that if I ever decided to work less, to call her and she politely ended our call.

What?

I was in shock, and when that wore off I was pissed. I roamed around my 600 square-foot apartment replaying our conversation, and I continued to be pissed all weekend. I ranted about the conversation to anyone who would listen. “I can’t just work less,” I said, “it’s not that easy.” Her words ran through my mind non-stop.

Then on Sunday afternoon, still reeling, the strangest thing happened; new thought popped into my head.

“What if I could work less?” I thought.

I paused to consider this, and right then something inside me shifted. Twenty four hours later I called my coach and asked for her help. I told her I wanted to find a way to work less, and we got started the same week.

Three months after that I was sitting in a coffee shop with two executives from my company. We were discussing the details of a new role I had created with the encouragement of my coach that involved a promotion and a raise. By this time in the process I knew I had general buy-in, but before we all agreed to move forward I had one final ask. I took a deep breath, looked into their eyes and said I would do the job if I could do it part-time, and if that wasn’t possible I understood and would leave instead.

And with every fiber of my being, I knew I was telling the truth.

They were surprised, and I held my breath when they said they would consider my request. A few days later they came back and said yes. Six months after that I was willing to admit what I knew all along: the role had been a temporary solution for a bigger problem. I left advertising for good on July 17, 2015.

For a long time when I thought about this story I saw a few key insights, those being:

If you want something different, you need to try something different. (In my case, that was coaching.)
Sometimes you need a new perspective, and someone who doesn’t buy into your limitations, to help you change your thinking.
Sometimes you just need a bridge to buy time until you’re ready to do the thing that scares you.

These are all valuable on their own, but what I see the MOST now after nine years of coaching people on career change is that sometimes what you think you want is not what you really want, or at least it’s not the next right step.

Much like the clients I work with, I truly wanted a career change, but what I wanted the most was TIME and SPACE. I wanted time for me. I wanted to know how to work less, and how to stop putting work before everything else. Deep down, I just wanted a break from a way of being that was no longer serving me. I was burnt out, and that’s why I was stuck. It’s not because I wasn’t resourceful or creative. It’s because I was tired, uninspired and had forgotten who I was.

This is also why the tactical career suggestions from my coach weren’t landing during our conversation. I didn’t need her advice. I needed space to hear my own thoughts, because my soul knew the way. I had all the answers I needed.

To wrap this up, I recently learned that, physiologically-speaking, you can’t learn a new way to do something when you’re in fatigue. Your body doesn’t have enough energy to create a new neural pathway, so it will default to what it already knows how to do instead, even if that’s not ideal or “bad” for you. The same idea applies to a career change. It’s highly unlikely that you’re going to figure out a new, inspired path for yourself when you’re burnt out.

As it turns out, having more time was exactly what I needed. Six months after leaving my job—after taking the summer off to reset, learning how to meditate and exploring all manner of things—I started working as a coach. Nine years later, here we are. 

Time held all the answers.

So I want to ask you this:

What if you have all the answers you need?
What if you just need some help hearing them?
What if you can finally figure out what else you’re meant to do?

This is the work I do with my clients.

If you’re ready to make a change, reach out to me. You can do this, my friend, and it’s so much easier with support.

Subscribe to blog updates

"*" indicates required fields