Since 2018, I’ve coached more than 400 people through over 1,600 hours of one-to-one conversations. Every story is unique, and clear patterns still emerge in what brings people. The most common thread: a deep readiness for change, paired with a sense of being completely stuck.
People rarely arrive with a plan. They arrive with a feeling: something isn’t right, and they have no clear idea of what to do about it. That dissonance, the uncomfortable sense that things aren’t quite clicking any more, is more than frustration. It’s information. Something has shifted, in them or around them, and the discomfort is how they’re finding out.
Tuning into that discomfort, rather than pushing it aside, is where the useful work starts. Pushing it aside has a cost, and people describe that cost to me in similar ways: sleep that suffers, a low mood that stops lifting, bitterness creeping into work, energy and motivation draining, resilience slowly wearing thin. None of that is a diagnosis; it’s simply what living with ignored dissonance tends to feel like, told to me over and over.
The first task usually isn’t choosing. It’s naming.
The early work is rarely about deciding what to do. It’s about working out what this actually is. Is it the job, or the direction? Is it work at all, or something wider that work is catching the blame for? Is this a visible transition (a role that’s ended, a decision arriving) or the quieter internal kind, where nothing looks wrong from the outside but something no longer fits?
You can’t answer “what should I do?” until you can articulate what’s shifting. Once it has a name, the question usually gets smaller and the options get clearer. Creating a vocabulary of what’s being felt, and the articulation of the experience, is most of what the first conversations are for.
And then: small steps, not one bold leap
Many people hope for a quick fix. “Tell me what to do to make this feel better, and I’ll do it.” I understand the hunger for that. But meaningful change rarely works that way. It’s almost never one bold leap; it’s a series of small steps that gradually bring clarity, confidence and a renewed sense of what matters.
The first step might be searching online, or telling a friend how you’re feeling. Maybe that leads you somewhere like this website. That’s a step. Booking a conversation is another. Saying the whole thing out loud to someone, and hearing yourself say it, is another again. That’s how real, lasting change tends to begin: not with a decision, with an exploratory step.
My own career change took over three years, so I understand the urgency for things to feel better now, and also why the change that lasts is the change that takes its time.
If some of this feels familiar, don’t ignore the feeling. It doesn’t commit you to anything; it’s just information worth taking seriously. A first conversation is free, takes about 30 minutes, and you don’t need to be able to articulate what’s off before you come. Naming it together is rather the point.
