The Career Pivot That (Might) Change Everything
How curiosity is paving the way through transformation and mess
I wrote last time about my messy middle and how I use writing to make sense of my world. Right now I'm in the midst of a career mess. I won't call it a crisis or drama or anything that compels me to resist or repel it. If life and work to 50 have taught me anything it's that curiosity serves us well when we're uncomfortable. Instead of fighting, lamenting, or seeking to resolve it, I find myself asking curious questions.
What am I experiencing?
Why is it happening?
What are these feelings?
What are they telling me?
I hold these questions lightly. They don't need answers. They are prompts for exploration. For reflection. Over days, weeks, and months. Through conversation and on my own.
It started with the pandemic. Mid-2020 I realised on the back of some shouty stress-induced rage behaviour (not my norm) that I couldn't navigate a consulting career, podcast, pandemic and remote schooling of our two boys all at once. It was too much. Something had to change.
A job ad crossed my path. A five-month part-time contract in our town delivering a community leadership program. I knew the program as I had been a presenter in years past. I figured the role matched my experience and offered a regular gig with a regular income while we waited for the world to right itself.
I threw my hat in the ring, talked my way through two interviews, and got the job. Huzzah!
This month I celebrate my third anniversary in my five-month contract role. The role has grown and so have I. It's not where I imagined I would be. After 19 years of being my own boss I figured I was unemployable. But I have found joy in new challenges, great colleagues and community contribution.
And that community contribution is the nub of the current messiness.
When I started in this role a colleague rejoiced in the opportunity I had to ‘make a difference at scale’. She crystallised for me the need I had to step away from the one-to-one model of change that is the lot of most psychologists. We help one person at a time and hope for a positive ripple effect from that person to their immediate circle - family, friends, and maybe colleagues. It’s valuable work, but slow.
I started my podcast because I saw it as a way to share the knowledge of psychologists and other social scientists with a wider audience. To make a difference at scale.
In my current role, my fabulous team and I help to build the leadership capability and capacity in our community to help others to achieve social change. The program we run is based on community and collective leadership principles. Our participants operate as a leadership collective, coming up with ideas, designing and developing and delivering experiences for their fellow participants to learn about community issues and initiatives.
They pull together practical community-based projects with partner organisations to make inroads into complex problems such as homelessness, increasing kids’ participation in physical activity post-pandemic, food security and corporate social responsibility.
It’s a joy to watch the transformation that takes place. A transformation that occurs from an outward focus. Transformation through doing things for and with others.
Their development is a systems intervention. As we watch our participants grow, transform and graduate, they step up as community leaders. They connect with one another, and others, ready to create change. They are actors in a system - our regional community - who come together to share information, develop solutions, and take action on the issues that are important to them. They go on to become leaders in non-profits, community organisations, and corporates, bringing a focus on community and positive change to everything they do.
In many ways this mirrors my experience. I’m finding purpose as one connection in a network of people seeking to help our community to thrive. My purpose is fledgling. I don’t know in which direction it will grow but I am compelled to follow.
Eleanor Mills speaks in her Substack article France is burning - or is it? Truly a tale of a country of two halves of the tension between enjoying good fortune and the responsibility to make things better in a world in which there is much going wrong.
I feel this tension acutely and it’s maybe only now, three years into my role that I can see that ‘making things better’ can happen through supporting others to do the work. That by sharing my expertise as a psychologist I help to grow the leaders who will take action. That this is the part that I play in the system.
My challenge now is this: Our leadership program has lost its funding. I know we will ensure its survival, one way or another, but the disruption has me asking, ‘What’s next?’ I didn’t expect to be here but now that I am I know I can’t go back. Too many possibilities have opened up, yet they’re hazy, indistinct. There is purpose in this work for me but I’m not sure where it’s leading. A continuation of the status quo, as fulfilling as it is, doesn’t feel right. Somehow, somewhere, there is more but I don’t know what that looks like.
Transformation, metamorphosis; it’s disquieting. There is a shift in identity that takes place. I’m not who I was but I don’t know yet whom I’m becoming.
And so I sit with the discomfort. I try to be patient. I trust the process of transformation, knowing that the way forward will come into focus with time. I stay curious. I experiment. I try new things. I explore new knowledge. I read and I ask questions, knowing that curiosity is key to finding and creating meaning in even the messiest moments.
I remind myself that my word for this year is unfurl. That I’m allowing possibilities and decisions to unfurl for me. It’s not always easy but it keeps agitation at bay. A form of acceptance - that dance between trusting what is, while working towards what could be. On I travel. Thanks for joining me.
The Fun Stuff:
I’m listening to: Stick Season by Noah Kahan. Restlessness, belonging and perfect economy of words.
I’m watching: The Americans. Intrigued to see where they take this story over six seasons.
I’m wondering: Everything right now. It’s exhausting ;-)
