My suggestion is to explore thinking differently about the true nature of your career. I believe we all have only one career. It’s a career that spans and integrates work, relationships, and all parts of our lives. This career is living a mindful life.

Lori Gottlieb worked as a TV scriptwriter, entered and then left med school, gave birth to a child, and got a job as a journalist, but she was dissatisfied. She wanted to make a

difference in people’s lives, not just write about them. She thought of becoming a

psychiatrist. But that’s mostly prescribing medication, she worried. One day, her former med school dean told her, “You should go to graduate school and get a degree in clinical psychology.” If you do that, the dean continued, you’ll be able to get to know your patients better. The work will be deeper and leave lasting benefits...

At a certain point in life, we have to find the career that we will devote ourselves to, the way we will make a difference in the world—whether it’s a job or parenting or something else entirely. While confronting this task, Erikson argues, a person must achieve career consolidation or experience drift...

Sébastien Bras is the owner of Le Suquet, a restaurant in Laguiole, France, that earned

three Michelin stars, the world’s highest culinary distinction, for eighteen consecutive years. Then one year he asked the Michelin folks to stopcoming to his restaurant and never come back again. He’d realized that his desire to please the Michelin system had imposed

tremendous pressure, crushing his creativity.

At the heart of this book are the stories of dozens of people who changed careers. It analyzes their experiences through the lens of established psychological and behavioral theories. Based on the stories and extensive re- search in the social sciences, the book affirms the uncertainties of the career transition process and identifies its underlying principles. But it does not offer a ten-point plan for better transitioning, because that is not the nature of the process. Instead, it lays out a straightforward framework that describes what is really involved and some tried and proven unconventional strategies that will make the difference between staying stuck and moving on.

The book hinges on two disarmingly simple ideas. First, our working identity is not a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered at the very core of our inner being. Rather, it is made up of many possibilities: some tangible and concrete, defined by the things we do, the company we keep, and the stories we tell about our work and lives; others existing only in the realm of future potential and private dreams. Second, changing careers means changing our selves, reworking our identities. Since we are many selves, changing is not about swapping one identity for another but rather a transition process in which we reconfigure the full set of possibilities. These simple ideas alter everything we take for granted about finding a new career. They ask us to devote the greater part of our time and energy to action rather than reflection, to doing instead of planning. Hence, the unconventional strategies.

Like many who switch careers, Susan’s transition brought her back to her starting point: working full-time for a top consultancy. Yet her professional life—the way she does her work, the way she relates to coworkers and employers, and the way she balances her personal and professional life—has changed because of what she learned along the way. Making a career move is a chance to make fundamental changes in one’s life. Many people, like Susan, have long-held dreams about their careers but for one reason or another—including financial, family, or social pressures—have put them off. In some cases, like Susan’s, the issue is less the substance of the work than the lack of flexibility of the institutional structure in which the work gets done. In other cases, a person may have dreamed of becoming a writer, musician, or entrepreneur, but the practicalities of life were constraining.

As we progress through the stages of our lives there are transitions that will occur in our work as well, whether it be when we receive promotions, get laid off, move into new jobs, or have kids. With each major transition it never hurts to step back and reassess our new lives from a bird’s-eye view: How are my relationships in the work world and beyond being affected by the current change? Are there choices I can make to maintain connections with people who are important to me? Are there new opportunities for connection here that I’m missing?”