Neither Lucy nor Pierre planned their way into their transitions, nor did they kick things off with a good dose of self-analysis. Instead, events in their lives and work led them to envision a new range of possible selves, the various images—both good and bad—of whom we might become that we all carry.

A working identity, however, is not merely what we do and with whom; it lies also in the unfolding story of our lives. Throughout a career transition, the narratives we craft to describe why we are changing (and what remains the same) also help us try on possibilities. June’s attempts at explaining herself—why she wanted to make such a seemingly “crazy” career change, why a potential employer should take a chance on her, why she was attracted to a company she had never heard of a day before—were at first provisional, sometimes clumsy ways of redefining herself. But each time she wrote a cover letter, went through an interview, or updated friends and family on her progress, she better defined what was exciting to her, and in each public declaration of her intent to change careers, she committed herself further.

Experience reveals barriers to change that we can rarely identify at the outset of a career transition, no matter how much self-reflection we do. What we see as feasible and appealing is always constrained by the limitations of our experience.

Both Dan’s story and Susan’s illustrate that working identity involves revisiting the basic assumptions we use to evaluate possibilities.

One of the useful—and difficult—things about experiments is that they sometimes tell us that we were wrong, that we actually don’t love or can’t make a living from what we thought we wanted to do. That’s when it comes time to close doors. It’s harder than you might think.