Why a Career Change Doesn’t Have to Be a Crisis
When you’re standing between the point where your current job no longer fits and the point of clarity about your next steps, it’s easy to feel like “something has to give”. This uncertainty can spiral into a career crisis as feelings of doubt and confusion pop up, but it doesn’t have to turn into a crisis.
What if we framed this shift differently? What if a career change becomes less about crisis and more about clarity, alignment, and purposeful movement? That’s the story we’ll explore here.
Let’s start by reframing the situation. Career change often feels urgent. You might think:
“I should have had this figured out by now.” Or “If I don’t act fast as possible, I’ll be stuck forever.” Before panic sets in, try this: catalog the signals and feelings as information in a data set. Your discomfort is a signal. It’s showing you that something in your work no longer matches your values, skills, interests, personality, or larger goals. It may be a misalignment with what energizes you or how you want to show up. This is our starting place where we can decouple the need for change from crisis and start making informed career decisions.
Next, let’s recognize the possibilities. When change arises, it can feel like you’ve lost something resulting in feelings of losing stability, identify, and routine, but there is another side of the coin. This reframe allows us to begin asking critical questions that we may not have been able to ask before like:
What do I really want out of my work life?
Which values do I want to guide how I show up every day?
What skills do I already have that could be redirected or reframed?
Rather than a crisis, this is an opportunity to consider if this fork in the road is leading you toward the kind of career that will work for you at this stage in your life.
Let’s use your values as an anchor. A core strength of the Values-Based Careers method is focusing on your values. When you’re in transition, anchor yourself by asking yourself which values you can’t compromise at work and which environments bring out the best version of yourself. If you look back in 5 years, what would I hope to say about how I spent my time? This shifts things from “What’s going wrong?” to “What could be going right?”.
A career change is a process. It can happen quickly in one move or in several steps that build. It’s not always about landing in the “perfect job”. It’s about exploring, refining, adjusting. Some strategies you might try to explore your next steps include:
Take stock of your current role
Get clear on your values
Informational interviews in fields you’re curious about
Explore before you commit
Learning new skills that intersect your interests and values
Create your career roadmap
Changing careers doesn’t always mean making a dramatic leap overnight. Sometimes it means subtle shifts. Sometimes it means saying “yes” to stretching outside your comfort zone a little. Give yourself permission to move at a pace that respects your life, your commitments, your values. Avoid comparing your journey to someone else’s highlight reel and when doubt creeps in, remind yourself: you are choosing a new path forward rooted in your values that will sustain you for a lifetime.
If you’re in that unfamiliar place where the questions outnumber answers and your career no longer feels meaningful, take a breath, and reframe from crisis to transition. Transitions can open doors to work that reflects who you are, what you care about, and how you want to show up in the world. At Values-Based Careers we believe: you can feel clear on your purpose, confident in your direction, and ready to make your mark. Your next chapter can begin right now grounded in the values that matter most to you.
