I think one of the weirdest things we do in our careers is hold ourselves accountable to decisions made by a version of ourselves that no longer exists.
Five years ago, you may have wanted the big title. You may have wanted to work for a specific company. You may have been obsessed with getting into a particular industry, making a certain amount of money, managing a huge team, traveling the world, or climbing as high as you possibly could. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. You wanted what you wanted based on what you knew at the time.
Then you lived a little more.
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You got the promotion. You worked for the big company. You managed the team. You sat in the executive meetings. You traveled every week. You made more money. You experienced some of the things you once thought would make you happy, and somewhere along the way you realized that maybe they weren’t exactly what you thought they were going to be.
That doesn’t mean you failed. It means you collected more information.
We put way too much pressure on ourselves to remain consistent with plans we made years ago. We worry that changing industries makes us look scattered. We worry that stepping away from management looks like we couldn’t handle it. We worry that taking a smaller company, different title, remote job, entrepreneurial path, or completely different direction means we’re moving backward. Meanwhile, the only person keeping score on most of this stuff is us.
Your career is allowed to evolve as you evolve. The 28-year-old version of you might have wanted something completely different than the 38-year-old version of you. Your priorities change. Your family changes. Your financial situation changes. Your definition of success changes. Hopefully, you know yourself a hell of a lot better today than you did ten years ago.
There’s a difference between quitting when something gets difficult and deciding that something simply isn’t what you want anymore. Sometimes staying on the same path just because you’ve already spent years walking it is the worst decision you can make. You don’t get bonus points at the end of your career because you stubbornly followed a plan that stopped making sense halfway through.
You don't get bonus points at the end of your career because you stubbornly followed a plan that stopped making sense halfway through.
You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to want something different. You’re allowed to decide the dream you were chasing isn’t your dream anymore. That isn’t weakness, failure, or a lack of commitment. Sometimes changing direction is the clearest sign that you finally learned enough about your career, your life, and yourself to know where you actually want to go next.