Lost Your Sense of Purpose at Work?

If you’ve built a decent career without ever quite choosing it, if you love parts of what you do but couldn’t tell me why you’re actually doing it, and if the idea of change terrifies you almost as much as the idea of staying, you’re not stuck because something’s wrong with you. You’re stuck because you’re standing between two fears, and nobody’s helped you tell them apart yet. That’s usually where I come in.

“I Feel Like I Just Ended Up Where I Am”

I hear a version of this most weeks. Not from people who are doing badly, usually the opposite. People with good jobs, decent money, a title that sounds impressive at a dinner party. And still, somewhere underneath it, a quiet sense of: how did I get here, exactly?

Nobody plans a career the way it turns out on paper. You take the job that was available, then the next one that made sense, then the promotion you didn’t say no to. Ten or fifteen years later you look up and you’re good at something you never actually decided to be good at. You like bits of it. You’re not miserable. But if someone asked you what you’re actually building toward, you wouldn’t have a clean answer.

That gap, between competent and purposeful, is one of the most common things that brings people to me.

Why Purpose Gets Harder to Ignore With Kids in the Picture

A lot of my clients come to this question at exactly the point their own kids arrive, or start noticing things.

There’s something about small children watching you that changes the maths. It’s not abstract anymore. If you want them to grow up believing work can be meaningful, that stability doesn’t have to mean staying somewhere just because leaving is scary, that looking after yourself is part of looking after them, not selfish, then at some point you have to actually live that, not just want it for them.

I’m not going to pretend I have this fully solved either. I’ve retrained more times than I can count on one hand, and I’ve got my own kids watching me do it. What I can offer is a lot of practice helping people work out what they actually want to model, and then building a realistic path toward it, one that doesn’t require blowing up everything at once.

The Fear of Staying vs. the Fear of Leaving

Here’s the part that trips people up the most: it’s rarely a straightforward “should I leave or should I stay” question. If it were, you’d have answered it already.

What’s actually happening, most of the time, is two fears sitting on top of each other. The fear of pivoting, of losing the identity, the income, the sense of competence you’ve built, and the fear of staying exactly where you are for another five, ten, twenty years, watching the gap between “fine” and “meaningful” quietly widen.

Both of those fears are real. Neither of them is stupid. And you can’t think your way past them by making another pros-and-cons list at 11pm. What actually moves people is slowing down enough to look at each fear honestly, on its own, rather than letting them cancel each other out into paralysis.

Why I’m Probably Not the “Climb the Ladder” Kind of Coach

I want to be straight with you about something: if what you’re after is networking tactics and a faster route up a corporate structure, I’m probably not your person, and there are good coaches out there who’ll do that well.

What I’m built for is the more holistic version of this question. Not just “what’s the next job title” but “what actually matters to you, and does the shape of your working life reflect that, or is it just the shape it happened to take.” That includes your health, your relationships, the way you want to show up for the people who depend on you, not just your CV.

I’m also not a particularly corporate presence myself, by design. I meditate. I’ve travelled a lot, and I try to stay active rather than just talk about it. I run this business as a certified B Corp because how I work matters to me as much as what I achieve. If a slick, polished, “optimise your personal brand” kind of coaching feels off to you, that’s probably a sign, not a flaw in you.

Why My Own Bounced-Around Career Might Actually Be Useful to You

If part of what’s pulling at you is the idea of eventually running something of your own, I understand that pull from the inside, not just as theory.

I’ve been a lifeguard, a cocktail barman, a programmer in Silicon Valley, a business analyst, a project manager, a furniture designer who built pieces for the Tower of London, a startup founder, a CTO, and a Head of People, before I became a coach. I didn’t plan that path either. I retrained multiple times, sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes because I had to.

What that’s given me isn’t a textbook answer to “how do I change careers.” It’s a genuine, lived sense of what it actually feels like to leave something you’re competent at for something you’re not yet sure you’ll be good at, and how to do that without losing yourself in the process. If your own version of “what’s next” involves the idea of building something that’s actually yours, that experience is exactly where I can be most useful.

Does This Sound Like You?

If any of this landed, drifting rather than choosing, wanting to model something better for people who are watching you, feeling caught between two fears instead of facing a clear decision, and wanting a coach who’ll meet you as a whole person rather than a career strategy to be optimised, then we’re probably a good fit.

I offer a free taster session, precisely so you don’t have to commit to anything before you know if this feels right. No pressure, just a conversation.