Before the Next Thing — Issue #12
She got the promotion years ahead of schedule. Then a question surfaced that she couldn't shake: Do I want to still be chasing this at 60?
ONE STORY, ONE SIGNAL, ONE TOOL, ONE QUESTION - EVERY WEEK
Issue #12 - Before the Next Thing
I have made five career transitions of my own. (You can read more about them here.) Each time, the hardest part was noticing, early enough for it to matter, that something in me had started to want a different life. We are taught to want the next thing, and we get so good at chasing it that we rarely stop to ask whether wanting it is still our truth.
This week, I want to talk about the pause that shows up right after a win, when you expected to feel triumphant and instead feel something you can’t quite name. It is one of the most important signals in a career, and it usually arrives well before we think it should.
A Coaching Story
💬 A de-identified composite scenario based on my coaching experiences. This story does not reflect the experience of any particular individual or organization in any way.
A client I worked with recently had just been named chief medical officer of her health system. She was in her mid-40s, which put her a good 10 years ahead of the usual timeline for that role. By every external measure, she had won. The board had chosen her, and she was genuinely excited about the work.
She was also anxious in a way she could not explain.
We spent the first part of our session exploring that anxiety. This wasn’t impostor syndrome. She had earned the role, she knew it, and she loved the work. But something about the moment felt off, and the harder she tried to name it, the more she couldn’t find the words.
So I asked her what she already knew about what felt off, even if she couldn’t name the feeling just yet.
She sat with that for a moment. Then she said, “I don’t think I want to still be chasing the next thing when I’m 60.”
There it was. She had spent her whole career excelling at climbing the next rung on the ladder. That ambition was the engine that got her where she had just landed, years earlier than most. She had leaned in, exactly as she was taught. And now, absorbing the reality of the win, she was wondering for the first time whether this was what she had really wanted, or a script she had internalized so young she had never thought to question whether it was for her.
The dissonance was about the pattern, not the job itself. She could see, clearly, a version of herself at 60 still climbing the ladder out of pure momentum, still saying yes to the next thing because saying yes was the only mode she knew. And she did not want to be that person.
The good news is that she noticed at 45, not at 60. That gap was everything.
The Changing World of Work
📊 A key data point and my insights about what it means to the changing world of work around us.
A single number from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reframes this whole issue. The average American born in the later Baby Boom held about 12.9 jobs between the ages of 18 and 58, and younger workers are on pace to match or beat that. Movement is the structure of a modern career, not an exception.
Which means the real question was never whether my client would keep changing roles. She would, and so will the rest of us. The question is whether each move is chosen intentionally, or simply accepted as the next available (and expected) rung, reached for out of habit. Motion is easy to mistake for direction. You usually can’t tell them apart from the outside, and often, you can’t tell from the inside either. The difference tends to surface later, right around the time you notice how much of your finite, high-function window has already gone into getting somewhere you never actually decided to go.
This Week’s Resource
⚙️ A framework, tool, tip, AI prompt or skill that you can save and put to use immediately.
I gave my client a simple practice, one I offer a lot of ambitious people who feel that same tug. I call it the Direction Check. Before you say yes to the next big move, whatever form it takes, sit with three questions.
First: Am I moving toward something I actually want, or just away from the discomfort of standing still? Ambition and avoidance can wear the same suit.
Second: Whose ambition is this? Did I choose this particular rung to climb, or did I absorb, somewhere early, the belief that I am supposed to want it? Naming the source doesn’t make the ambition wrong. It just makes it yours to decide about.
Third: If I picture myself climbing this same way at 60, what comes up, pride or fatigue? Your body often knows before your resume does.
None of these questions tell you to stop climbing. Plenty of people run the Direction Check and give a full-throated yes to the next thing, then climb with more freedom afterward because they chose it on purpose. The goal of the Direction Check is simply to make sure your ambition is aimed at a life you actually want to be living, while you still have decades of good years to live it.
A Powerful Coaching Question
🤔 This week’s high-value coaching question for you to consider in whatever way you like to reflect.
When you picture yourself 15 years from now, still reaching for the next rung the same way you reach for it today, does that feel like a life you are choosing, or one you are defaulting into?
Inspiration for the Week
Find out who you are and do it on purpose.
Dolly Parton
The chasing only costs you when it comes from someone else’s idea of a life. So find out whose ambition you are actually running on. If it turns out to be yours, chase it with everything you have. If it isn’t, you’ve just uncovered the most important thing you’ll learn all year, and you found it with time to spare.
Before You Go
If that question landed somewhere tender, reply and tell me: when you picture 60, are you still climbing? I read every response, and I love hearing from readers.
P.S. That finite, high-function window has a name. I call it the Golden Window: the stretch of years when you’re healthy and able enough to do the things that matter most to you. You’re likely decades from any hard decision about it, and that’s the point. The best time to learn your Golden Window exists is long before the decisions about it get hard. When you’re ready to look, it will be here.
Until next week,
