5 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get Out of a Career Rut
It’s a strangely smart time to figure out your next pivot
I know what it’s like to be in career quicksand. I’ve pursued opportunities because they seemed shiny and new — or because they’d save me from having to subsist on a diet of ramen and oatmeal. But there came a point when I finally asked myself: Was I doing what I was meant to do? I’d spent many years in digital marketing, but I wasn’t sure I could see myself at 70, sporting my finest muumuu, cranking out yet another social media strategy for yet another company I wasn’t passionate about.
When it comes to reinventing our careers, rarely do we look at the whole of our lives to draw lines and make connections. We might look at the last three jobs on our résumé and figure, “Well, I guess this company/role/project is the next linear step.” Or we’ll make moves out of desperation — maybe we’re hoping to escape a nightmare boss, burnout, or unemployment. But by stepping back to consider all the decisions we’ve made and paths we’ve taken, we can see how we ended up where we are today — and where we should go next.
I am not a woman of faith, but the Franciscan friar Richard Rohr’s words have resonated for me in my own periods of career uncertainty: “[W]hat I always tell the folks is there’s no nonstop flight from…
