Career transitions weren’t meant to be crossed alone, so stop trying to hold it all yourself

Next Wednesday, I’m hosting Between Rooms, a free monthly gathering for people in the thick of a career transition. If you read my email earlier this week, the story below will be familiar. I’m telling it again because it’s where this post begins, and it explains why I think spaces like this matter.

A few months ago, I introduced a coachee to Substack.

He was in the middle of a career transition, and he began reading articles by people who were writing from the inside of their own. He realised the thoughts and feelings he’d been carrying were actually very normal, and that he wasn’t crazy after all. He was just having a very human experience.

I work with people in transition, so I have the benefit of seeing many of them wrestle with the same doubts, questions and uncertainty. From where I sit, it’s clear that none of them are crazy, but I also know it rarely feels that way from the inside.

Often, you’re the only one in your circle questioning the path you’re on. There’s a strangeness to leaving a chapter behind and feeling like you’re in limbo, while the people around you carry on with their lives. They wake up, go to work, earn money, spend money. It’s not always magnificent, but for the most part, their lives seem stable and have some direction.

With no one to compare notes with, you might keep your doubts to yourself and wonder whether you’re wrong to want something different. The feeling of being alone in that experience is called existential isolation. It’s different from loneliness. You can be surrounded by supportive friends and family, yet still feel isolated.

What eases this isolation is meeting others who feel the same way you do. It explains a lot about why new parents seek out other parents. It’s partly practical, since child-free friends probably don’t want to spend a Saturday afternoon at the playground. But it’s also about being around people who can empathise with the particular texture of your life.

Who walks the corridor with you?

In my last post, I borrowed an image from the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, who pictured society as a house divided into rooms and corridors. A rite of passage was the movement from one room to another. You leave the old room, linger in the corridor, then enter a new room.

In many of the traditions van Gennep studied, elders led young people away from their home to mark the end of a chapter. A group of their peers made the crossing with them, guided by people who had been through it themselves. When it was over, the whole village welcomed them back.

These days we mostly navigate these crossings alone. Nobody arrives to tell us a chapter has closed. Nobody who has made the crossing walks it with us. Nobody gathers to welcome us into the new room.

The problem is, if you want company during a transition, you’re going to have to look for it.

Identity isn’t constructed in isolation

We arrive in the world completely dependent on others, unable to see clearly or speak, with nothing but a cry to call for care. We grow less fragile, but we never stop needing each other. Who we are is shaped, in part, by the people around us, which is both frightening and beautiful.

A snarky comment can make us question the person we're becoming, but someone who takes that person seriously, before we do, can give us the confidence to take ourselves seriously too.

A transition brings this into sharp focus. When you choose to leave a chapter behind, the people closest to you may not understand why. Instead of walking beside you, they might ask you to justify yourself, and that can be painful.

When Herminia Ibarra studied professionals reinventing their careers, she found the same pattern. Friends and family tended to favour the status quo, and the people who made it through built new relationships with peers and role models who could see where they were heading.

A transition needs three kinds of company:

1. Peers who are crossing at the same time and normalise your doubts and fears.

2. Guides who’ve already made the crossing and make the destination feel possible.

3. Witnesses who recognise you in the new room. Some of them will be your peers and guides and others will be people who only ever knew the new you.

When I look back at my own career transition, I realise my new professional identity didn’t take shape in private. It took shape among the people I surrounded myself with.

My peers were the people I trained with, many of whom were looking for something more meaningful beyond their corporate career. My guides were the teachers, coaches and mentors I worked with and the female business owners I’d connected with along the way, for whom self-employment was completely normal. They showed me what was possible before I believed it was possible for me. My witnesses included my partner who has been a constant throughout, my coachees and a small group of friends who’ve watched me grow into the work.

These days, I’m in a different kind of transition, building my practice and maturing as a coach. It’s less destabilising than changing careers, but it still requires its own kind of support. Other coaches and friends building their own businesses are my peers. My supervisor and IFS therapist are my guides (both of whom represent the type of practitioner I want to be), and my witnesses are roughly the same group of people.

None of this means leaving old friends behind. People adjust best when they keep the groups they already belong to and add new ones.

The work of becoming is mine to do, but I don’t have to do it alone.

Who sees who you’re becoming?

I once asked a coachee, “Who sees who you’re becoming, and where can you find more of these people?” She was unsure of the relevance of the question and I understand why. It was loaded with context I hadn’t given her. This post is my attempt to provide some of it.

Wherever you are in your own crossing, it’s worth asking:

• Who are your peers, crossing at the same time as you?

• Who are your guides, showing you what’s possible?

• Who will witness and celebrate with you in the new room?

Between Rooms is a free monthly online gathering for people in the middle of a career transition. It’s a place to meet others who are asking the same questions, compare notes and feel a little less alone on this path of becoming.

The first gathering is on Wednesday 28th October at 6:30pm (WET). If this post resonated with you, I’d love to see you there.