This episode explores why ambitious women struggle to leave professions that are quietly breaking them. Beyond money or fear, deeper internal drivers are often being satisfied just enough to keep you stuck. If you feel trapped in a career that doesn’t reflect the real you, this conversation will help you understand what’s really holding you there and how self-knowledge becomes the foundation for meaningful change.
Hello, and welcome. This episode unravels the mystery of why you get stuck in a profession or role you don’t even want to be in, and how you can unearth the gold that helps you move forward.
You’re back at your desk every day, deep in the cycle of overworking and exhaustion.
You’ve started to resent yourself because you keep turning up, giving it your all and not feeling any real joy in return.
These are hard days. And yet, you still get through the work, churn it out, lead the teams, hit the milestones and surpass expectations.
But why?
When You Stop Listening to Yourself
Well, the answer is interesting…and it’s not really about the money.
Yes, money can play a part. But there is something much deeper going on that explains why you’ve allowed yourself to stay in a profession or role that doesn’t truly fit you.
For much of your working life, you are on autopilot.
At some point that switch clicks on. And by that I mean, you stop engaging with yourself.
It becomes all about the job, the work, colleagues, perks, bonuses, performance and the next promotion. Your focus shifts outward.
I know this reality too well. It’s consuming and it’s distracting.
So why can’t you leave?
You might have tried. Made a move left or right. Taken a leap of faith, and still found yourself in a similar context, the cycle repeating.
You’ve known for some time that what you’re doing is not the vision you once had for your career, let alone be a lifelong ambition.
It’s the path you took, for whatever reasons, and now you feel trapped in it.
What’s Really Driving You
What I’ve learned, through my own journey and through my coaching practice, is that there is much more at play when it comes to what really makes us tick.
Before I give you a thinking exercise, I want to touch on something important: you have internal motives that drive your behaviour.
These are deep seated drivers that want to be satisfied. And when they are, they can be compelling enough to keep you exactly where you are.
For instance, throughout my career, I had a lot of autonomy in my roles.
I’ve since realised how deeply satisfying that is for me. And I can see it was one of the key reasons I stayed in roles, even when I knew I wasn’t in the right place.
Taking Back Your Power
So knowing is one thing, but how does it help?
Well, it gives you power.
When you tune into yourself and begin to see what’s really driving you, you take back the power that driver has over you.
You can choose to use it to your advantage, to align yourself to work that allows your deepest drivers to thrive in a context you genuinely love.
You get to be the driver, not the passenger, in your career.
So back to you. The profession or role you can’t seem to break away from is satisfying something in, just enough to keep you there.
You need to think deeply about the work you do, and how you do it.
What is within it that you find deeply satisfying?
This is the journey of discovery that you need to go on. There is no quick fix when you’re entrenched in a career path that doesn’t work for you.
You want your next move to be the one that breaks the cycle.
Remember, you have the choice to know yourself.
Without that knowledge, the feeling of being lost and staying stuck will continue.
So find some time. Reflect on your career history and your current role, and begin to identify what is satisfying you enough to keep you there.
This is an aspect of self-understanding that I find so interesting. You’ll hear more on this in the coming episodes. So stay with me.