Magic Wands and Future Proofing, Anyone?

No job title can fully hold what you know how to do, how you care, or what you bring to change, leadership, and repair. In uncertain seasons, it helps to come back to the strengths and capacities that belong to you, no matter what role you hold.

I’ve had folks come to me saying they want to future-proof their career.

I wish I had that kind of witchy skill. The closest I can get to that is some version of diversifying your career interests, partnered with relational and community building.

I wish I could have offered myself a version of future-proofing where I could have locked in the feelings of that early commitment and motivation. That youthful Gen X (xennial?) drive to pursue and hustle, saying yes to as many experiences as possible and also living life fully, if a bit broody. Equal parts love of learning, ADHD-shiny-squirrel brain, and knowing how to work the system. Instead, value misalignment became glaring in the face of the bullshitery of unchanging bureaucracy and toxic relational dynamics that pushed overing and criticism to new limits.

I wish I had that magic wand to grant you this. Across industries, levels of positions, time in positions, academia to corporate to nonprofit - no one is immune to the impact of career grief that lurks right now underneath the uncertainty about the future of work and planet. Or the career shocks that roll in and feel like a narrowing of your career future.

So here is a small practice from the Career Pivot Toolkit. Not a magic wand, I’m afraid, but a path forward to figure out your next steps. 

Give yourself ten quiet minutes and complete this sentence without mentioning your job title, current institution, or field:

The skills and strengths I have to offer others, beyond job titles, are...

Let your list include the things that do not always look impressive on paper but have carried you through work, relationships, leadership, teaching, caregiving, organizing, building, repairing, or starting over. Feel free to ask friends and family on this one. Their answers make for great data points, and you don’t have to agree with them.

Maybe you know how to make sense of complexity or community complex things clearly. Maybe you know how to hold people through change. Maybe you know how to build trust in a room, translate messy ideas into structure, notice what others miss, ask better questions, care without overfunctioning, or tell the truth with more precision than comfort.

This is not about turning your whole life into transferable skills language. It is about remembering that the title and career were never meant to be viewed as the full container for your capacity and gifts. In my last advanced yoga training weekend, the question posed to us was, “if you were stripped of all your titles, names, and roles, would you be able to recognize your essence?”

If you are in a season where your professional identity or job feels shaky, I hope you give yourself a little room to name what always belongs to you. Find the way back to the parts of yourself that have always been there.

And if you want more prompts like this, check out The Career Pivot Toolkit.