What Most Career Advice Misses
The mainstream conversations about career advice sure does leave much to be desired. One of the biggest misses: The reality that the practical and personal need to be intertwined.
So today I’m sharing a new free resource that offers a more integrated approach to career advice! From navigating my own career in, through, and out of academia, I learned that change is already challenging and it is possible to feel ease and support. It’s taken me decades to learn this, but we don’t have to always make things so damn hard on ourselves.
As I shared the other week, I often hear from prospective clients:
“I know I need help, but I really should just focus on the practical stuff like my CV, job search, interview prep. I’ll work on myself later.”
The default career advice is to jump into action: update your résumé, refresh your LinkedIn, apply everywhere. But in my experience, both personally and with clients, this skips the essential, foundational work of:
Healing
Reflection
Connection
Visioning
Prioritizing these four things allows you to get clear on which opportunities to follow and which ones are distracting. Career pivots aren’t just logistical. They’re emotional, embodied, and often deeply existential. And a pivot is as much about shifting your mindsets and behaviors as can be about changing jobs or industries.
The Tools You Actually Need to Unravel and Rebuild
In my work with coaching clients and through my own pivot out of higher education, I’ve seen that the most powerful career transformations begin not with job applications, but with an honest inventory of:
What you already have: your strengths, values, and transferable skills
What you need to grieve: the loss of identity, community, or certainty
What needs repair: boundaries, purpose, support systems, confidence
What’s missing: mentorship, community, clarity, and creative space to imagine something new
That’s why I created The Career Pivot Toolkit, a free guided workbook to help you navigate the space between what was and what’s next.
The Power of Slowing Down
If you’re tempted to jump straight into job searching, you’re not alone. That urgency is a normal response to uncertainty and instability. And often, if you’re intentional during the job search, you can learn a lot about your needs and wants for what’s next.
But clarity doesn’t come from panicked action. It comes from intentional action—aligned with your body, your values, and your vision.
In the toolkit, you’ll explore questions like:
Who am I without my job title?
What am I really grieving?
What practices keep me grounded in uncertainty?
What does success feel like in this next chapter?
You’ll also reflect on five key dimensions of career resilience:
Self-worth
Relational networks
Boundaries
Growth mindset
Embodied practices for navigating uncertainty
Because these are the foundation to adding on the next layer of resilience => your innate creativity to reimagine possibilities and potential!
A More Expansive Way Forward
One of the most powerful shifts you can make is to stop thinking of your career as a ladder and start thinking of it as a spiral.
Each pivot is not a step back, but a new ring outward—anchored in who you are, expanding into new possibilities.
This workbook won’t tell you what to do next. But it will help you hear your own voice more clearly, so you can decide with intention.
Ready to Dive in?
If you’re navigating a career shock or exploring what’s next, download The Career Pivot Toolkit for free. It’s a medium-length, fillable workbook that blends journaling prompts, mindset shifts, and practical steps for your next move.
📘 Download the free Career Pivot Toolkit
You are not broken. You are becoming.
Let’s walk this path together.