Reassessing Values in Mid-Career: What Impact Do You Want to Have in the World?
Reassessing Values in Mid-Career:What Impact Do You Want to Have in the World?
The goals you had that shaped your career in your 20s and 30s are unlikely to remain constant throughout your life, especially as you enter your 40s. Many people reassess their professional trajectories mid-life and mid-career. If you are feeling a sense of disconnection and dissatisfaction with your work, you owe it to yourself to do a self-audit to find out why.
There are lots of versions on ‘finding purpose’. I am going to use those offered by Office Hours with Arthur Brooks, which is my new podcast crush. First of all, here’s Brooks’ own introduction and statement of purpose:
“I’m Arthur Brooks. I write, speak, and teach about the science of human happiness, blending neuroscience, behavioural science, philosophy, and religion for insights on how to live better and be happier lives”
He further describes his purpose as “lifting people up in bonds of happiness and love”. He’s a teacher of how to find happiness and invites us all to learn how we can all be happier and join him as teachers of happiness. Arthur, I want you to know I am ALL IN. I highly recommend that you check out his podcast, which you can find on Spotify.
In Brooks definition, meaning is one of the three components of happiness, along with enjoyment and satisfaction. I am particularly interested in meaning, which is what gives the other two substance. Enjoyment and satisfaction depend on doing what is meaningful to you. Another formulation is offered by Simon Sinek: finding meaning is “finding your why”. Sinek uses this in an organizational context, whereas we want to help you delve into your own personal why.
There are a couple of books I recommend as manuals for doing this.
The first is How to Measure Your Life by Clayton Christensen.
This book helped me with my mid-40s reassessment and redirection. Over the years, I’ve shared it with many people and helped them work through the exercises.
The Christensen book adopts a highly analytical, business-oriented approach, treating career strategy as a mirror to business strategy. It focuses on establishing a clear direction for the future, whether your horizon is three years or twenty. By developing a strategic vision first, you can then implement the specific tactics required to reach those goals. This methodology proved exceptionally effective with the analytical professionals I advised during my tenure at Gartner, with many finding it useful for achieving a more successful and personally satisfying professional life.
My alternative recommendation is Body of Work by Pamela Slim.
She presents a framework for navigating a career in an economy where stable, linear paths are increasingly rare. The central idea is that a career is not just a sequence of jobs, but a cumulative collection of everything you create, contribute, and impact. By finding the thread that connects diverse experiences, you can create a coherent narrative for your professional life.
These books are not simply read and absorbed; you need to do the thinking and the exercises. Having an accountability partner helps. To get an idea of the way this could possibly work for you, I include here some journal prompts and a bit of the material I developed to work with my clients:
Are you planning on more career steps when you leave your current position? What rewards will you be looking for? Do you feel your current company will be able to support your career through these steps?
Depending on your age (40- 55), imagine your 50th or (55-65) your 70th birthday. Will you commemorate this milestone in any way? Who will be with you? What announcements, if any, will you make? Are you still working? Is that work substantially different from what you do now? If you are leaving a role, is that to take another? Start a business? Retire or semi-retire?
Now look back in time and try and remember the first career goals you had, even as far back as childhood. What did you want to be when you grew up? It surprised me to learn, when I did this as a workshop, that many people ended up, mostly via a long and winding road, doing exactly what they had decided to do as children.
This is only a place to start, and these might seem simple, or worse, not worth your time. Trust me when I tell you, these deceptively simple ideas will spark deep thinking and give you some insight you didn’t have.
Logan Advisory Services is built around material like this. If you want to know more, arrange a call with one of our advisors.
If you are not working with an advisor–and even if you are–the best way to do this is to journal. If you don’t know how or don’t want to take my word for it, I’m going to do a blog on this next week: Journaling: Science Subjectivity and History. It’s a practice that I’ve used for years. Journaling is one of the essential activities that will help you succeed finding more meaning and more happiness in your life and work.
