"I feel completely lost in my career. Nothing makes sense anymore."

Jennifer sat across from me, accomplished VP of Marketing with everything she'd worked toward for fifteen years. But sitting there, she looked exhausted and empty.

Maybe you know that feeling.

The Stories We Live By

There's this psychologist, Dan McAdams, who studies something called narrative identity. Basically, it's the idea that we are the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. These internal narratives about who we are, how we got here, where we're going actually shape what we believe is possible.

When our career story stops making sense to us, we feel stuck. But here's what Jennifer discovered through our work together: she wasn't stuck. She was between chapters.

The Problem with the Straight Line

Most career advice assumes everything moves in a straight line. Do A, then B, then C, and you'll get to D. But real careers don't work that way. They're messy. Full of plot twists and unexpected turns and sometimes complete changes in direction.

When we hit transitions or setbacks or pivots, we often think we've failed. Our story feels broken. But every good story has obstacles. That's actually where the growth happens.

A Framework for Rewriting Your Story

I use a simple approach to help people rewrite their career narrative. I call it The Story Shift:

The Arc: Your career journey
The Now: What you value today
The Next: Your new direction
The Narrative: How you tell it

Let me show you how this worked for Jennifer.

The Arc: Finding Your Thread

Jennifer's first breakthrough came when we looked at her career as a whole. She'd worked in healthcare marketing, then tech, then finance—which felt random to her, like she couldn't stick with anything.

But when we mapped it out, there was a clear thread: she was drawn to complex, regulated industries where marketing required both creativity and serious strategic thinking. She didn't just want to make things pretty—she wanted to solve hard problems.

What looked like "job hopping" was actually "expertise building." Same facts, completely different story.

The Now: What Actually Matters to You

Often we're still operating from old ideas about what we should want instead of what we actually want. Jennifer realized her deepest value was intellectual challenge. But her VP role had become purely about managing people and politics.

The problem wasn't her job. It was that her daily experience had nothing to do with what energized her.

The Next: What If

This is where possibility opens up. Jennifer didn't need to quit or start over. She needed to redesign how she worked. Together we crafted a proposal: keep strategic oversight, delegate the people management piece, return to hands-on campaign development.

Her boss said yes immediately. Turns out they'd noticed she seemed disengaged and were worried about losing her.

The Narrative: Your New Story

Jennifer's rewritten story: "I'm a strategic marketer who thrives on solving complex communication challenges in regulated industries. I combine creative vision with analytical rigor to build campaigns that work within serious constraints."

Suddenly, her "random" career path became a strategic advantage. The story made sense.

Your Career Doesn't Need to Be Perfect

If you're feeling stuck or lost right now, consider this: you might not be failing. You might just be in the middle of character development.

Try this:

The Arc: What themes run through your career, even through the parts that seem contradictory or random?

The Now: What values are you actually honoring now versus what you thought you should value?

The Next: If your career were a story, what would make the next chapter feel true to who you are?

The Narrative: Complete this sentence: "I am someone who..."

You're the Author

Here's what I want you to know: you're not just living your career story, you're writing it. You have the power to look back at what's happened and reframe it. You have the power to decide what the next chapter is about.

Six months after our work together, Jennifer sent me a message: "I actually look forward to Monday mornings now. I didn't think that was possible."

Her work hadn't changed. How she saw her work and herself had changed everything.

You're not stuck. You're between chapters. And the next one? You get to write it.

What story are you ready to tell about your career? What would it look like to reframe what feels broken into what's actually been building?