The Permission to Want: Moving from Should to Soul in Your Career
What do you actually want?
It's a simple question that stops most of my clients in their tracks. After years of conditioning around what they should want, the swanky office, the impressive title, the salary that makes their parents proud, many women have lost touch with their authentic desires entirely.
I see this particularly with women in their forties, the ones who have climbed the ladders, checked the boxes, and achieved what they set out to achieve, only to find themselves sitting in their beautiful lives feeling a little bit dead inside. They know something needs to change, but they can't quite put their finger on what.
The Awakening Decade
There's something that happens to many women around this stage of life. The balls they've been juggling, career advancement, children, aging parents, household management are spinning so fast they can't even see the colors anymore. The strategies that got them here are no longer sustainable.
It's not that they've suddenly become incapable. It's that the cost of maintaining the performance has become too high. The splitting of themselves into work-self and home-self, the constant people-pleasing, the saying yes to everything while their own needs get pushed further and further down the list, it's exhausting on a soul level.
This is when women often find themselves googling "career coach" or "how to find your purpose" at 2 AM, desperately seeking something they can't quite name.
The Myth of Career Clarity
Here's what I've learned after years of coaching: people usually know what they want much more quickly than they think they will. The clarity isn't actually the hard part. What's really difficult is giving themselves permission to want it.
We've been so conditioned to look outside ourselves for validation, to seek the "right" career path that will impress others or fit neatly into existing categories, that we've forgotten how to tune into our own inner knowing.
Traditional career coaching asks: "What's out there? How can you fit into what the market needs?" I flip this approach entirely. I honestly don't even want to see your CV. I want to know who you are at your core. What lights you up? What kind of impact do you want to have in the world? What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?
Only then do we go looking at what exists externally and seek out your path. And sometimes we discover that what you're called to do doesn't exist yet, which means you get to create it!
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
The women I work with are incredibly smart. They've read all the books, listened to all the podcasts, know all the frameworks. Intellectually, they understand concepts like following your passion and creating boundaries. But when it comes time to actually implement these ideas, they hit a wall of internal resistance.
"I can't do that. I don't have the time. I don't have the money. I don't have the energy."
While practical constraints are real and valid, often these statements mask deeper fears. Fear of disappointing people. Fear of being judged. Fear of stepping out of line with what's expected of ambitious, successful women.
I had a client recently who kept saying she couldn't reduce her hours because she "needed" the money. When we dug deeper, we discovered that she had enough savings to live comfortably for a year, even without any additional income. The "I need the money" story was covering up her fear of being seen as less committed, less ambitious, less worthy of respect.
The Somatic Truth
Our bodies hold wisdom that our minds often try to override. When I work with clients, we pay attention not just to what they're thinking, but how different possibilities feel in their bodies.
Does the thought of that promotion make your chest feel heavy or light? When you imagine saying no to that additional project, do you feel relief or anxiety? What happens in your body when you picture yourself working four days a week instead of five?
These bodily responses aren't random, they are really important information. Your nervous system is constantly scanning for safety and alignment, sending you signals about what supports your well-being and what depletes it.
But we've been taught to override these signals in the name of professionalism, productivity, and success. We push through the exhaustion, ignore the dread, medicate the anxiety, and wonder why we feel so disconnected from our own lives.
The Power of Small Experiments
One of my favorite tools is what I call "low-stakes experimentation." Instead of making massive life changes that feel terrifying and potentially disastrous, we start with small tests.
Want to explore your creative side but think you need to quit your job to become an artist? Start with one evening a week dedicated to creative play. Curious about working with a cause that's important to you but scared to leave your stable position? Volunteer with an organisation that serves the community you're drawn to.
These experiments serve two purposes. First, they give you real information about what actually energises you versus what you think should energise you. Second, they help build your tolerance for doing things differently, for disappointing people, for prioritizing your authentic desires over external expectations.
The Council of Values
Knowing what your true values are can provide such a grounding, solid support for direction and decision making. I love how one of my teachers, Danielle Cohen, talks about your group of values as a "council of values", wise energies sitting around you like a boardroom of advisors, supporting every decision you make. This is such a different image than values as rules or restrictions.
When you're connected to your authentic values, decision-making becomes clearer. You're not trying to figure out what you should do based on what would look good on Instagram or what the mothers at the school gate think. You're asking: What would honour who I really am? What would feel aligned with what matters most to me?
When you know these and honour them, you can move towards work, life and family ways of being that are true to you. This is an energy saving and massively efficient way to operate especially in our work lives and career decisions.
They're about being authentic to who you are in this season of your life.
The Integration Journey
The goal isn't to find the perfect job that will solve all your problems. It's to find ways to honor who you are within whatever context you're in, while also being honest about what contexts truly support your thriving.
Sometimes this means leaving. Sometimes it means staying and renegotiating your relationship to your work. Sometimes it means creating something entirely new.
What it always means is getting honest about what you actually want, not what you think you should want.
Beyond the Binary
We live in a culture that loves binary thinking: either you're successful or you're not, either you have a demanding career or you're opting out, either you're ambitious or you're settling.
But real life exists in the nuanced spaces between these extremes. You can be deeply ambitious about creating a life that honours all of who you are. You can want professional success and also want time to dance in your kitchen and go for lazy lunchtime walks. You can care about making money and also care about making meaning.
The women who are creating the most fulfilling careers aren't choosing between these things, they're finding creative ways to weave them together. We need to reject binary thinking!
The Ripple Effect of Authenticity
When you start living and working from a place of authenticity, you give other women permission to do the same. Your children, nieces and nephews see that success doesn't have to come at the expense of well-being. Your colleagues witness that it's possible to have boundaries and still be highly valued. Your friends see that midlife can be a time of expansion rather than resignation.
This is how cultures change, not through grand gestures or policy mandates, but through individual women courageously choosing to honor who they really are.
Starting the Conversation
If you're feeling that familiar stirring, that sense that there might be more to your professional life than what you're currently experiencing, start with curiosity rather than action. Start asking yourself:
What do I actually want my days to feel like?
What kind of impact do I want to have in the world?
What would I do if I knew I couldn't fail?
What would I choose if I didn't care what anyone else thought?
You don't need to have the answers immediately. You don't need a perfect plan or a guarantee that everything will work out exactly as you hope. You just need to start the conversation with yourself about what's possible.
Because the world needs women who are fully alive in their work, who bring their whole selves to what they do, who model what it looks like to be successful without sacrificing your soul.
The career you're seeking might not exist yet. Maybe that's your invitation to create it.
