Eight Years After I Got Lost, Here’s What I Know About Finding Career Clarity
I started this series with a story about getting exactly what I wanted. I had spent years working toward a very specific goal: I wanted to be a CEO. Not someday. Not somewhere. I wanted to lead a particular company that I loved and had helped build.
And I did it. I got the dream job.
The problem was that I had spent so much time thinking about the job I wanted that I hadn’t spent nearly enough time thinking about the career – or the life – I was building around it. For a while, that didn’t matter. I had achieved the goal. I was doing work I cared about. I was successful by almost every measure I had used to define success.
Until I wasn’t.
I became restless. Then burned out. Then bored. And when I eventually left, I didn’t just lose a job.
I lost my direction.
I spent the next eight years focused on finding career clarity.
I’ve thought a lot about that as I’ve written this series, because for a long time, I interpreted those years as a problem I needed to solve.
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- Why couldn’t I figure out what I wanted?
- Why couldn’t I find the thing that would stick?
- Why could I see so many possibilities but not know which one was mine?
I bought a company. I worked desperately to make it successful. I expanded services. I built programs. I coached people. I taught. I spoke. I wrote a book. I created courses. I experimented with new audiences, products, ideas, and business models.
Some worked, some didn’t, and some I loved for a while and eventually outgrew.
And because I owned a business that needed to make money, there was another layer to it all: I didn’t have the luxury of quietly figuring myself out. I had employees, clients, expenses, and responsibilities. If someone had a problem we knew how to solve, there was a pretty compelling reason to solve it.
So I kept moving, and somewhere underneath all that activity was a question I wasn’t always saying out loud:
Could this be it? Could this be the thing I’m supposed to do? Could this be the direction I’ve been looking for? Could this finally make everything click?
In hindsight, I understand something about those years that I couldn’t see while I was living them.
I didn’t have a destination strong enough to make “no” obvious.
So almost every road seemed worth exploring.
When you don’t know what you’re building, almost anything can look like an opportunity.
That’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned about career clarity. We often frame career decisions around whether an opportunity is objectively good.
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- Is it a good job?
- Could I make more money?
- Would I be good at it?
- Could this business work?
- Would this look like progress?
Those aren’t bad questions, they’re just incomplete. Because there are countless things you could be good at. There are plenty of jobs you could succeed in.
There are businesses you could build, promotions you could pursue, certifications you could earn, opportunities you could accept, and paths you could follow. The question isn’t simply whether you could. The better question is:
Does this belong in what I’m building?
It’s not whether you could, but whether you should. And that is a much easier question to answer when you have some idea of what you’re building toward.
I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.
That’s probably the most important thing I can tell you at the end of a series about finding career clarity.
There was a time when that would have terrified me. I wanted the answer. I wanted another destination as clear as the one I’d had before. A title. A company. A plan. Something I could point toward and say, There. That’s where I’m going.
I don’t need that anymore.
Because I’ve realized that you don’t need a perfect picture of the rest of your career to stop feeling directionless. You just need enough clarity about what you’re building toward to know which next decisions belong – and which ones don’t.
I know much more about that now.
I know the problems I want to help solve. I know the conversations I want to change.
I know I care deeply about helping people create clarity when they feel stuck or lost, find direction from that clarity, advocate for what they need, and take action toward what they want. Especially women trying to build meaningful careers and meaningful lives at the same time – and don’t want to lose themselves in either.
I know I want to challenge the idea that a career is simply a collection of jobs or a ladder we’re supposed to keep climbing. It’s not saying yes to every opportunity because it looks good on paper – and it’s not staying rooted in place because it’s easy.
I know I want people to think more intentionally about what they’re actually building.
I don’t know every form that work will take. I don’t need to, but I finally have enough direction to recognize what belongs. And, just as importantly, what doesn’t.
Maybe career clarity isn’t an answer. Maybe it’s a filter.
That’s where I’ve landed after eight years. Clarity isn’t necessarily waking up one morning and suddenly knowing exactly what you’re supposed to do with the rest of your life.
It’s understanding yourself well enough – and understanding what you’re building toward clearly enough – that your decisions start becoming easier.
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- Yes, this moves me toward it.
- No, this doesn’t.
- Not now.
- Not anymore.
- That’s worth pursuing.
- That’s something I’m willing to leave behind.
- That’s the career I want to keep building.
And maybe that’s why so many of us feel stuck. We’re waiting for certainty when what we actually need is enough clarity to take the next right step.
So, what comes after clarity?
Throughout this series, we’ve talked about paying attention to the data your career is giving you, asking better questions, getting curious about what’s working and what isn’t, and creating greater clarity about what you want.
But clarity by itself doesn’t change anything. Eventually, we have to decide what to do with it. We need direction. We need the confidence and language to advocate for ourselves. And then we need to act.
Clarity → Direction → Self-Advocacy → Action.
That’s where I’m going next.
I’ll share more practical tools, questions, stories, and ideas on how we build careers more intentionally – especially when the old definition of success no longer fits.
If you’ve been following this series because you’re trying to figure out what’s next in your own career, stay with me. Follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow The Center for Leadership Excellence as we continue the conversation.
Because you don’t have to know exactly where your career ends. You just need enough clarity to know where you’re going next.
Catch Up on the Career Clarity Series
This post is the conclusion of a six-part series about what happens when the career you planned no longer fits—or when you realize you never really had a plan beyond the next job, promotion, or milestone. Throughout the series, we’ve explored what career clarity actually looks like, the questions that help us find it, and how to pay attention to what our careers are already telling us.
Start at the beginning or explore the rest of the series:
About Jessica Gendron
Jessica Gendron is the President and CEO of The Center for Leadership Excellence, an author, speaker, and leadership and career development expert. She has spent more than 20 years helping people navigate careers, develop as leaders, advocate for themselves, and make more intentional decisions about what comes next. Her work challenges outdated ideas about careers, leadership, and success—and helps people create the clarity and direction they need to build careers and lives that actually fit.