Career indecision usually feels like a knowledge problem. "If I just knew what I really wanted, I'd decide." But in Working Identity (2003), Herminia Ibarra showed why that assumption is flawed. You can't figure out what you want first and then go test it. You figure it out by testing.
This sounds like a small distinction. It isn't. It reverses the entire direction. Sitting with all your options and weighing them at the table doesn't reduce indecision — it usually amplifies it. Because a job you've imagined and a job you've actually done are two entirely different things.
Why the desk is the wrong place to decide
You don't think your way to the right career — you narrow your way there through small experiments. The version of a profession you construct in your head rarely matches the reality. The only way to know how work feels is to touch it. A part-time project. A brief trial. A real conversation with someone already inside that world. Each of these brings back information you could never have generated sitting still.
Ibarra calls this acting your way into a new identity. Who you are is shaped by what you do — not by what you deliberate about. Reflection alone doesn't open new directions. Action does.
The sunk cost trap
The years you've already spent won't come back, so they shouldn't factor into what you decide next. And yet they do. People stay in the wrong direction because they've "put so much into this already." But that investment is spent regardless of which way you turn now. The question of whether to continue should look forward, not back.
Easy to say. Hard to feel. Walking away from a ten-year career isn't just a job change — it's a relinquishing of identity. The difficulty isn't the salary gap. It's that the question "who am I?" swings open again, and you have to stand in that.
Transition is not a bridge — it's three stages
In Transitions (1980), William Bridges described how every major life change moves through three distinct phases: an ending, a neutral zone, and a new beginning. Most people talk about the first and the last. The real challenge lives in the middle.
The neutral zone is the gap where the old role has ended but the new one hasn't formed yet. Uncertainty is at its highest here. And it cannot be skipped. Rushing to fill that gap too early typically leads to the wrong choice. Learning to wait — to tolerate that in-between without forcing a premature answer — is its own skill.
What coaching actually does here
Career coaching doesn't hand you the right answer. It helps you design the experiments that will narrow the question. The real inquiry isn't "which career should I choose?" It's "what small step could I take this month that would teach me something I don't know yet?" The big decision gets clearer through small moves.
Meaning enters here too. Choosing work purely on compensation tends to run dry quickly. Frankl's will to meaning applies to careers as much as anything else. What a role pays matters — but so does what it stands for, to you, in the particular life you're living.
The Cevvela view
- You don't figure out what you want first and then try — you try in order to find out.
- Indecision isn't solved; it's narrowed through small experiments.
- The years already spent are sunk costs — don't make your next decision by looking backwards.
- Every transition has a neutral zone in the middle, and it cannot be skipped.
- Coaching doesn't provide answers — it designs the steps that bring you closer to your own.