The Mid-Life Challenge: Make a Plan to Re-ignite Career Passion

From Craig Nathanson
Take Stock of Your Career Passion to Target a Career Change and a Career Search

Nobody will stop you in the hallway at work to ask if your career provides meaning and personal fulfillment. Recognizing that something’s missing in your career and vocational life and taking the initiative to change must come from within.

Serena Williamson found a way to turn her passion — helping writers hone their skills in order to get published — into the catalyst for a new, more fulfilling life. Serena now runs her own small publishing house.

Software engineer Bonnie Vining needed a new career that would value her warm personality, not suppress it. So she left the high-tech world and opened Javalina’s Coffee and Friends.

After Anita Flegg lost her engineering job, she embarked on a program of self-improvement. The journey led to personal discoveries and her calling: She provides information and support to those who, like her, suffer from hypoglycemia.

I have found that many high achievers who lose enthusiasm for their work share common traits:
Their work has little connection to the things they really care about. Work is a barrier rather than a path to fulfillment.


While they may be doing something they’re good at, it isn’t something they want to do. Unfulfilled professionals haven’t taken time to align their abilities with their interests.


They have never made a long-term plan to guide them toward a more fulfilling vocational life. They tend to set short-term goals, or set no goals at all.


As they reach mid-life and understand the need for meaning, they turn to their current workplace as a source of what’s missing. Most organizations, though, are structurally incapable of providing nourishment for the soul. So the mid-life employee’s frustration grows.

Mid-lifers like Serena, Bonnie, and Anita take stock of their lives and careers. They develop a plan to re-ignite their energy and enthusiasm for work. The process involves a number of steps, but the common thread involves taking responsibility for making life changes. Read on to learn how.