If I asked you what a career move looks like, you’d probably describe something external, updating your CV, having the conversation with your boss, applying for new roles, reaching out to recruiters, maybe handing in your resignation, and starting something new, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Those are career moves. They’re visible, tangible steps that other people can see and point to and say she made the move. But here’s what I’ve learned, both from my own career and from working with women navigating this exact crossroads. The most powerful career move you can make doesn’t show up on LinkedIn. Nobody actually claps for it. There’s no announcement, no ‘I’m excited to share post, you know. And it’s the move that determines everything as to whether what comes after it works, and it’s the move that happens inside before anything external changes, and that’s what I want to talk to you about today. When I talk about what the most powerful move is, before you update your CV, so we’ve been taught that if you feel stuck, if you feel restless, if something isn’t right, if you think about, okay, what is next? Then the next action step should be to research options, to scroll on LinkedIn, to look at job boards, maybe talk to friends who’ve made moves, maybe you speak to a recruiter and you start updating your CV and tweaking your positioning and thinking about whether your skills could transfer, and all of that makes sense. It’s completely logical, and it’s what smart strategic women do. But here’s what I notice again and again with the women I work with: they do all of that, they think about it all, they research, and they have the conversations, and some of them even get to the point of interviewing, and then nothing happens, and it’s not because they didn’t find options, not because there wasn’t anything out there, but because something inside them couldn’t land on a decision, they couldn’t commit, they couldn’t move. And then they come to me and say some version of, I just need more clarity, I need to figure out what I actually want, and I understand why they think that, because when you can’t decide, it feels like a clarity problem, it feels like you haven’t found the right answer yet, but nine times out of 10 that’s not what’s actually going on. What’s actually going on is that you’re trying to make a completely new kind of decision using the same internal operating system that was built for the career you’re trying to leave. Now, that might sound a little bit confusing, so let me say that a little bit differently. The way you think about your career, the way you evaluate your options, what you prioritize, what you dismiss, how you define success, how you measure risk, how you make decisions under pressure, all of that was built for a specific chapter of your life, and it worked. It got you to where you are, and the title, the income, the reputation, the track record, all of that, that came along with it is there, and that operating system was perfectly designed for the career you built. But the thing is, you’re in a different moment now, the career that fit 1015 years ago, when you first started your career, or even longer ago, you know that doesn’t fit anymore. And the question you’re facing isn’t, how do I optimize what I’m already doing? The real question you’re asking is, Who am I becoming, and what does my career need to look like to match that? And that’s a fundamentally different question. And your current operating system doesn’t have the software for it, so what happens, you loop, you overthink, you research endlessly, you feel simultaneously like you have too many options, but they’re no good options, and you keep almost making a move and then pulling back, not because you lack courage or clarity, but because the part of you making the decision is still operating from rules that were written for a chapter that’s ending. I know this because I lived it so many years ago when I left corporate, and I feel like a broken record, but for some of you listening, you might not have heard this story, but when I left Goldman Sachs, I made a very visible career move.

4:13
It from the outside it looked like a bold decision to leave Goldman Sachs, and in some ways it was, but here’s what I didn’t understand at the time. I changed everything external. I left that job, I left the corporate and commercial real estate industry. I thought I was going to start a completely different business, but I brought the same me into that new chapter, the same patterns of overworking, proving, hustling, grinding, and the same way of measuring my worth through achievement and output, and the same nervous system responses of stress, overwhelm, push through, and the same relationship with pressure and productivity, and proving myself, and do you know what happened? I recreated the same dynamics in a completely different context, different job, same operating system, different business, same patterns, different external circumstances, same internal experience. It took me years to understand that the most important move I needed to make wasn’t leaving Goldman’s, it was actually involving the woman who was making all the decisions, because until she changed, nothing else really could, not in any lasting way, which is why I’m so passionate and really just obsessed, I would say, with how we can actually mature and up level the individual that we are. It’s part of the reason why I’ve deepened into my own training, continuing with another coaching certification this year, and it’s also really what I see driving the most change when I work with women. I want to be really clear about something here, because I know how this can land, when I say you know that if you want to make a different career move, then the decision maker needs to evolve. I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with you, I’m not saying that you’re broken or flawed or that you need fixing. I’m saying you’re running sophisticated software that was perfectly designed for a previous chapter, and now you’re entering a new one, and that software needs an upgrade too, not because it was bad, but because the context has changed. So, think of it this way, the strategic thinking, the drive, the ability to perform under pressure, the high standards, all of that got you here, and all of it is still yours. You will bring that into whatever you decide to do next, but the way those qualifiers are configurated right now, they’re configured for staying, for optimizing, for playing the game you already know how to play. What they’re not configured for just yet is navigating genuine uncertainty, making decisions without a guaranteed outcome, moving towards something you can feel but can’t fully see yet, and that requires a different internal setup, not different qualities, a different relationship with the qualities you already have. So, what does this internal career move actually look like in practice? Well, it looks like recognizing that the indecision you’ve been experiencing isn’t confusion, it’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do, protecting you from risk. When you’ve built something significant, every part of you is hardwired to protect it, and that’s not weakness, that’s intelligence. But it becomes a problem when protection turns into paralysis. It’s like examining the definition of success you’ve been operating from, and asking honestly, is it still yours, or did you inherit it? Because a lot of the metrics we use to evaluate our careers weren’t the ones we consciously chose, they were actually absorbed from our families, our industries, our cultures, and making a career move based on someone else’s definition of success just gives you a different version of stuck. It looks like building a new relationship with uncertainty, not eliminating it. You can’t eliminate it, but learning to move inside it without collapsing into either paralysis or recklessness, finding that space in the middle where you can feel uncomfortable and still take the next step, like that’s where it’s at. The important thing here is to really separate your identity from your job title, because for many of the women I work with, the reason they can’t leave isn’t actually about the money or the logistics, it’s that they don’t know who they are without that role. Their professional identity has become their entire identity, and the thought of stepping away from that can feel like stepping into nothing, and that’s not a career problem, that’s an identity evolution that needs to happen before any external move can properly land.

8:51
So, if you’re listening and you’re like, okay, I get this, Shiv, I want to share with you a few signs that your operate operating system might need an upgrade, and I share these not to diagnose you, because nothing’s gone wrong, but just to name the pattern at play, because when you can name it, then you can break the spell, so you know that your operating system might need an upgrade if number one, you’ve been thinking about making a change for longer than you’d like to admit, maybe it’s months, maybe it’s years, but you’re no closer to a decision than when you started. Number two, you keep researching options, but nothing feels quite right, and you find reasons to dismiss every possibility. It’s too risky, it’s too different, it’s not different enough, it’s not the right time, you’re too old, you’re too young, whatever it might be thirdly, maybe you feel exhausted, not just tired, but like bone deep depleted, and the exhaustion doesn’t, doesn’t just go away with a holiday, you come back and within a week you’re right back in the same feeling. The other way you might know that your operating system needs an upgrade is if you look at other women. Who’ve made moves, and you feel simultaneously inspired, and also defeated, like they have something that you don’t. And lastly, maybe you intellectually know that something needs to change, but knowing and doing feel like they’re separating by an ocean, separated by an ocean. If any of that resonates, you don’t need more information. You don’t need another career quiz or a personality test or a brainstorming session. You need to work at the level where the stuckness actually lives, and this goes deeper than strategy. It’s the identity, your identity, your nervous system. It’s the patterns you can’t see because you are inside of them. So, when you, the decision maker, evolves and you actually do this work, something shifts that’s hard to describe, but it’s really unmistakable when it happens. Decisions that felt impossible start to feel obvious, not because the options changed, but because you’re seeing them from a completely different place. That noise, all that mental chatter, the endless pros and cons lists, the 3am spiraling. All of that settles, not because you’ve got everything figured out, but because you’re no longer making decisions from fear, you’re making them from a grounded and clear place that can actually tolerate not knowing the full picture yet. You stop looking for the perfect move, and you’re willing to experiment, to test, try things out, you know, in the real world, instead of endlessly theorizing, and paradoxically, that’s when the clarity actually comes, not from thinking harder, but from moving, and here’s the part that surprises most women, often they end up choosing what they end up choosing looks nothing like what they have chosen before the internal shift, and that’s because the woman choosing is different, her criteria is different, what she values is different, what she’s willing to tolerate and not tolerate is different, and the external move becomes almost easy once the internal move has happened, not effortless, of course, but clear, grounded, and clean, like you, you’re finally making decisions as the woman you’re actually becoming and meant to become, not the woman you were trained to be. So that’s the work that I do inside the Pivot Pathfinders Mastermind, and I share that not as a sales pitch, but because I think it’s important to share that this kind of work isn’t theoretical for me, it’s not a nice idea, it’s a method that I’ve honed, tested, refined, and really brought together based on my gosh, it’s almost 14 years now experience working and coaching women, and also navigating this myself, because I, by no means, am perfect, and I’m also muddling through this as well, and the method that I’ve come up with is called the re-evolution method, and it starts exactly where we’ve been talking about today, underneath the stuckness at the level of the nervous system patterns, and then the identity and the deep conditioning that is driving your career decisions. We work there first, not because strategy doesn’t matter, it absolutely does, but because strategy built on an outdated operating system just gives you a more sophisticated version of stuck. Like, could you imagine having your the latest iPhone 17, but like running an iOS system?

13:15
I don’t even know what you would call it, but from like five years ago, it’s like you can’t utilize all of that goodness, because the software is just too slow, so that’s what we need to shift first. Once the internal ground has shifted, then we move into career strategy and aligned action from that new place. That’s where the testing happens, and that’s where real options emerge, and that’s where you build a pivot plan that protects what you’ve built while making room for what’s next, so if that resonates, the link to learn more is in the show notes over at Siobhan barnes.com forward slash 151 and the next cohort starts really soon in June, and so if you would like to participate, if you would like to be a part of it, make sure you come on over and sign up. I’m only opening the doors for a really short window of time, because I want to make sure that we all start this journey together. So, if that’s of interest, come on over to the show notes, Siobhan barnes.com forward slash 151 And here’s what I want to leave you with: if you’ve been waiting for career clarity to arrive before you make a move. I want to offer you a different possibility. What if that clarity isn’t missing? What if it’s just blocked by an operating system that’s doing its job too well, like that’s protecting you from the very change that you’re craving. You don’t need a new job, at least not yet. You might need one eventually, but right now the most powerful career move available to you is the one that happens before you update your CV. It’s the move where you stop trying to figure out your next step and start evolving the woman who’s going to take it, and that’s the work that I absolutely love to do. So, thank you so much for tuning in. If. There’s anything that you would like to share, any reflections, comments, or questions, come and find me over at I am Siobhan Barnes on Instagram, and you can come and find me at LinkedIn on the same profile. I would absolutely love to know. And until next time, please remember you are here for a reason beyond merely hustling, grinding, and merely surviving. You matter. you.