Feeling Stuck in Your Career? It's Not a Mid-Career Crisis.

You're capable, experienced, respected in your field and completely, frustratingly stuck.

That feeling has a name, apparently, the internet calls it a mid-career crisis, and there's an entire industry, worth $1.43 billion and growing, built on selling you programs to fix it.

Here's my problem with that. The phrase is a label, not a diagnosis. And most of the people selling the fix have never actually been through what you're going through.

I have. Here's what it actually looked like.

Fifteen years into senior leadership roles, I had a micromanager who kept pushing past every professional boundary I had. I finally said it out loud: "You're imposing on my personal time, and your behaviour doesn't align with the company's values." He tried to issue a written warning for insubordination. I looped in HR, held my ground, and HR sided with me.

That wasn't a mid-career crisis, that was a boundary that hadn't been set, in a system that had let poor leadership go unchecked until someone pushed back.

The problem wasn't my age or where I was in my career. It was a specific situation that needed a specific response.

The label keeps you looking in the wrong direction

Research from the University of Surrey found that the so-called mid-career dip in job satisfaction only shows up among managerial and professional workers, and only in Western cultures. Japanese and Indian research barely registers the phenomenon; it's not universal, it's situational.

Only 8% of people surveyed experienced a crisis actually linked to awareness of ageing. The other 92% were dealing with specific things: a bad manager, a values mismatch, a leadership vacuum, or operating below their capability.

Those aren't age problems. they're situation problems. And situation problems have specific solutions.

What's actually going on when someone says they're "stuck"

When a client tells me they're having a mid-career crisis, I ask one question: can you tell me what that actually means for you right now?

Because the phrase covers entirely different problems. Burnout from broken systems. A growing gap between what you're doing and what you value. A direction that made sense five years ago but doesn't anymore. The feeling that you're capable of more but can't see the path.

None of these requires a program. They require honest conversation, the right questions, and someone who's actually been in the arena, not someone who read about it and built a course around it.

What two calls a month actually does

I work with clients every month, two focused 30-minute conversations built entirely around what's happening in their career right now. Not a framework. Not a module. Not homework.

Just: where are you, where do you want to be, what's in the way, and what's the next move.

Most clients come in sceptical; they've spent money on generic coaching and still feel stuck. By the end of the first session, they understand the difference between being given answers and being asked the right questions.

If you're sitting on something you know needs to change but can't quite name it, that's exactly the conversation worth having.

Start monthly coaching → Two calls a month. No cookie-cutter program. Built around your situation.