This is an ongoing series — each piece opens with direct acknowledgment of a widespread frustration, names what's really going on, and closes with one concrete reframe or next step.
Dear Everyone: It's Okay to Change Your Mind About Your Career
You don't owe anyone a linear path.
You don't owe your college major a career. You don't owe your first job a five-year commitment. You don't owe your 18-year-old self the plan they made before they knew anything about anything.
The career you thought you wanted at 18 might make you want to crawl out of your skin at 25. The field you went to grad school for might not be the field you actually want to work in. The “practical” choice might have been practical for someone else, not for you.
Changing your mind isn't failure. It's information.
It means you learned something. It means you paid attention to what something was actually like versus what you thought it would be like. It means you have enough self-awareness to know when something isn't working.
The real failure is staying in something that makes you miserable because you're afraid of what it says about you that you changed direction.
It doesn't say anything about you except that you're human.
Dear Everyone: Job Rejection Is Not a Verdict on Your Worth
You didn't get the job.
It stings. Maybe it stings a lot. Maybe you've been searching for months and this was the one that felt right and now it's gone and you're right back at the beginning.
Here's what I want you to hold onto: rejection in the job market is almost never about you as a person. It's about fit, timing, competition, and a hundred factors that have nothing to do with your value.
The hiring manager might have already known who they wanted before they posted the job. There might have been 400 other applicants. The team structure might have changed. The role might have been put on hold. The salary might not have been what you were willing to accept.
None of that means you're not good enough. It means the equation didn't balance this time.
Your job is to keep going until the right fit shows up. And it will.
Dear Everyone: Stop Apologizing for Not Having It Figured Out
You don't have to have it figured out.
Not at 22. Not at 30. Not at 45. Not ever, really.
The pressure to have a five-year plan, a clear career trajectory, a LinkedIn profile that tells a coherent story about who you are and where you're going — it's exhausting. And it's largely a lie we tell each other because it feels better to pretend we have a plan than to admit we're all improvising.
Some of the most successful people I know didn't figure out their calling until their 40s, 50s, 60s. Some of the most impressive career paths I've seen were completely meandering on paper.
The goal isn't to have a plan. The goal is to make good decisions with the information you have, stay open to new information, and be honest about when something isn't working.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
Dear Everyone: Career Success Doesn't Look Like Everyone Else's
Someone else's version of career success will make you miserable if you try to live it.
You will compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter twenty. You will look at someone who took a traditional path and wonder why you couldn't just do that. You will measure yourself against milestones that were set for a world that no longer exists.
But here's what I've learned from working with hundreds of early career professionals: the most fulfilled people rarely had the most straightforward paths.
They pivoted. They took detours. They said no to things that looked good on paper and yes to things that felt right in their gut. They made less money in exchange for more meaning. They took jobs that were beneath their qualifications because that's what was available. They left jobs that paid well because the culture was killing them.
Career success is not a trophy on someone else's shelf.
It's a career that lets you sleep at night. That challenges you. That pays you enough to live. That doesn't require you to abandon who you are in order to advance.
If you have that? You're already there.