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Life experience & transition

Career changers

The push, pull, transferable skill, beginnerhood, hidden cost, identity shift, and evidence that a change was right.

12 questions, 573 answers on the record, from 456 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?

Mario Molina

Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995

For me, it was just a thrill. I just remember thinking at that time, this is the sort of thing I would like to do, if I could. I did not come from a family of scientists.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1996

Michelle Dockery

British actress

Many things. I remember wanting to be a vet, a ballet dancer and a hairdresser.

Recorded · The Guardian · 2020

Miriam Margolyes
I wanted to be a doctor, like my father.

Recorded · The Guardian · 2025

Read all 196 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. What pushed you away from your former path, and what pulled you toward the new one? —
  2. As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself? 196
  3. Which skill transferred unexpectedly well from your previous work? —
  4. What was hardest about becoming a beginner again in public? —
  5. What is the biggest professional obstacle you have faced? 24
  6. What did the change cost that success stories usually leave out? —
  7. What made you stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time? 14
  8. Which part of your old professional identity did you keep, and which part did you have to release? —
  9. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  10. What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore? 78
  11. When did you know the change was right, even before it looked successful? —
  12. What accomplishment matters most to you? 192

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

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