Janet was describing how her career had evolved until now. From her perspective, she had never searched for a job, all the career changes she had made seemed to have “fallen into her lap” as she described it.

Listening to her, I couldn’t prevent myself from thinking how this past was making her blind today.

Her situation had changed since her last career move, and she knew that. We had been discussing the different variables she felt obliged to conform with nowadays. These were constraints that resulted from how she envisioned living her life. She had become reluctant to move and wanted to stay close to her friends. She was also anxious about the way her industry seemed to be changing and wondered about the safety of her job.

We explored her situation at work and figured out that she was delivering results to her and her bosses’ satisfaction. There were also no clear indications that she would need to change her job soon. This all was giving her time to act and prepare for a career move. It allowed her to become more playful and worry less about the current situation.

However, it also became clear that her next step would require her to think differently about her future. She needed to start paying attention to opportunities again, to investigate what other industries would be interesting for her, as well as what staying in the local market instead of focusing on the global market would mean for her. There was no urgency to this, but having asked herself some of the above questions was a first step towards making things fall into her lap again.

There is, however, nothing magical to it.

Shifting her attention away from her worries toward the existing constraints allowed her to let go of her anxiety. Exploring the constraints and transforming them into decisions felt liberating to her. She knew that it was now up to her to let herself be open to existing possibilities and to use her imagination to explore possible scenarios for her future.