I’ve been thinking a lot about ancestral heritage lately. It’s a common theme for me when I return to my homeland every summer. There’s something about having my feet on the soil where generations of my family once stood — and where we still stand today — that grounds me in a way few other places do. And lately, it has made me think differently about career reinvention. Because for all the talk about starting over, beginning again and writing a new chapter, none of us ever really starts from scratch.
There’s a Māori word, whenua, that captures something English doesn’t quite hold in a single word. It means land, but it is also the word for placenta — the source of nourishment before birth. Embedded in that shared word is a powerful connection between people, ancestry, nourishment and the land to which they belong.
During the time I lived in New Zealand, I was struck by introductions that located people not simply by what they did, but by where and who they came from — their people, their land, their mountain, their river.
There was an acknowledgement that who we are doesn’t begin with us. This concept is never clearer to me than when I have my feet on the ground where I was born. I see evidence of the contributions my family has made here in all kinds of ordinary places. My brother, a land surveyor, once surveyed the lines in a swimming pool so athletes competing in the Summer Games could swim straight. In a local museum, there’s an old stove made in a forge once owned by my great-grandfather. And I still meet people who remember my father, whose voice graced the airwaves in our community for more than three decades.
These aren’t necessarily headline-making contributions. What they are is evidence of the impact of real people doing their work, showing up for their communities, using their skills and quietly leaving something behind.
Legacy often happens that way. And so does inheritance. We inherit work ethic. Values. Attitudes toward money and success. Ideas about responsibility. Beliefs about what makes a life worthwhile. Some of those beliefs serve us beautifully. Others stay with us long after they have stopped fitting.
I witnessed this recently while coaching a client. I asked her what she attributed the early success of her new business to. She thought for a moment and said:
“I was raised to work hard. I was taught that anything worth doing is worth doing well. And so I’m giving my all to this business. I can figure things out. I can figure this out with hard work and commitment.”
And she can. This woman, now in her late 60s, reinvented herself in retirement. She has learned online platforms that didn’t exist when she went to college. She has built an audience of tens of thousands of followers in just two years. And she has created a business from scratch through commitment, curiosity, work ethic and a belief that she is capable of figuring things out.
Some of that belief is hers. And some of it was handed down. Which raises an interesting question:
What have you inherited — and how is it shaping the choices you’re making about what comes next?
What Career Reinvention Really Means
Something I see again and again in my work with accomplished women considering a career change or a career shift, is the belief that reinvention means starting over. A blank page, a clean slate, a leaving of the old career to build something entirely new. And while this concept can be very exciting, it’s never true. Because that’s not how reinvention works.
The paradox is this: choosing what feels right for you in this stage of your life — or alignment, as I like to call it — doesn’t require you to discard everything that came before. It asks you to know it well enough to choose what you want to carry forward.
Women I coach often believe that honouring one value means betraying another. That building a new chapter means leaving an entire career behind. That changing direction somehow invalidates everything they worked so hard to build. But it doesn’t. Career reinvention can be much more thoughtful than that — it might mean taking your strongest skills into a different industry, moving from leadership into advising, stepping from employment into entrepreneurship, or choosing meaningful work over advancement. Sometimes it simply means realizing you still love your field, but no longer want to work in it the way you once did.
And sometimes, it means realizing you don’t actually need a dramatic career change at all. What you need is clarity about what still fits — and what doesn’t.
Why Career Clarity Has to Come Before Career Change
When a woman comes to me feeling foggy — accomplished, capable, but no longer convinced the life or career she built still fits — the instinct is often to jump straight to the decision. I’ve seen it so many times: “I just want to quit my job and open a coffee shop!” says one client. “Sometimes I dream of leaving my corporate career and opening a B and B,” says another.
And invariably I caution quick decisions in these scenarios: Do you want to run a coffee shop or do you really want to BE in a coffee shop? I might query. Or, do you really dream of changing sheets, cleaning toilets and making breakfast every day? Or do you want someone else to do that for you? I might ask.
Ahhh… there’s the rub. They seek relaxation, less stress, less pressure and more comfort, connection and nurturing. That’s not a career change, that’s a holiday.
That’s why career clarity has to come first.
Before asking, What should I do next?, it helps to understand what you’re standing on. That means getting honest about:
What was inherited rather than consciously chosen? What beliefs about success, achievement, money, security or responsibility did you absorb long before you were old enough to question them?
What has actually nourished you? Not simply what you were good at, rewarded for or praised for — but what gave you energy, meaning and satisfaction.
What do you want to consciously carry forward? Which strengths, values, experiences, relationships and ways of working still belong in the next version of your career?
What are you ready to leave behind? What no longer fits, even if it once served you well?
These questions sound simple. But they are rarely easy. However, they do create a much more useful foundation for deciding what comes next.
There’s an important difference between moving toward something you genuinely want and simply trying to get away from something you no longer want. Burnout, frustration, boredom or dissatisfaction can tell you that something needs to change. They don’t always tell you what that change should be.
You’re Not Starting Over in Your Career
One of the biggest fears I hear from women contemplating a midlife career change is that they will somehow lose everything they have built. Their experience. Their credibility. Their earning power. Their professional identity. Their years of hard work.
But a new chapter doesn’t erase the ones that came before it. You bring so much with you: your judgement, your relationships, your resilience. You bring the difficult conversations you’ve learned to navigate, the mistakes you’ve made, the problems you’ve solved and the leadership muscles you’ve developed over time.
Most of all, you bring your wisdom and understanding of yourself.
Career reinvention isn’t about pretending your previous life didn’t happen. It’s about deciding what deserves to come with you.
The Chapter You’re Writing Is Still Connected to the Land
The next chapter of your life and work will always be connected to where you’ve been. It brought you here, and now you get to decide what happens next.
Perhaps the most useful questions aren’t What should I do next in my career? but simply: What do I want to keep? And what am I ready to choose on purpose?
That is the work of reinvention. You never start from nothing. It’s a turning of a page and starting from everything you already know, value, have experienced and have become — and choosing, with much greater intention, what comes with you.
If you’re in a season of career reinvention and you’re not sure what comes next, my free Alignment Equation is designed to help you begin there. It will help you get clearer about your values, priorities, goals and dreams so you can make your next career decision from a place of alignment rather than reaction.
Looking for more resources on this topic? Here are a few:
Susan Elford is a Leadership Coach and Business Mentor who especially loves to work with women who want it all: a fulfilling career or business while living a full and satisfying life. Through powerful career coaching and business mentorship to get their career or business to the next level, Susan helps her clients get real about their strengths and celebrate and promote them so they get more of what they want: success at work; success in business & success in life.
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