Is It Too Late to Change Careers at 35 or 40?
For many professionals in their thirties or forties, the thought of changing careers can feel like admitting defeat. You’ve likely invested over a decade building your reputation, rising through the ranks, and becoming ‘known’ for what you do. But the nagging feeling persists: this isn’t it. So, is it too late?
Not at all. The modern job landscape is far more flexible than it was two decades ago. Career paths are no longer linear, they’re modular, iterative, and often more rewarding when shaped around who you’ve become rather than who you were at 22. In fact, a growing number of people are choosing to make executive career decisions in their late 30s and early 40s, not because they failed, but because they’ve outgrown what used to fit.
The Psychology Behind Mid-Career Restlessness
Mid-career restlessness isn’t about being fickle. It’s often rooted in cognitive dissonance, the gap between who you are and the role you’re performing. Psychologist Erik Erikson referred to this as the “generativity vs stagnation” stage: a time when adults reassess their purpose and contribution. When your work no longer aligns with your evolving identity, discomfort builds.
This dissonance doesn’t always manifest as dissatisfaction. Sometimes it’s a quiet fatigue. A sense that you’re drifting. A recurring thought that your best energy is being spent on something that doesn’t matter to you anymore.
Why Guidance Matters When You’re Not Sure What’s Next
There’s a particular kind of uncertainty that emerges in your thirties or forties. It’s not the youthful confusion of not knowing what to do, it’s the sharper, more disorienting experience of no longer wanting what you’ve built. At this stage, decisions carry more weight. You might have a mortgage, a family, a certain level of status, which is precisely why so many people freeze. And yet, staying stuck is often riskier than making a move. What’s needed isn’t blind action, it’s structured reflection. That’s where working with an experienced career coach, like Michael Serwa, can provide real value. Not because they offer ready-made answers, but because they know how to ask the questions that cut through your noise. A good coach won’t push you to leap, they’ll help you see where you’re standing. The coaching process isn’t therapy, and it isn’t consultancy. It’s a mirror. A chance to test your assumptions, deconstruct your fears, and rebuild a vision of work that fits who you are now, not who you were ten years ago. When clarity emerges, momentum follows.
Burnout, Boredom or Something Deeper?
Burnout and boredom are often treated as separate issues, but in mid-career transitions, they’re usually two sides of the same coin. Burnout says, “I can’t do this anymore.” Boredom whispers, “I don’t want to.”
In both cases, what’s really happening is a misalignment between your work and your inner values. When that misalignment stretches too far, symptoms appear: procrastination, low engagement, and a creeping sense of meaninglessness. A shift isn’t always about escaping, it can be about re-engaging with something that makes sense.
What Career Change Really Means (It’s Not a Restart)
Changing careers in your thirties or forties is rarely a complete reset. More often, it’s a pivot. It means leveraging what you’ve already built, skills, insights, relationships, and applying them in a different context. Think of it as a career transition, not a demolition job.
The London job market, for example, has seen an uptick in demand for professionals who bring cross-industry experience. Employers increasingly value adaptability and perspective over linearity. Your previous decade isn’t wasted; it’s your unique differentiator.
Why So Many Professionals Feel “Off Track”
Feeling off track doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the wrong path, it might mean the path has changed. Success in your twenties often involves external validation: titles, salaries, promotions. But by your mid-thirties, the markers evolve. Fulfilment, purpose, autonomy, these take centre stage.
This is where many people struggle. They’ve achieved what they set out to do, but they feel strangely empty. The ladder they’ve climbed no longer leads to where they want to go. It’s not a crisis, it’s a recalibration.
The Role of Mindset in Reinvention
You can’t solve a career transition with strategy alone. Mindset matters. A belief that it’s “too late” can silently sabotage the process. Conversely, seeing this phase as a reinvention, rather than a resignation, changes the energy completely.
Jake Smolarek, a career coach in London, puts it this way: “A career change isn’t always about running from something broken. Often it’s about realigning with who you’ve become.” He argues that transformation starts when you stop asking “What’s wrong with my job?” and start asking, “Who am I becoming, and what does my work need to look like to match that?”
The success of any mid-career pivot depends less on strategy and more on self-permission
How to Avoid the Trap of Escaping into Anything
One of the biggest mistakes in mid-career pivoting is making impulsive decisions under pressure. If you’re feeling stuck or unfulfilled, it’s tempting to latch onto the next thing that promises relief, even if it’s poorly aligned.
This is why clarity precedes action. The most successful transitions aren’t reactive; they’re reflective. Escaping into anything may feel better in the short term, but it usually leads to another dead end.
Building Clarity Before Making the Jump
Finding clarity doesn’t always happen overnight, but it’s the only antidote to career confusion.
Clarity isn’t a luxury; it’s a prerequisite. Before you rewrite your CV or quit your job, slow down and define what you’re actually looking for. What energises you? What kind of problems do you want to solve? What kind of life do you want to live?
Tony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within, emphasises this: “It’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” But those decisions need to be made consciously, not out of frustration, but from alignment. Clarity protects you from jumping ship only to find yourself lost at sea.
A mid-career pivot isn’t about being lost. It’s about no longer pretending to be someone you’re not.
What a Career Coach in London Might Ask You First
True career design starts not with a job title, but with asking better questions about who you are and what matters most.
Working with a career coach in London doesn’t mean getting spoon-fed answers. In fact, most of the process involves deep questioning. You might be asked: What do you believe success looks like now? When do you feel most alive? Who are you when no one’s watching?
These aren’t easy questions, but they’re the right ones. They help you strip away the noise and get to the core of what matters. Good career design starts with knowing your own blueprint.
Career Resilience vs Career Hopping
Resilience is often misunderstood. It’s not about gritting your teeth through a job you’ve outgrown. It’s about having the self-awareness and agility to evolve when necessary. Hopping from one role to another without purpose isn’t resilience, it’s reaction.
According to an article in Harvard Business Review titled How to Build Career Resilience in Uncertain Times, true resilience involves cultivating a sense of agency, staying connected to purpose, and building a personal board of advisors who challenge your thinking. These tools don’t just help you survive a change, they help you grow through it.
Why Titles and Salaries Aren’t the Whole Story
Many professionals get trapped in what looks like success. They have impressive titles and enviable compensation, but they feel drained, disconnected, or underutilised. Chasing more of the same rarely solves the problem.
Richard Alderson, founder of Careershifters, explains: “Changing careers isn’t about finding the perfect job. It’s about moving towards a more meaningful version of work.” That doesn’t mean throwing logic out the window. It means recalibrating your definition of success to include meaning, energy, and alignment, not just prestige.
Why Fulfilment Replaces Ambition (And That’s OK)
There comes a point in many mid-career journeys where ambition itself starts to feel hollow. Not because you’ve lost your edge, but because the things that once drove you no longer excite you. That promotion you fought so hard for? It doesn’t land the same. The title sounds good, but it doesn’t resonate. This phase is often misread as burnout or laziness. But what’s really happening is a shift in values. You begin to realise that fulfilment has replaced ambition as your primary compass. You want to create, not just compete. To contribute, not just climb. Coaches like Michael Serwa, who work with high performers across industries, see this shift frequently. It’s not about settling, it’s about evolving. And that evolution often requires space, reflection, and the courage to admit that what once mattered… might not anymore.
When the Outer Success No Longer Matches the Inner Story
One of the hardest things to articulate in a career transition is the growing gap between external success and internal resonance. You show up, you deliver, you meet the metrics, but some part of you has already moved on. You feel like an actor playing a role that used to fit but now feels tight at the seams. This isn’t failure, it’s friction. And that friction is often the most reliable signal that change is not only needed but overdue. Redefining success means letting go of metrics that no longer serve you. It means being brave enough to build a version of work that feels congruent, even if it defies expectations. It’s not about dramatic reinvention. It’s about subtle recalibration. Moving towards work that doesn’t just look good, but feels right.
Realigning Career With Identity, Not Ego
There’s a subtle but important difference between ego-driven change and identity-driven evolution. Ego says, “I need to prove something.” Identity says, “I want to express something.”
The most sustainable career transitions come from identity. They’re less about compensation and more about congruence. If your work doesn’t feel like an extension of who you are, it will eventually wear you down.
As BBC Worklife explored in The Mid-Career Workers Pivoting to Dream Jobs, many mid-career professionals are choosing depth over height. They’re less interested in climbing and more focused on contributing. This isn’t settling, it’s evolving.
Final Thought: Mindset for Career Change in Your 30s or 40s
In your twenties, career growth is often about acceleration, promotions, raises, and performance metrics. It’s a race defined by speed and visibility. But something shifts as you move into your thirties and forties. Growth becomes less about height and more about depth. You begin to crave alignment over achievement, meaning over movement.
Changing careers in your thirties or forties isn’t an act of panic; it’s a signal of awareness. It’s not about giving up on what you’ve built; it’s about being honest enough to admit when what you’ve built no longer fits who you’ve become. The decision to shift, especially mid-career, requires more maturity than the decision to start. It takes clarity, courage, and the willingness to move from autopilot into authorship.
That’s where coaching can play a pivotal role, not as a shortcut or solution, but as a space for deeper reflection. The right coach doesn’t tell you what to do. They ask you the questions that help you remember who you are. They help you strip away titles, noise, and expectation, and reconnect with purpose. You don’t need someone to hand you a plan. You need someone to hold up a mirror.
Ultimately, a career pivot at this stage of life isn’t a step back, it’s often the most powerful step forward. Because it’s not driven by fear, but by insight. Not by proving yourself, but by knowing yourself. And if the road ahead feels uncertain, that’s probably a sign you’re finally asking the right questions.
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