"Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes”
Carl Jung
“There is a song stuck in my head. Has been for months, actually. Not because I like The Clash. Because the question haunts me every Sunday night, somewhere between the silence that settles over the house and the moment I finally turn off the light. Should I stay or should I go?
I am 41. I have a good job. A title that sounds impressive at dinner parties. A salary that covers the mortgage, the school fees, the annual holiday that we almost cancelled last year because things got complicated. By every external measure, I have made it. And yet.
And yet I wake up on Monday mornings with something that feels less like motivation and more like obligation. I show up. I perform. I hit my numbers. But there is a version of me, I can feel her, who used to do this work with fire in her chest. That version is quieter now. Harder to find. So, the question gets louder. "Is this it? Is this what I built my career for?”
She stopped there. And in that silence, I recognized everything.
Because I have sat across from that question more times than I can count. Not always in those exact words. Sometimes it arrives as irritability. Sometimes as envy of someone who seems to have found their thing. Sometimes as a quiet, persistent flatness that no amount of achievement seems to lift.
It is one of the most honest questions a leader can ask. And one of the most frightening.
The hunger that will not be quiet
I call it a purpose gap. The distance between the work you are doing and the work you feel called to do. Most of the leaders I work with roll their eyes the first time they hear language like that. Purpose. Calling. It sounds like something from a wellness retreat they would never attend.
But here is the thing about a purpose gap. It does not care whether you believe in it. It shows up anyway. In the flatness of your enthusiasm. In the way you check your phone during meetings you used to find fascinating. In the speed at which Sunday evening turns dark.
Viktor Frankl wrote that the primary human drive is not pleasure, nor power, it is meaning. I have seen that truth play out in coaching room after coaching room.
This is not burnout. Burnout is exhaustion. This is something different. This is a woman who still has energy, still has ambition, but cannot find the right outlet for it anymore. Like a current with nowhere to flow. That is the gap. And once you feel it, you cannot unfeel it.
The trap that looks like ambition
Here is what I see most often. And it is uncomfortable to name. Many of the leaders I work with have been here before. Not this exact job, this exact city, this exact restlessness, but this feeling. And more than once they have responded to it the same way. A new role. A new challenge. A new beginning. And for a while, it works. The novelty feeds the hunger. The challenge keeps them sharp.
Until it does not.
The question I always ask, gently, and without judgment, is this: “what are you looking for in a new role that you have not yet found in yourself?”
It tends to land in silence. Because sometimes the restlessness is not about the role at all. Sometimes it is about being very good at seeking change as a way of avoiding stillness. As a way of outrunning a question that has not yet been answered.
The question of who you actually are, underneath the ambition?
The things you are too busy to hear
I rarely meet a leader who has time to think. Really think. The calendar is a fortress. Back to back from eight until six, then dinner, then the children, then the emails that should have been answered yesterday. Productivity performed at such velocity that the inner voice cannot get a word in.
And that, in my experience, is not always an accident. Busyness is one of the most socially acceptable forms of avoidance we have ever invented. It looks like discipline. It looks like commitment. It looks like someone who has their priorities straight.
But sometimes, not always, but sometimes, it is armour. A way to not sit with the deeper career questions that have no clean answer. Because those questions are uncomfortable. Because they ask something of you that you are not sure you are ready to give.
- “What do I actually want?"
- "What am I genuinely good at, versus what I have been rewarded for?"
- "What would I be doing if the money were not the deciding factor?"
- "Who and what is worthy of my energy?"
- "What can I uniquely do that the world needs?”
Most leaders I work with have not given themselves enough silence to find out.
The fear underneath the fantasy
And then there is the fear. The one that does not make it into performance reviews or LinkedIn posts.
For my client, it was her family. The move three years ago. Not because they wanted to uproot the children, not because her partner had always dreamed of this city. They moved because of her career. And they came with her, graciously, loyally, with a kind of love she admitted she had not properly acknowledged.
To ask that of them again, another transition, another set of schools, another circle of friends to rebuild from scratch, felt like a withdrawal from an account she was not sure still had enough in it. And so she stayed. And the question got louder. And she resented the staying a little, which made her feel guilty, which made her work harder to perform gratitude for what she had.
I hear versions of this story every week. It is an exhausting cycle. And a very private one.
Does the dream job actually exist?
I want to be honest with you here. Because I think the idea of the dream job, the role that ignites you every morning, where purpose and pay align perfectly, where the culture is healthy and the leadership is inspiring, is largely a fiction.
A composite fantasy assembled from our best moments at work and our most optimistic projections about what else is possible.
But that does not mean you settle. It means you get more precise.
NOT: what is the perfect job?
BUT: what are the two or three things that, if present, make the work feel like yours?
For my client it was autonomy over how she got results. The sense that what she was building actually mattered beyond the quarterly numbers. And working with people she genuinely respected, who challenged her without diminishing her.
That is a more useful compass than chasing a fantasy.
What I ask every leader who sits across from me
I ask them to sit with the question rather than react to it. That is harder than it sounds. Every driven, problem-solving, forward-moving instinct wants to convert discomfort into a decision. Into a plan. Into action. But the discomfort is not a signal to escape. It is data. It is asking something. Not about the job. About you. Because here is what I know after years of doing this work.
The role might genuinely not be right. That is a real possibility and it deserves honest examination. But no role, not the most beautifully designed one, will fix the gap that has been outsourced to career moves. That gap closes through a different kind of work. Inner work. The slower, less-linear, uncomfortable kind.
And once you do that work? Then you can make a clearer decision about staying or going. From a place of knowing yourself rather than fleeing yourself.
That is the difference between a career change and a breakthrough.
The question I am leaving you with
If you recognize yourself in any of this, the Sunday night weight, the performance without presence, the hunger for something you cannot quite name, I want to ask you something.
NOT: should you stay or should you go?
BUT: what is the question underneath that question?
Because in my experience, the surface question is rarely the real one. The real one is deeper. Quieter. A little more tender. And it is worth the discomfort of hearing it.
This is where the work begins...
A question for reflection: If you sat quietly with yourself today, instead of asking yourself "should I stay or should I go?" consider asking yourself "what is the question underneath that question?"
Frequently asked questions
High-performing employees often face unique challenges that can erode their motivation. One significant issue is the lack of recognition and reward for their efforts. When their hard work goes unnoticed, they may feel undervalued and unappreciated, leading to a decline in their drive to excel.
- Fear of failure
- Negative news and people
- Inaction
- Living in the past or in the future
So how do you motivate? It turns out the brain has a built-in reward system that lights up when five key needs are met:
- control
- certainty
- connection
- influence
- consistency
Moving forward together
As a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, I work with leaders who are navigating exactly this kind of crossroads, not because they have failed, but because they are ready to lead from a deeper place. If this resonated, let us have a conversation.
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