Eight years ago, I walked across the stage at our National Sales Meeting to receive one of the biggest awards of my career.
Actually, it ended up being several awards.
Sales Rep of the Year.
Immunology Rep of the Year.
President’s Club (which came with an all expenses paid trip to Croatia for me and a +1!).
All based on my sales performance. Go me!
I smiled for the photos. Shook the hands. Collected my plaques.
And at some point later that night, in the middle of celebrations and yet another round of drinks, I remember thinking:
Is this it?
Not because I wasn’t proud.
I was.
These awards mattered to me.
For years, I’d worked incredibly hard to prove myself. I wanted to be seen as top talent. I wanted senior leadership to notice me. I wanted to move into a people management role.
And these awards felt like proof.
Proof that I was good enough.
Proof that people saw what I was capable of.
Proof that I was management material.
Proof that all of the extra effort had been worth something.
I had achieved exactly what I’d been working toward. Just as I knew I would.
I just thought it would feel different when I inevitably got there.
And then the world kept spinning
If I’m being honest, I think that’s the part I wasn’t prepared for.
You work toward something for years and, in your head, it becomes this enormous destination.
Then you get there.
People congratulate you.
Your name gets called.
You take the photo.
You celebrate.
And then...
Monday comes.
Nobody is still talking about your award three weeks later.
The new sales cycle starts.
The targets reset.
And because you performed so well in the last cycle, your targets get significantly higher. (My fellow sales people know this all too well).
Yesterday’s exceptional performance becomes today’s expectation. And what was once your ceiling, now becomes your floor.
Sooooo basically…..
What else you got?
I knew that was the nature of sales. I’d been in the game 8 years at that point.
But I don’t think I realized until then just how fleeting achievement could feel.
I’d spent so much time imagining what it would feel like and be like to get there.
Then I got there (and performed beyond what I could have even imagined in a single year!) and almost immediately, there was somewhere else to go.
So I did what high achievers are very good at doing: I started figuring out what came next.
Maybe you’ve had your own version of this?
Maybe yours wasn’t an award.
Maybe it was finally getting promoted to Director or VP.
Or hitting the salary you once thought would mean you’d made it.
Being hired by your dream company.
Getting the bonus.
Becoming a people leader.
Getting the office.
Going to Global.
Being invited into the room you spent years trying to get into.
And then you got there.
And it was...good. Fine. Okay?
Maybe even great!
But it didn’t fundamentally change how you felt.
You were still stressed.
Still thinking about work when you weren’t working.
Still looking toward the next thing.
Still wondering why a life that looked so successful from the outside didn’t feel quite as satisfying from the inside.
And that can be incredibly confusing. And frustrating if I’m being totally honest.
Because what are you supposed to do when you get the thing you said you wanted...
...and realize you still want something more?
This is where the guilt can creep in
Because nothing is necessarily wrong.
You have a good job.
You make good money.
You’ve built a career you’re proud of.
People respect you.
Maybe your younger self would be absolutely thrilled to know where you ended up.
So who are you to be dissatisfied?
Other people would kill to have your job. Your opportunities.
You worked so hard for this.
You should be grateful.
You should enjoy it.
You should stop looking for problems.
Maybe you’re just being unrealistic.
Maybe you’ll never be satisfied.
Maybe this is adulthood and you need to get over it.
So instead of getting curious about the feeling, you judge yourself for having it.
I know that feeling all too well.
When I had that moment at the NSM, I didn’t immediately decide my entire definition of success needed to change.
I didn’t dramatically quit my job.
I didn’t decide corporate life was a lie and move to a small remote island.
I told myself to enjoy the moment.
To appreciate what I’d accomplished.
And that I’d eventually start thinking about what came next.
For me, the next hill to climb was making the move from individual contributor to people leader. And in Big Pharma, that usually involves taking one of two paths:
Marketing or,
Training/Learning and Development
As a lifelong personal development junkie Training/L&D was a no brainer, and by then, I’d already started dabbling in coaching and fitness outside of work.
There was a part of me that wanted to believe I could eventually make a career out of both those things, but at that point, I wasn’t brave enough to bet on them yet.
Learning and development felt like the safer choice. A bridge.
I could stay in the corporate world I knew while getting closer to the work I was drawn to. I could teach, coach, facilitate AND develop people. I told myself I’d be building the skills and confidence I would need if I ever decided to do coaching full-time, so this move made sense.
It was smart. Strategic even (a nod to a boss that told me I wasn’t “strategic” enough. Cue eye roll).
Maybe this role would give me enough of what I was looking for that I wouldn’t need to leave corporate at all.
Because I sure as hell wasn’t ready to blow up the career I’d spent years building. Plus, the Big Pharma golden handcuffs are REAL.
Learning and development seemed like it could give me more of what I was looking for while still making sense on paper. And after 8 years in sales, there was so much I could learn which always appealed to me.
I could teach.
Develop people.
Coach.
Do work that felt more connected to the things I was becoming increasingly interested in.
Maybe this would be it. Maybe I just thought I wanted to be a coach but really L&D was my calling.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I would spend years doing some version of this mental gymnastics.
Trying to answer a growing question about my life by finding a different answer inside my career.
Maybe a different role.
Maybe leadership.
Maybe another company.
Maybe better boundaries.
Maybe if I could be successful without working myself into the ground, then it would feel different.
And to be clear, sometimes those changes really do matter.
A different boss can change your experience of work.
A role that’s better suited to you can change your experience of work.
More autonomy, better boundaries, meaningful projects, supportive leadership and fair compensation matter.
Sometimes the job really is the problem.
But sometimes you make those changes and the question is still there.
Is this it?
Maybe “Is this it?” isn’t a problem to get rid of
I think we treat dissatisfaction as evidence that something has gone wrong.
Especially when, objectively, our lives are good. Enviable. Fine.
We think we need a sufficiently terrible reason to question them.
Burnout.
A toxic workplace.
A layoff.
A horrible boss.
A health scare.
Some kind of crisis that gives us permission to say:
I don’t want to do this anymore.
But what if nothing terrible has happened?
What if you’ve simply changed? Or changed your mind?
What if the goals that made perfect sense at 25 don’t automatically get to decide what your life looks like at 35, 40 or 45?
What if you’re not ungrateful?
What if you’re just FINALLY paying attention?
Because there comes a point when “Can I do this?” stops being the most interesting question.
You’ve answered it.
You can.
You’ve built the career.
You’ve handled the pressure.
You’ve figured things out.
You’ve achieved things your younger self wanted desperately.
Maybe the question now is:
What do I actually want all of this success to be for?
Not what’s the next title?
Not how much more can I earn?
Not what would look impressive when I announce it on LinkedIn or slap it on my resume?
Not what am I capable of achieving if I push myself hard enough?
What do I want my life to actually feel like?
What do I want my days to contain?
Where else do I want to put my ambition?
Who am I when I’m not working?
What matters to me now that I don’t need another accomplishment to prove that I’m capable?
Those are much harder questions, obviously.
There isn’t a career ladder telling you which answer comes next.
Wanting more doesn’t have to mean blowing everything up
I think this is where a lot of career conversations lose people like us.
Because the story often becomes:
You realized your career wasn’t fulfilling, so you quit.
You followed your passion.
You started the business.
You moved across the world.
And, yes, I eventually did some of those things.
But that’s not what happened when I first started asking these questions.
It took years.
There were different roles.
Different companies.
Burnout.
Recovery.
Leadership.
Experiments outside of work.
Choices that moved me closer to what I wanted and choices that taught me what I didn’t.
I kept trying to understand what the feeling was telling me.
And I think that’s important.
Because “Is this it?” is a question, not an instruction.
It doesn’t automatically mean quit.
It doesn’t mean you chose the wrong career.
It doesn’t mean the last 15 years were a waste.
It doesn’t mean you need to sell everything and book a one-way ticket somewhere. Although you absolutely can!
And it doesn’t mean you need to become less ambitious.
It might simply mean the definition of success that got you here no longer aligns with the life you want now.
Achievement wasn’t the problem
I still love achieving things.
I enjoy having goals.
I like working hard at things that matter to me.
I like getting better.
I like seeing what I’m capable of.
I don’t think the answer is pretending we don’t care about success.
What changed for me was realizing that my career couldn’t be responsible for providing all of it.
My sense of accomplishment.
My identity.
My growth.
My purpose.
My validation.
My excitement.
My proof that I was doing life correctly.
That’s an enormous job to give a job.
And when work is the place where most of your ambition, energy and attention goes, it’s very easy for the rest of your life to become whatever fits around it.
Until one day you look at the career you’ve spent years building and realize:
I don’t necessarily want less from my career.
I want more from my life.
I wish I’d understood that distinction sooner.
Because wanting more from your life doesn’t make you ungrateful for the life you’ve built.
It doesn’t erase what you’ve accomplished.
And it doesn’t require you to know exactly what comes next.
Sometimes the first step isn’t making a change at all.
It’s allowing yourself to simply stop dismissing the question.
So if you’ve built a career you’re proud of and lately there’s been a quiet voice asking:
Is this really it?
Maybe you don’t need to silence it.
Maybe you need to get curious about what it’s trying to tell you.
- Samantha
Want help figuring out what’s actually going on?
I work 1:1 with high-achieving mid-career women who know something about work isn’t working anymore, but aren’t sure what needs to change.
We’ll figure out what’s actually making work feel so heavy, what you want instead, and what needs to change so you can make a life, not just a living.
“Still wondering why a life that looked so successful from the outside didn’t feel quite as satisfying from the inside.”
That says it all!