Letting Go of "Recruiter"

For more than twenty years, if you asked me what I did, the answer was easy. Recruiter. Headhunter. The person who loved making the match between a hiring team and the right candidate.

It wasn't just what I did. It was who I was.

So when it came time to let that go, I thought it would be simple. I'd been coaching alongside the recruiting work for years already. The shift made sense on paper. I even believed I was ready.

Then I spent the better part of a year proving I wasn't.

I dabbled. I went back and forth. I told myself I'd do both, just in different proportions. I changed my mind more times than I'd like to admit, sometimes in the same week. Every time I got close to letting go, something in me grabbed the wheel back.

Looking back, I wasn't confused about what I wanted. I was grieving an identity I'd spent two decades building. That takes longer to release than a decision does.

What finally shifted things wasn't a single moment. It meant I had to really get honest with myself. Not about what I should do, but about who I actually was now, and what I wanted to offer the people I worked with going forward. Once I let myself answer that question for real, the rest got a lot less complicated.

Of course, I broke out my trusted vision exercise to help me get clear on what this new direction would look like. If you know me, you know how I love that vision exercise! But strangely enough, it wasn't landing the way it always did in the past. Turns out it was built for a different career stage.

So I rebuilt it. Same idea: get clear on where you're headed before you try to figure out how to get there. But sharper, and built for exactly this kind of moment, the one where you know something has shifted, but you're not sure yet what comes next.

If you're in that place yourself, wondering what your next chapter looks like, that's exactly where I'd start.

https://www.daretobedeliberate.com/the-next-chapter-vision