Moon Career Company

“I have no regrets.”

It sounds beautiful in a song.

In real life, for most of us, it isn’t actually true.

Which is where many career conversations begin in my work.

Regret goes by many names.

Sometimes it sounds like
“I feel time is passing so quickly.”

Sometimes
“I wish I’d made a change years ago.”

Sometimes
“I cannot spend another year in the same place.”

Sometimes
“Maybe it is still possible to change careers in my 50s.”

Sometimes
“I want to set an example for my daughters.”

Sometimes
“At the end, what will I say I have achieved?”


Regret about something done.
Something not done.
Something that may never be done.

Or the fear that one day it might be too late to do it.

Regret sits in the background of many successful careers (and probably many lives too).

It makes us human.

It also makes us better by looking back at what might have been.

By making us feel worse today, it pushes us to do better tomorrow.

Most people don’t come to coaching to erase regret.

They come because they don’t want to carry the same one forward.

Apparently perspective lasts only as long as snow.

Skiing has always been my thinking time.

From slow button rides growing up to heated six-seater lifts nowadays, it’s impossible for the mind not to fly a little under the sun, snow, and the perfect beauty of a slope.

This year it coincided with my birthday, which brings reflection by default.

Funny how things look smaller from the top of a mountain.
And, with another year added, too.

Even perfection feels optional (including in skiing).

Perspective is a very persuasive thing.

Both altitude and time change the scale of things.

And somehow, I seem to forget this and relearn it every winter.

When senior opportunities aren’t visible, the rules change.

One of the harder conversations this week was with a client who is exceptional at what she does.

Senior, highly technical, thoughtful, and introverted.

A career built on a reasonable assumption: do the work well, and the results will speak for themselves.

And for a long time, they did.
Until redundancy.

Then came a sense of disorientation - caught off guard by the market she found herself in, and by how different the rules felt once she stepped outside.

It is tough right now. Much tougher than people expect.

Roles are fewer. Timelines are longer.

And the more senior the role, the less visible opportunities.

At that level, many roles are discussed informally - long before they’re advertised, if they ever are.

This is where things became particularly uncomfortable for her.

She doesn’t lack capability.
But her career had never required her to be visible in that way.
Until now.

Networking felt unnatural.
Almost unfair - especially as losing her job was not down to performance.

In this market, networking isn’t a nice-to-have.
It is how senior opportunities move. Not only now – but now more than ever.

Not through applications.
Through conversations.
Through proactively putting yourself out there.

It’s learnable. And, when approached thoughtfully, it doesn’t require becoming someone you’re not.

It’s about access to the conversations where decisions are already forming.

An uncomfortable truth for some, but a truth nonetheless.

January brought a lot of conversations with people navigating organisational change and uncertainty.

And a noticeable difference in how they were experiencing it.

Some people remain relatively steady, even when work feels unsettled.

They don’t have more confidence or more information about what happens next.
At least not about the change itself.

But they do seem to have a clearer sense of themselves - they don’t seem to be starting their thinking from scratch.

At some point they’ve already thought about some of the basics:
who they are at this stage of their working life,
the kinds of roles or environments where they do their best work,
how work itself is changing, and where that might realistically take them.

They’ve usually also thought about less obvious possibilities.

They don’t have a detailed plan for every scenario.
More a reference point.

Research supports this. People who have articulated some sense of career direction - even loosely - tend to experience less anxiety during periods of uncertainty.

The future doesn’t becomes clearer, but their relationship to it does – they feel more in control, whatever direction events take. A sense of agency is there.

Interestingly, the same thinking helps when uncertainty resolves favourably for them too.
When people stay, they tend to do so more deliberately - shaping the role, the environment, and the work around what they already know matters to them.

In moments like these when calm cannot come from certainty, it comes from awareness. From having done some thinking in advance - which puts us a step ahead.

Serendipidog: a story of spectacular failure.

Our dog was bred to be a sprinter. Her grandfather was the world champion.

That was the plan. Her purpose and measure of success.

She was terrible at it.
Spectacularly so.

So much so that she was put up for adoption before her second birthday.

Given her pedigree, she was meant to love speed, competition, and routine.

Instead, she froze at the track, turned around without competing, and made it very clear this whole sprinting thing was not her idea of a good career - or life.

Fast forward.
She lives with us now.

Her current “career” involves slow walks, warm rooms, long naps, and watching the world from the sofa.

She’s very committed to it.
And excellent at it.

Nothing about her changed.
Just the environment.
And the standards she was being measured against.

I caught her earlier today, stretched out on the floor, fast asleep on a cushion she’d stolen from the sofa.
We laughed. She knows where her strengths lie.

No grand life lesson in this - but it did cross my mind how underperformance might not be about ability, but about being in the wrong role.

Life does feel better when you find your place.

Even if, realistically, the upgrade rarely includes a fireplace and unlimited naps.

Sometimes staying is the change.

Tax return this month sent me back to last January.

I had just announced my new business.
A colleague of an old friend got in touch - and became one of the very first clients I worked with.

He came carrying a heavy sense that something had to change, without knowing what.
Eighteen years of climbing the ladder in renewable energy.
Global roles.
A solid career.

But the same questions kept resurfacing.
A feeling that he wasn’t fully in control of his career anymore.

There was a strong conviction that regaining that sense of control would come from knowing what to change - and then changing it.

We worked together for a while.

And he did regain a sense of control.

What surprised him was how.

It came from staying.

He didn’t talk himself into it.
And it wasn’t because it was the “safe” option.

He took time to remind himself of who he is, what matters to him at this stage of his career, and what was really behind that persistent restlessness.

He explored the options properly and saw how to approach his current role differently – as a place with far more room for growth than he had assumed.

He came full circle.
Same place. But with the sense of it being the right place.

No more mental energy spent replaying the doubts.
Instead, focus - on making a difference where he was.

He’s still there.
And that sense of control is too.

This wasn’t an unusual outcome.

Career coaching doesn’t always end somewhere new.

But it does end in clarity.

And in calm - in knowing, with confidence, this is the right place for you to be.

This first week back after the holidays has a way of revealing things we didn’t register during the year-end rush.

Usually just small signals that appear differently when the pace slows and you step back into work with a clearer mind.

The same inbox.
The same meetings.
The same responsibilities.

But perhaps you’re not returning as the exact same person who left a few weeks ago.

Sometimes it’s a change in what energises you.

Sometimes the realisation that your motivation isn’t what it used to be.

Or that something you parked in the background has become harder to ignore.

January doesn’t create these changes - it just makes them more visible.
The contrast offers perspective.

If you’ve caught a small glimpse of that change this week - a thought, a feeling, a dip in motivation – you are not alone.
It’s far more common than we tend to admit.

See what it begins to reveal in time.

What is one thing you avoided last year?

Not out of laziness.

Or lack of ambition.

But because it felt uncomfortable, uncertain, or easier to postpone “until later”.

In many coaching conversations last year people spoke about feeling stuck.

But very often, they weren’t stuck because they didn’t know what to do.

They were stuck because they were avoiding the one thing that would have brought clarity:

A conversation they didn’t want to have.

An honest look at a role that no longer felt right.

A question they kept circling around, but never asked themselves honestly.

A decision they sensed was coming, but kept postponing.

Avoidance is rarely about the task itself.

It’s usually about what the task represents:

A recalibration of identity.

A risk to security.

Letting go of an expectation.

Stepping outside what’s familiar.

Admitting a possibility.

And yet, the things we avoid tend to hold the most information.

Like small catalysts that, once faced, change how we see the bigger picture.

So as new year starts, one reflection worth considering is:

What did you avoid in 2025?

And what might it be trying to tell you?

No need to resolve it yet.
Notice it.
Name it.

See what further thinking it unlocks for 2026.

Happy New Year!

Does courage always have to come before action?

We often talk about courage as something bold and decisive.
As if courage must come first - and action follows.

But what if it works the other way around?

In my work, and in my own life, it often happens in reverse:

Courage rarely leads.
Curiosity does.
Courage grows along the way.

Most real change doesn’t begin with a bold decision.
It begins with a small pull of curiosity: “What if I explored this… just a little?”

That’s usually the moment things start to move.
Curiosity gives you permission to explore without committing, to follow an instinct before you fully understand it.
Your view widens. Just enough that the familiar no longer feels inevitable.
Clarity starts to form, and courage grows alongside it, almost as a by-product.

There is something liberating about this.
Especially for high achievers who believe they must be brave before they can move.
Curiosity removes that pressure.
“Just look here for a moment,” it says. Nothing more.

As the year slows down, instead of setting big goals or waiting for courage, you could decide to follow that nudge.
No plan needed.
No courage required.
Just follow the thread.

Curiosity will take care of the rest.

Wishing you a season of rest, reflection and the kind of clarity that sparks something new.

Merry Christmas

&

HAPPY NEW CAREER.

We often talk about AI as a threat.
What if that’s the least interesting way to think about it?

One of the most memorable events I attended this year was a London Business School webinar on the future of work.

One idea I kept coming back to was framing AI less as a threat to employability, and more as a way of reinforcing it.

It’s unlikely AI will replace everything we do.

But what if it replaces the parts that drain us most?

Administrative load.
Repetitive tasks.
Process-driven work that keeps us away from creativity, critical judgment and insight.

If technology absorbs more of that operational weight,
our value shifts even more clearly towards what only humans can offer.

Not just more productivity, but more substantive contribution.

More work that fits who we are at our best,
not who we became under pressure and pace.

For the mid-career professionals I work with,
this reframes the future from fear to possibility.

Then the key question becomes:

· What could your career look like if more of your time went into work that energises you?

· What if progress creates space, not pressure?

· What if the future frees us to do more of what we’re uniquely here to do?

As the year comes to an end, this feels like the perspective worth holding onto.

Less anxiety about what might disappear.
More curiosity about what might become possible.

The future of work isn’t only about technology.

It’s about the space it may create - for clarity, contribution, and for many, a long-overdue move towards self-actualisation.