Updated June 2, 2025
If you’re feeling restless in your current role but can’t tell if it’s normal job dissatisfaction or a genuine sign you need to make a career change, this post is for you.
Here’s what I see in my tarot sessions every single week: brilliant women who know EXACTLY what they want to do next in their careers, but they’re frozen. They’re waiting for someone else to give them permission to start their career transition.
Sound familiar? You’re not alone, bestie.
The Real Reason You’re Hesitating (Spoiler: It’s Not Imposter Syndrome)
Let me pull a card that comes up constantly for my clients who are sitting on career transitions, business ideas, or bold professional moves: the 10 of Swords.
This card frequently comes up to represent our deepest fear about taking visible action: that we’ll be backstabbed, badmouthed, or become the subject of office gossip. That colleagues will undermine us. That we’ll face “ruin” of our reputation, or that everything we’ve built so far will “collapse” if we dare to step outside the prescribed path.
Here’s the brutal truth: these fears aren’t irrational. When you start owning your expertise, applying for stretch roles, or launching that side business, some people WILL talk. Some will try to diminish your success. Some will whisper that you’re “too ambitious” or “getting ahead of yourself.”
But here’s what the 10 of Swords also represents: the ending of letting other people’s potential judgment control your career trajectory.
Signs It’s Time for a Career Change (Beyond Just Feeling “Stuck”)
That restless feeling telling you to make a change is not just personal desire—it’s career intel from your subconscious.
I’ve made four major career transitions: teaching → content creation → marketing → product management → now running my own practice. Each time, that yearning showed up first. Each time, I had to choose between staying safe in a role that no longer fit or trusting that inner intelligence.
Here’s what I learned: your professional dissatisfaction is information about your growth opportunities.
When I felt constrained as a teacher, it wasn’t because I was ungrateful or didn’t love working with kids—it was because I could see gaps in how educational content was being created and wanted to make my own. When marketing felt limiting, it wasn’t because I was annoyed with the endless to-do lists (though I was) —it was because I understood a wider product strategy in ways that weren’t being utilized.
Your yearning to do something different often signals that you’ve outgrown your current role or that you can see solutions others haven’t noticed yet.
Nobody’s Coming to Invite You
In business school, they teach you that market opportunities exist in the gap between what currently exists and what people actually need. The same principle applies to your career.
Nobody’s going to hand you a formal invitation to:
- Apply for that director role
- Pitch your innovative solution to leadership
- Start that consulting practice
- Launch that product idea
- Speak up about the broken process everyone complains about
The permission you’re waiting for has to come from you first.
How to Turn Yearning into Strategic Action
Ancient Egyptian magical teachings emphasize that words have the power to create reality—but only when they’re specific, aligned, and true enough to us to manifest in the physical world.
Here’s my 3-step process for translating vague professional dissatisfaction into concrete career strategy:
Step 1: Get Uncomfortably Specific
Instead of “I want to do something more meaningful,” or “disappear to the woods and be a goblin” try:
- “I want to lead a team of 8-12 people building fintech products for underbanked communities”
- “I want to consult with B2B SaaS companies on making way better user onboarding strategies that set everyone up for success”
- “I want to run business development for a regenerative agriculture startup in my home state”
- “I want to relocate to a smaller town in Arizona and start a pottery studio business”
Step 2: Map Your Myth
Look at your seemingly random career experiences as building blocks of expertise:
- That retail job taught you customer psychology
- The nonprofit work showed you project management under constraints
- The corporate role gave you systems thinking at scale
What unique combination of skills do you have that others don’t? This is your competitive advantage.
Step 3: Accept the Learning Curve
Every career transition requires mastering things you’re not yet good at. I had to learn:
- Product analytics when I moved from marketing to product
- Financial modeling when I started advising startups
- Ancient Egyptian symbolism when I integrated tarot into business coaching
The gap between your vision and current skills isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. It’s what makes your eventual success remarkable.
The Social Risk is Real (…and Why You Should Do It Anyway)
When I left a secure product management exec role to become a tarot-reading business strategist, people had OPINIONS. Some colleagues questioned my judgment. Some whispered that I was having a midlife crisis. Some stopped taking my LinkedIn posts seriously.
But here’s what also happened:
- I landed a big ticket product consulting contract within three months
- I helped clients secure promotions and launch successful businesses
- I became known as the woo-woo person who helps high performers make MEANINGFUL strategic life transitions
The people who judge you for taking bold action usually do so because they don’t have the courage to pursue their own callings.
How to Position Your Career Change on Your Resume (Without Looking Scattered)
Before you touch your resume, hit record on your phone and just talk through your career story like you’re telling a friend. Walk through each role—the challenges you faced, what you actually learned, the problems you solved, the moments you felt most alive at work.
When I did this before my transition from product management to coaching, I discovered something crucial: The boring corporate bullet points I’d been using (“Led cross-functional teams to deliver products on time and under budget”) completely missed the compelling story (“I was the person who could translate between engineering’s technical constraints and the CEO’s wild visions, helping everyone feel heard while keeping us focused on what users actually needed”).
Listen to your recording or read the transcription. Circle the parts that make you lean forward, that have energy, that sound like someone you’d want to hire. Girl, that’s your real value proposition!
Then Apply These Strategic Frameworks:
1. Lead with the Value You Create, Not the Roles You’ve Held
Instead of: “Marketing Manager → Product Manager → Business Coach” Try: “Strategic leader who helps organizations solve complex problems through data-driven decision making and human-centered design”
2. Find the Thread That Connects Your Experience
My thread: “I help organizations and individuals bridge the gap between strategy and execution”
- Teaching: Translated complex concepts into actionable learning
- Content: Converted strategic vision into engaging user experiences
- Marketing: Aligned product value with customer needs
- Product: Connected business goals with user outcomes
- Coaching: Helps leaders integrate intuition with strategic planning
3. Use “Bridge” Language to Connect Seemingly Different Fields
- “Applied design thinking principles from product development to…”
- “Leveraged customer psychology insights from retail experience to…”
- “Used project management skills developed in nonprofit sector to…”
4. Frame Diverse Experience as a Strategic Advantage
“My unique combination of [skill A] and [skill B] allows me to [solve specific problem] that companies with traditional hires often struggle with.”
5. Include a “Career Philosophy” Statement
“I believe the most innovative solutions come from high-morale teams who are empowered to collaborate across functions.”
But these examples are just starting points, and you should not rely on them too much – because you ultimately want to stand out and tell your story. It’s the voice memo trick works because when we talk naturally, we automatically focus on the parts of our experience that actually matter: the challenges, the breakthroughs, the moments we made a real difference. Your resume should capture that energy, not bury it under corporate buzzwords.
Your Next Move: Strategic Permission-Granting
Try this practical exercise I use with clients:
- Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of someone who already believes in your vision
- Identify one skill you need to develop for your transition and commit to learning it this month
- Tell three people about your professional goal—specificity creates accountability
- Apply the “future self” test: make one decision today based on who you’re becoming, not who you’ve been
The Bottom Line
Every person currently shaping industries, leading companies, or creating positive change had to give themselves permission to start before anyone else believed in their vision.
Your yearning isn’t a luxury to indulge when everything else is perfect. It’s strategic intelligence about where your unique combination of skills and interests can create value in the world.
The 10 of Swords reminds us that yes, there will be challenges when you step into your power. But the alternative—staying stuck in professional situations that underutilize your gifts—is the real tragedy.
You don’t need permission to start. You need the courage to trust that your yearning is pointing toward something real.
Ready to turn professional dissatisfaction into strategic career moves? I offer tarot-guided strategy sessions that help ambitious women translate their yearning into concrete action plans. No fluff, no spiritual bypassing—just practical magic for real career challenges. Learn more here.
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