The Myth of the Linear Life: How Storytelling Helps You Navigate Career Transitions and Midlife Reinvention
We’ve all heard the same tidy story about how life “should” go:
🎓 Get the degree.
💼 Land the job.
📈 Climb the ladder.
🏖️ Retire.
But let’s be honest—very few of us are living that story.
In fact, research from the University of Queensland shows that the average person will have three to seven careers in their lifetime. Not jobs. Careers. Entire identity-level reinventions.
I’ve already lived at least four: TV producer. Political content creator. Global storyteller at Airbnb. And now, Story Coach & Consultant.
So if your path feels twisty, messy, or unfinished? You’re not behind. You’re right on time.
Midlife Career Change: The “Looking Up” Moment
On a recent episode of the ACT3 Podcast with India Gary-Martin, we talked about what I call the looking up moment—especially common in midlife.
It’s that pause where you suddenly think:
👉 What story am I actually living?
👉 Is it mine, or someone else’s?
👉 Do I even like it?
It’s not just nostalgia. It’s not a crisis. It’s clarity. 😮💨
Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have for navigating these moments, because it allows us to make meaning from our past, anchor into the present, and imagine what’s possible for the future.
As I shared on the podcast:
“Story is all around us. Story is in us. Story is us. When we stop consuming everyone else’s narratives and pause to reflect on our own, we step out of autopilot and into authorship.”
Reframing Your Career Story: From Contamination to Redemption
Researchers call this shift reframing from a contamination narrative to a redemption narrative.
Contamination Narrative: “Things started good, they ended bad, and now everything is ruined.”
Redemption Narrative: “Things started hard, but they’re getting better. I’m still writing this story.”
I’ve lived both.
When I was laid off from my dream job at Airbnb in 2020, I remember sobbing in a park, thinking my entire identity had been stripped away. That moment could have been a contamination story. Instead, I made it the start of a redemption story: not the time I lost my job, but the time I found myself. 🌟
That reframe opened the door to becoming a Story Coach—a career I never would have discovered if I’d stayed in autopilot.
Why Storytelling and Autobiographical Reasoning Build Resilience
This isn’t just feel-good talk. Research backs it up.
A study by Jennifer Pals Lilgendahl and Dan McAdams found two storytelling patterns that are directly linked to greater wellbeing and resilience, especially in midlife:
✨ Positive Processing: The ability to find growth in difficult experiences. People who used this lens reported less anxiety and greater life satisfaction.
🌀 Differentiated Processing: The ability to see how one experience helped you grow in multiple ways—becoming stronger and more compassionate and more creative. This kind of reflection was especially powerful when applied to painful chapters.
Even after controlling for personality traits and demographics, these narrative patterns were stronger predictors of wellbeing.
So it’s not just about what happened. It’s about how you choose to tell the story.
Midlife Reinvention Story: Sole’s Transformation
In the ACT3 conversation, I shared the story of my client Sole.
She came to me after leaving corporate, believing her only option was to contort herself back into a job she didn’t want. Through reflection and mapping her career chapters, she realized the thread running through all her experiences was her love of designing cultural travel experiences.
Once she gave herself permission to claim that, she launched her own consultancy, Hey Sole, helping people create transformative, culture-rich journeys.
Her story went from: “I have to go back to what’s safe” to “I get to build a career around what lights me up.”
That’s the power of narrative reframing.
Tools for Career Reflection and Clarity
So how do you actually do this work yourself? Here is a free tool I created to help you reflect, reframe, and reimagine your own story.
📝 Career Chapter Map Worksheet
Your career isn’t just a resume. It’s a story with chapters. This worksheet helps you:
Map your career chapter by chapter, starting from your very first paying job
Reflect on what you liked (or didn’t) about each stage
Identify themes, lessons, and turning points that shape your compass moving forward
You Are in a Story Right Now
Here’s the truth: you are in a story right now.
It might feel unfinished, messy, or uncertain—but that’s not failure. That’s what every great story looks like in the middle.
You get to decide if it’s a contamination story or a redemption story. You get to choose the title of your next chapter.
As I said on the ACT3 podcast:
If you’re navigating a career transition, midlife reinvention, or simply ready to reframe your story, here’s where to start:
🎧 Listen to the ACT3 Podcast episode
📝 Download the Career Chapter Map Worksheet
🔮 Try the Story-Based Time Travel Meditation
Your story is still unfolding. Let’s write it with intention.
