Ask Christa! How Can I Stop Feeling Like My Career is Going Nowhere? (S5E56)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! the place where you can ask questions about how to work through business challenges and workplace issues. I'm Christa Dhimo and today’s listener question continues our season’s theme of career growth, but this one is related to that nagging feeling many of us feel at different times in our careers: feeling like we’re going nowhere.

And hey—psst! if YOU’D like to submit YOUR question, head over to my show's site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H.

Listener Question

Here’s the listener question. Here’s the listener question. It’s a big one and I think many of our early career listeners may relate to it:

“I’m 29 years old. I have an undergrad degree in accounting and a masters in management that I earned as an add-on to my bachelors. 

That was six years ago. I got my dream job in a mid-sized accounting firm and had big plans to develop and grow there, but a year later the pandemic hit, which slowed things down. A lot. I was able to complete my hours to test for my CPA and successfully passed, which was good, but a year after that, and due to the slow recovery of the business, I was laid-off during a restructuring. 

It took a year to find my next job. 

With just over two years of experience in financial analysis, jobs were scarce even with my credentials. I took an admin position in a small financial management firm, and I’m still there. I also manage a portion of their cost management analysis, and I support the CFO with special projects—but the “support” is really that I sit in meetings and take notes as others decide how the projects will go. I am definitely learning, but I’m three years into this role, and that means I have more experience as an admin while supporting “special projects” than I do as a financial analysis professional, which is what my education and professional certification is for. It’s also what I really love and want to do. 

The job market is bad right now, and despite the lack of challenge in this role, there’s no way I could find a better cultural fit. They pay me well, the benefits are good, and people are great to work with.

BUT, I’m almost 30 years old and I’m afraid I’m going nowhere, or at least nowhere near where I want to be. I feel like I’m moving farther away from what I actually want to do, which is to manage a financial planning and analysis team in a few years and eventually become a CFO later on in my career. 

My manager and I have talked about me taking on bigger projects here, and they have a plan to promote me to a Senior Business Analyst position right after the new year. The role would put me ahead of where I left off when I was laid off a few years ago. The paperwork is in place, and we have started the interview process for my backfill.  

But I’m afraid something else will go wrong and change the course of my career, and I can’t seem to break this feeling that I’m washed up even at my age. There aren’t many I can talk to about this. I appreciate your insights, and thank you for giving us a platform to ask any questions we have about work issues. How can I break the feeling that I’m going nowhere?”

The Concept of Going Nowhere…

First, you’re welcome, and I hope EVERYONE considers submitting their questions and concerns. That’s exactly why I started this podcast—definitely NOT to go viral, but to help people deal with the day to day challenges of work life.

Remember—I also offer additional resources in every episode so that you have more available to you afterward. 

Second: the concept of going nowhere is a tough one to break because it usually starts with a concern that is soon fortified or made true due to various events-- most often being out of our control. Then as we try to work through the career setbacks, we start to think about and compare ourselves to where we MIGHT have been had the setbacks not occurred, and soon we're stuck in our thinking. And that's usually where we're stuck-- not in our careers, and not because we're going nowhere, but because we've somehow created a truth in our minds that we are in fact going nowhere. 

But let's shift that and start thinking that “going nowhere” is simply a concept—and that’s not to diminish or belittle how bad it feels to have ambitions and feel you just can seem to get them going. The feeling of being stuck and “going nowhere” is real, but it’s based on a concept, so let’s talk about how to break the CONCEPT of going nowhere. Because from what I read with our listener, they’re far away from going nowhere. In fact, in spite of all the setbacks, they’re just getting started with a few years’ of work experience and A LOT of years of life experience behind them.

That’s Not Nothing.

Lifting Your Head Up to Breathe…

Often times the best thing you can do for yourself when you’re feeling stuck is to come up for air, as the saying goes. Give yourself space to BREATHE and GAIN PERSPECTIVE. Most times people who feel their careers are going nowhere are in a zone where things are just taking longer than they expected. Now YES—there are instances where people get stuck in their careers, and without examining where they are and where they want to go, it’s likely they will be stuck, and often being stuck brings with it the feeling of going nowhere… for obvious reasons.

But what I’m hearing from this listener—or reading—is what I hear from a lot of people in their early and mid-careers; some are even mid and late career, where there is stagnant growth of opportunities in an organization for-real there aren’t a lot of opportunities to get to a next step. That happens. But that’s not what I’m understanding to be the case from our listener.

What I understand from our listener is that a lot of unfortunate setbacks occurred within the first two years of their career, one after the other, which caused a lot of understandable caution, some understandable career anxiety, and some likely disbelief and reticence about whether they will get back onto the track they believe they should be on. AND… it sounds like their company agrees and is making room for a change and is ready to develop our listener and get them beyond the role they were in when they were laid off. That’s real, and it’s FORTUNATE, and our listener has earned this opportunity. 

Trust Takes Work and Strength… (but it’s time)

Now it’s time for our listener to trust it a bit more, though. Take some of the energy away from worrying about whether you’re going somewhere, and put it toward preparing for the somewhere you are already moving toward. Lift up your head. Move away from the last few years. Take a deep breathe. Stretch out a little, and trust what you know and see: the paperwork has concluded. They are interviewing for your backfill. You are being promoted into a role ahead of where you were a few years ago. It sounds to me that by February of next year, you’ll be right where you would have been had you not experienced the calamities that occurred, or perhaps even slightly ahead. I think what you’re experiencing is the habit of dealing with disappointment after many setbacks, and that fear of going nowhere is real. Now it's time to break that habit and work through your fear.  Your present world is INFORMED by your past experiences, but shouldn’t be RULED by it. And your future deserves all the openness you can give it. So again, take a step back, take a deep breath, stretch out a bit and reset your mindset.

For our listener, breaking the feeling that they’re going nowhere may be as straightforward as taking an objective look at where they’re at right now. Because it’s definitely not.. nowhere.

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included an article from Allied One Source. It’s from January 2025 called “Break Career Stagnation: 7 Ways to Grow Professionally,” and it includes links and formally-cited resources (and you know how much I love citations from research when it comes to business matters!).  The topics they cover are practical AND easy to apply. 

Next up: an article from The Muse, which could be a valuable resource for those seeking additional information and support when job seeking. The article is “3 Realistic things you can do when your career isn’t living up to your expectations.” It was updated in June 2020, but remains timeless, focused on ways to determine if you’re on the right path, the importance of resisting the urge to compare yourself to others, and the importance of living up to your own expectations within the context of what’s achievable and when. 

And of course, I included a peer-reviewed and evidence-based papers that highlight research associated with barriers to career development as well as obstacles to career progression. The first is from Luwei & Huimin from 2024 called “From jobs to careers: drivers and barriers to career development in emerging labor markets,” and published in Frontiers in Sociology. The model they created and tested is very complex, but the gist of the paper holds true: that career trajectory and growth include a lot of factors, from psychological and social to economic and educational. The paper also explores how career maturity keeps setbacks—and possible feelings of going nowhere—in perspective. 

I would skim the introduction and go deep when a phrase feels relatable, and maybe explore some of the literature they reviewed. This isn’t to turn things into homework; rather, it’s to offer empirical evidence and a more scientific approach to learning about the feeling your career is getting stuck, and even going nowhere, and how to manage it. 

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Questions

And there it is, Episode 56 of Season 5 focused on Career Growth! 

You can submit YOUR question on my show’s site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H, where you will see all my episodes listed based on category and season. While your there—sign up for my More Answers… newsletter, where you will receive additional content on Sunday nights to set you up for the work week. 

As always, thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!