Happen To Your Career - Meaningful Work, Career Change, Career Design, & Job Search

Between a job that demands 10+ hours a day, a family that needs you the moment you walk through the door, and a never-ending list of obligations, finding the space to even think about what you want next feels impossible. But it doesn't have to be.

You asked, and we're answering.

In this special Q&A episode, we're tackling one of the most common questions we hear from people all over the world: how do you make a career change when you have zero time and energy left to give?

We'll break down exactly how real people, just like you, have made meaningful career progress without overhauling their entire schedule or waiting for the perfect moment that never seems to come.

What you'll learn

• Why meaningful career change happens in the margins — and how to find those hidden pockets of time in your day
• How one engineer working 10–11 hour days used a single lunch hour to land a new role
• Why knowing when you do your best work is the secret to making faster progress with less effort
• The two questions you need to ask yourself before taking any other step toward a career change
• How to stop waiting for the "perfect" amount of time and start building real momentum today

Our book, Happen To Your Career: An Unconventional Approach To Career Change and Meaningful Work, is now available on audiobook! Visit  happentoyourcareer.com/audible to order it now! Visit happentoyourcareer.com/book for more information or buy the print or ebook here!

Want to chat with our team about your unique situation? Schedule a conversation

Free Resources

What career fits you? Join our free 8 Day Mini Course to figure it out!

Career Change Guide - Learn how high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over.

Related Episodes

1. Figuring Out Your Perfect Career Match (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)
2. Changing Careers (When You Don't Know Your Next Job Title) (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)

Switching industries doesn't mean starting over. The skills you've built over 20+ years are transferable, and learning to translate them is the difference between feeling stuck and landing a better job in a completely new field. This episode walks through why your industry isn't where your value actually lives, how to reposition transferable skills for any new field, and the 3-step framework high performers use to make a career pivot without losing the seniority, salary, or recognition they've already earned.

What you'll learn

• Why most high performers stay stuck in their current industry, and the belief that's keeping them there
• The functional vs. industry-specific way to think about your skills (and why this shift is the unlock for any career pivot)
• The 3-step framework for making a career pivot without starting over: taking inventory of your transferable skills, finding functional overlap in your target industry, and building your bridge story
• Glenn's story: how a 20-year healthcare sales veteran pivoted into a Regional Director role at a values-aligned company after a life-changing diagnosis
• Taj's story: how multiple pivots across athletics, music, and coaching prove the through-line isn't the industry — it's how you want to live
• The reframe that changes everything about how hiring managers in a new industry see your background

Our book, Happen To Your Career: An Unconventional Approach To Career Change and Meaningful Work, is now available on audiobook! Visit  happentoyourcareer.com/audible to order it now! Visit happentoyourcareer.com/book for more information or buy the print or ebook here!

Want to chat with our team about your unique situation? Schedule a conversation

Free Resources

What career fits you? Join our free 8 Day Mini Course to figure it out!

Career Change Guide - Learn how high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over.

Related Episodes

1. Changing Careers (When You Don't Know Your Next Job Title) (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)
2. Executive Burnout: Making A Midlife Career Change (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)

The difference between work that drains you and work that energizes you usually isn't the role. It's whether your strengths fit the environment you're using them in.

This episode walks through when your strengths actually matter for finding career fit and work you actually love, why matching your strengths to a job title is the wrong approach to career happiness, and how to identify the work environments where your unique combination of strengths will actually be valued.

You'll also hear why the right environment isn't really about the company itself, it's about whether the people around you value the strengths you bring, and why values alignment usually matters more than strengths alignment when you're starting to figure out what actually fits.

What you'll learn:

• Why trying to match your strengths to a job title doesn't create career fit or job satisfaction, and what actually does
• The two situations where strengths-based career planning is genuinely useful for finding meaningful work: spotting clear career non-fits and identifying the right work environment
• How to tell when the people around you, not the role itself, are the real reason your work feels draining and unfulfilling
• Why values alignment matters more than strengths alignment when you're starting a career change or career pivot
• How to use your strengths as a filter for career fit and workplace happiness instead of a roadmap for which jobs to apply to
• The signs your current career path isn't working and how to address job dissatisfaction before it turns into burnout

Our book, Happen To Your Career: An Unconventional Approach To Career Change and Meaningful Work, is now available on audiobook! Visit  happentoyourcareer.com/audible to order it now! Visit happentoyourcareer.com/book for more information or buy the print or ebook here!

Want to chat with our team about your unique situation? Schedule a conversation

Free Resources

What career fits you? Join our free 8 Day Mini Course to figure it out!

Career Change Guide - Learn how high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over.

Related Episodes

1. Should I Quit My Job? How to Know It's Time (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)
2. Stuck in a Career You're Unhappy With? Fear Of Taking Risks Could Be Keeping You There (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)

Mentioned Episode:

1. Mid-Career Family Sabbatical: How to Design an Intentional Career Break (Without Coming Back to the Same Burnout) (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)

Thinking about a mid-career sabbatical, a family career break, or an intentional career pause, but worried about coming back to the same burnout?

Whether you're considering a year-long family sabbatical, designing your first intentional career break, or wondering whether consistent employment is actually required for a fulfilling career, this episode of Happen To Your Career breaks down what a designed mid-career sabbatical looks like in 2026, and how to come back to real career reinvention instead of the same burnout you tried to escape.

Research shows most career breaks lose all their gains within 1 to 4 weeks of returning to an unchanged environment. It's called the fade-out effect, and it's why most sabbaticals feel like expensive vacations instead of life-changing pivots.

HTYC career coach Laura McClernon walks through the 10-year design process behind her family's year-long mid-career sabbatical, the Die With Zero memory-dividends math that made it make sense, and the Ideal Career Profile framework she used to design a career break that actually makes her career better.

What you'll learn:

• What a designed mid-career family sabbatical actually looks like
• The difference between an intentional career break and a reactive one (and why most fail in the first 4 weeks back)
• How to plan a mid-career sabbatical without losing career momentum or explaining a massive resume gap
• The Die With Zero memory-dividends math that makes a mid-career break make sense
• Why most career breaks lose all their gains in 1 to 4 weeks, and the design principle that beats the fade-out effect
• The first step this week if you want to design your own family sabbatical or intentional career break

Our book, Happen To Your Career: An Unconventional Approach To Career Change and Meaningful Work, is now available on audiobook! Visit  happentoyourcareer.com/audible to order it now! Visit happentoyourcareer.com/book for more information or buy the print or ebook here!

Want to chat with our team about your unique situation? Schedule a conversation

Free Resources

What career fits you? Join our free 8 Day Mini Course to figure it out!

Career Change Guide - Learn how high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over.

Related Episodes

1. How to Figure Out What You Really Want (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)
2. Discover Your Strengths to Find Your Ideal Career (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)

Dealing with career burnout in 2026 — or could it actually be boreout? Whether you're experiencing job burnout, work burnout, quiet burnout, or boreout at work, struggling with a lack of career satisfaction, or wondering why you've lost motivation in a job that looks fine on paper, this episode of Happen To Your Career breaks down exactly what career burnout and boreout in 2026 look like, how to fix burnout and boreout for good, and how to find real career satisfaction.

83% of corporate professionals report burnout right now, and among women in senior leadership, that number jumps to 43%, more than double what it was in 2019. But the signs of burnout most people are experiencing today don't look like the burnout symptoms you've been told to watch for — many of them are actually boreout.

If you're high-performing, still delivering, still holding it all together, but something inside you that used to care about your work has quietly disappeared, you're not dealing with traditional burnout. You're likely dealing with boreout: the under-challenged, under-utilized, chronically bored version of burnout almost nobody talks about. And boreout is the kind that keeps people stuck for years in jobs that look great on paper but slowly drain them of any career satisfaction. In this episode, we break down the difference between boreout and burnout, why boreout turns into burnout if left unaddressed, the two distinct types of career burnout (situational burnout vs. career burnout), how to recover from boreout and burnout, and exactly how to find career satisfaction in 2026.

You'll hear Lisa's story of 7 years of boreout at a "good job" before landing a role she's genuinely excited about — and the exact framework she used to get there.

What you'll learn:

• What career burnout and boreout in 2026 actually look like (and the new signs to watch for)
• Boreout vs. burnout: the difference (and why confusing them keeps you stuck)
• Why boreout is the most under-diagnosed form of burnout in 2026
• The 3 forces driving boreout, job burnout, and work burnout in 2026
• Situational burnout vs. career burnout: how to know which one you have
• How boreout quietly turns into full career burnout
• How to fix boreout and burnout without quitting reactively
• How to recover from burnout and rebuild career satisfaction
• Why changing jobs doesn't fix career burnout or boreout (and what actually does)

Listen now to learn what career burnout and boreout in 2026 actually look like, how to tell the difference, how to fix both, and how to find the career satisfaction you've been missing.

Our book, Happen To Your Career: An Unconventional Approach To Career Change and Meaningful Work, is now available on audiobook! Visit  happentoyourcareer.com/audible to order it now! Visit happentoyourcareer.com/book for more information or buy the print or ebook here!

Want to chat with our team about your unique situation? Schedule a conversation

Free Resources

What career fits you? Join our free 8 Day Mini Course to figure it out!

Career Change Guide - Learn how high-performers discover their ideal career and find meaningful, well-paid work without starting over.

Related Episodes

1. Should I Quit My Job? How to Know It's Time (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)
2. Executive Burnout: Making A Midlife Career Change (Spotify / Apple Podcasts)