Career Change in Mid-Life for Australian Women: A Holistic Guide
In this article you will learn:
Why many women question their careers in mid-life
The difference between capability and capacity
What holistic career change really means
How to approach meaningful, sustainable transitions
When counselling makes a difference
Introduction
What Is a Mid-Life Career Change?
A mid-life career change is not necessarily about changing professions or starting again. For many Australian women, it involves re-orienting work around changing values, capacity, health, and life circumstances while retaining skills and experience built over decades.
Many Australian women reach mid-life with a quiet but persistent sense that their work no longer fits.
On the surface, things may seem ‘fine’ or ‘ok’; a stable role, years of experience, a reliable income, a job that pays the bills. Yet underneath, there’s often fatigue, restlessness, or a feeling of being disconnected from work that once felt meaningful. Or worse never having felt a sense of meaning in their career because it never truly aligned.
This guide is for women over 35 who are questioning their careers; not because they’ve failed, but because they’ve grown. It’s especially built for those who don’t want to burn out, start over, or force themselves into another version of success that doesn’t honour their life, energy, or values.
Let me ask you this: As a Gen X or even older millennial did you have a career role model? The answer for most of us in a resounding no.
And this lack of modelling, the emergence of paid careers for women (as distinct from unpaid workloads) being a mainstream thing has left us with a world of opportunity and workload that is truly unsustainable long term. And that’s before we talk about babies, women’s health and menopause.
The 3-Part Shift Many Women Go Through as They Approach Mid-Life in Their Careers:
Identity Evolution: Self identity changes and evolution that often starts with a sense of ick or low job satisfaction which can extend into other areas of life.
Capacity shifts: As capacity drops and capability growth as we realise this getting older caper really does impact our energy levels and care factor.
Values realignment: As the seasons of life change, because what you once cared about just does not matter anymore, and often times what is becoming important still may be unclear.
Women going through midlife career changes almost universally go through a version of these 3 steps, and they are steps that don’t fit with old school career models that better suit men. This is why a holistic career counselling approach is needed for women, especially in midlife.
Why Career Dissatisfaction Often Emerges in Mid-Life
Career dissatisfaction in mid-life is not a personal flaw or failing, it’s a predictable response to layered change and facing midlife intersectionality as a modern woman.
In my work with women across Australia, I consistently see five common themes that contribute to the overwhelm:
Identity shifts: Who you are now is not who you were in your 20s or 30s and what you want or need now will be different. For many women, according to my survey and white paper around 15-20%, neurodivergent diagnoses is happening in midlife. And that is on top of all the other factors impacting women’s sense of self and identity.
Caring responsibilities: Children, ageing parents, emotional labour all take time and energy; often time and energy we don’t have anymore.
Changes in energy and health: Woman face unique seasons with women’s health, monthly cycles, pregnancy, reproductive health challenges, perimenopause and menopause. That’s before we consider burnout and overwhelm from the competing roles we play.
Values misalignment: Work that once ‘made sense’ no longer feels right or purposeful. With changing roles and workforce demands perhaps your ideal role no longer exists and you need to figure out ‘what next’. For many women work never made sense, it made money, and that’s no longer enough.
Changing definitions of success: Status and achievement often lose their appeal over time and often make way for lifestyle, health and wellbeing pursuits that don’t fit with old and outdated careers.
When several of these occur at once, work can begin to feel heavy, meaningless, or unsustainable.
Feeling Stuck In Your Career Doesn’t Mean You’ve Failed
Many women describe to me feeling ‘stuck’ in their careers. They’re unsure what to change, but unable to continue as they are.
Often women don’t know why any of this is happening, to the extent they have what I term a ‘fire sale’. Everything must go in an attempt to regain a sense of control and agency.
Midlife is the age where not only careers fall apart for women, but relationship breakdown and divorce is at its peak; as are mental health challenges like depression and anxiety and a growing awareness they have lost themselves along the way.
The part that is saddest is that many women see their inability to cope as a personal failing, and blame themselves for the problems without considering the bigger picture.
Let’s re-frame some of these tricky feelings about feeling stuck in your career, as often means:
Your inner values have shifted faster than your external life and there is a lack of congruency or alignment in your ‘being’ and your actions. Success will look different and often we don’t have a picture of what that might look like so the result is feeling this sense of inertia.
Your work no longer reflects your capacity, interests or priorities because you are in a new season of life, or there has been significant changes happen within or around you. Often times women are blindsided and get caught in the bewilderment and grief of it all.
Your career identity hasn’t caught up with who you’ve become. This leads women to doing the same thing you have always done hoping if they hang in there long enough it will get better, chances are it won’t though and it ends with exhaustion and burnt out. Be it personal or professional growth and development, many women become so much more than they think they are through their early career; and this feeling of being stuck is a sign to re-evaluate mindfully and very deliberately your worth, wants and next steps rather than pushing harder.
Feeling stuck isn’t the stagnation you might think. It’s a signal that something needs re-orientation in your world.
Capability vs Capacity: A Crucially Important Career Distinction For Midlife Women
One of the most misunderstood aspects of mid-life career change is the difference between capability and capacity. In my work with both veterans and women capacity shifts is a common and defining problem they face in career transition and building a sustainable career that feels right for them.
Capability is what you can do - your skills, experience, competence
Capacity is what you can sustain - emotionally, physically, relationally, contextually
Many women remain highly capable long after their capacity has been depleted. When this distinction is ignored, career advice often pushes women toward roles they can technically perform but cannot live with.
Sustainable careers are built with capacity in mind.
Why ‘Just Find Your Passion’ Rarely Helps
Advice to ‘follow your passion’ often lands poorly for women with complex lives. Passion is an important consideration given it is hard to do anything that doesn’t interest you, but it is not the answer either.
Unfortunately, ‘follow your passion’ is often a place women turn in desperation to make sense of their situation.
For example, there are many women in ‘spiritual’ circles with their exceptional skills in helping others hustling their hearts out to earn a living in a way that affords them the flexibility they need, but it rarely pays them nearly what they are worth.
They thought because they are passionate about helping others and using their ‘gifts’ and followed that it would solve their problem. In many cases the steps women take in this situation is to pay out money they don’t really have to an ill equipped or unqualified coach or advisor; in return getting simplistic and generic business or career advice without the practical steps and support.
The result: they are still broke and overwhelmed and have the same problem they started with less the time and money spent hoping for the answers.
In mid-life, the question is rarely:
What excites me the most?
It’s more often:
What fits my life and values now?
What can I sustain without burning out?
What feels meaningful and realistic?
Holistic career change in midlife often focuses on alignment and capacity, not completely reinventing the wheel.
As an Australian-based career counsellor working with women across the country, I’ve supported hundreds of clients through midlife career transitions and conducted original research into women’s experiences of work, identity, and capacity. It matters more than you might realise.
What Holistic Career Counselling Looks Like
Holistic career counselling goes beyond resumes, job titles, and personality tests. These are all important to consider, at the right time and in the right order.
Instead, a holistic approach to career development includes:
Working with uncertainty instead of rushing clarity or answers
Asking better questions before making decisions
Integrating values, energy, season of life, and lived experience
Making sense of grief, longing, and ambivalence around work
This approach is especially helpful because it names feelings, values, fears and worries. It uncovers the hidden desires, identifies who you are and supports re-defining success. The issue isn’t ‘what job should I do?’, but ‘how do I want to live and work now?’
When Career Counselling Is Helpful (and When It’s Not)
Career counselling is often helpful when:
You feel drawn toward change but can’t articulate what it is, or you simply feel inexplicably stuck.
You’re burnt out and wary of repeating patterns of pushing through the pain, because you now realise there must be a better way (even if you don’t know what that is yet).
You want work to align with your values and capacity in a purposeful and sustainable way.
You’re navigating identity shifts, change or life-stage transitions.
It may not be helpful if:
You want a quick job match or resume rewrite.
You’re seeking external motivation rather than reflection.
You want someone else to make the decision for you.
Working With a Career Counsellor Online in Australia
Online career counselling allows women anywhere in Australia to access reflective, personalised support, without geographic limits.
For many women, online sessions offer:
Privacy and flexibility which is important given how time poor women often are. No driving to the consulting rooms, bumping into people you know (or your boss) or waiting around.
Space for deeper reflection is afforded online. Women often tell me they feel freer to feel and express emotion, which allows them to process it better, when online. It also gives you room to be with yourself after sessions to continue processing in your own space and time.
Continuity during life transitions is afforded by the lack of geographical boundaries on our time working together, meaning things like change of address don’t matter. Nor does it matter how long or how often we work together; the space is for you as you need it. Online career counselling supports women with high quality services everywhere in Australia, not just the city.
Frequently Asked Questions: Midlife Career Change
Is it normal to want a career change in your 40s or 50s?
Yes, it is incredibly common. Mid-life is a common time for reassessment as values, energy, and priorities change. Many women find themselves in a state of flux with kids still at home, parents who need more support, partners who according to my own survey are not as helpful with the household load as they could be and hormonal shifts starting to happen. It’s a lot! And over and over the women I work with as an online career counsellor tell me the same stories, so much so that I wrote a white paper about this.
Do I need to know what I want before starting career counselling?
No. Uncertainty is often the starting point, not a barrier. The world of work is changing probably about as rapidly as your body, and this creates a level of complexity and uncertainty that can be incredibly difficult to navigate even for the most stoic of women. Part of the counselling process is to deeply investigate this complexity and redefine what success looks like, what brings meaning and what will support you in living a life that feels more like the current and future version of you. Career counselling is never just about the job, it is about you at the centre of your life as it evolves and unfolds.
How is career counselling different from career coaching?
Counselling focuses on understanding, integration, and meaning. Coaching focuses on performance or optimisation. Ideally a good practitioner will have both skill sets. I am both a trained coach and counsellor with post graduate training in career development, affording you the most holistic approach.
Can online career counselling really work?
Yes, I have completed thousands of hours coaching hundreds of people online successfully. Many women find online sessions more accessible and reflective than in-person work.