When Work No Longer Resonates: Why Career ‘Fit’ Is About More Than Skills or Passion
Many people come to career counselling with a quiet but persistent feeling that something is off.
On paper, their career makes sense.
They are capable, experienced, and often doing work they once chose deliberately.
And yet, something no longer resonates.
This dissonance is rarely easy to name. It doesn’t always look like burnout, and it doesn’t always come with a clear alternative. It often sits somewhere between fatigue and restlessness, between competence and disengagement.
In my work, I hear it described as:
‘I should be grateful, but I’m not.’
‘I don’t know what’s wrong – I just know this isn’t it anymore.’
‘I feel like I’m forcing myself through something that used to feel natural.’
This is not a failure of resilience, motivation, or mindset.
It is often a signal that the relationship between a person and their work has changed.
Resonance Is Not the Same as Passion or Purpose
In career conversations, we are often pushed toward extremes.
On one end, we are encouraged to intellectualise – to analyse our skills, values, and strengths until we can produce a rational answer about what comes next.
On the other, we are offered spiritual or motivational shortcuts – ‘follow your passion’, ‘trust the universe’, ‘just align’.
Neither approach is sufficient on its own.
Resonance sits somewhere in between.
It is not about chasing constant fulfilment, nor is it about enduring work that drains us because it looks sensible. Resonance describes a felt sense of relationship with what we do – whether our work speaks to us, challenges us, and allows us to respond without costing us our health or wholeness.
You can be skilled at something and still feel no resonance.
You can believe in the purpose of your work and still feel depleted by how it is structured.
You can even love aspects of your role and still know, quietly, that it no longer fits who you are becoming.
A Personal Example of Lost – and Found – Resonance
Early in my career, work was not about meaning or fulfilment.
It was about survival.
The advice I received was very much of its time: never say no to a job.
So when opportunities came up in administration and bookkeeping, I took them. I was apparently ‘good with numbers’, there was always work available, and it fitted around having young children. Before maternity leave was standard, temp work mattered.
On paper, it was sensible.
In reality, I hated it. Every minute.
At the time, I didn’t have language for that experience. I didn’t know it was about resonance. I simply assumed I needed to be more grateful, more resilient, more disciplined.
After my divorce in my early thirties, I went back to study – initially through massage, natural therapies, and polarity therapy, and later into counselling. If I’m honest, much of that was driven by my own need for healing and self-understanding. But through that process, something else became clear.
I was not a ‘human doing’ who needed to push harder.
I was a human being who cared deeply about people, creativity, and ideas.
Helping people made sense to me in a way that spreadsheets never had.
From that point on, my career decisions were shaped through a different lens. Not ‘what can I tolerate?’ but ‘what actually resonates?’ That distinction changed everything.
This kind of learning is rarely taught in school. It is not often modelled by parents. And for many of us, particularly women of my generation, the message was clear: take the work, don’t ask questions, be grateful.
It is not bad advice because it is practical.
It is bad advice because it is incomplete.
When Resonance Is Lost
Loss of resonance often happens gradually.
It can be shaped by:
prolonged periods of high demand
shifting life stages or health
values changing through experience
workplaces accelerating while people do not
Over time, work can become something we manage rather than something we are in relationship with. We cope, adapt, rationalise, and push through. For many women, this is reinforced by cultural expectations to be capable, flexible, and accommodating. I see this too in my work with veterans who started out with a desire to serve and do the work only to have administrative load take over as they move up through the ranks and get asked to lead. It is a different ask to the one they signed up for, and it is often hard to grapple with that reality.
The risk is not just dissatisfaction.
When work no longer resonates, people often lose access to energy, creativity, and agency. They may begin to doubt themselves rather than question the systems or structures they are operating within.
And sometimes resonance was never had to be lost, and for people in this situation it can be terribly difficult to understand why they are so miserable at work, even though it never felt good.
Resonance Is Felt in the Body, Not Just the Mind
One of the reasons resonance is difficult to articulate is that it is not purely cognitive.
People often notice it through:
persistent exhaustion that rest doesn’t resolve
a narrowing of interest or curiosity
emotional flatness or irritability
a sense of effort where there used to be flow
This is where over-intellectualising career decisions can be unhelpful. Equally, bypassing these signals with positivity or spiritual language can be just as damaging.
Listening for resonance requires slowing down enough to notice what is already present, rather than searching for the ‘right answer’.
Career Development as a Place to Listen, Not Fix
Career counselling is not about manufacturing resonance or promising a perfect role.
Resonance cannot be forced. It cannot be optimised. And it does not arrive on demand.
What career development can offer is a grounded, structured space to:
notice where energy is moving or blocked
explore how work fits alongside health, relationships, and capacity
question inherited ideas about success, resilience, and productivity
make sense of why something that once worked no longer does
This work is especially important for people who are capable, conscientious, and used to coping. Often, the very qualities that make a career ‘successful’ can make it harder to recognise when it has become unsustainable.
An Invitation to Slow the Conversation Down
If any of this feels familiar, it doesn’t mean you need to make an immediate change.
It may simply be an invitation to pause.
To listen more closely.
To take seriously the signals you have learned to manage or minimise.
Resonance is not about finding a perfect path.
It is about restoring a relationship with work that allows you to participate without disappearing yourself.
If you would like to explore this in a grounded, professional way, I invite you to begin the conversation with me.