“There’s Only So Long You Can Draft Behind Someone Else’s Passion”: Lara’s Midlife Career Redesign

Season 3

7 Jan

From Stuck to Energised: One Former Client’s Joy-at-Work Breakthroughs

Lara, a former client of Midlife Unstuck, shares the three career lessons she never wants to forget—on loyalty, boundaries, and the quiet truth our bodies reveal. Her story offers a powerful reminder that it’s never too late to stop drafting behind someone else’s passion and design work that energises you.

What happens when a high-achieving, values-led professional realises they’ve spent years working on problems that aren’t truly theirs?

In a recent episode of the Joy at Work podcast, host Lucia Knight welcomed Lara, a former client who bravely shared the three career lessons she never wants to forget. What began as a conversation about work quickly became a deeper reflection on loyalty, grief, and the surprising truth our bodies often reveal before our minds catch up.

Here’s what stood out—and why Lara’s story might just echo your own.

1. Loyalty Isn’t a Reason to Stay Stuck

Lara’s first realisation came in the form of a question many professionals quietly avoid: Am I calling this loyalty… when it’s actually a lack of boundaries?

She had always prided herself on being loyal. But through her work with Lucia, she uncovered that this ‘loyalty’ was often covering for something less helpful—a habit of giving too much, too often, without enough in return.

“You can feel like you’re giving a lot of yourself and not getting stuff back,” she shared. “If you look at it as a boundary issue, it gets a lot clearer what was going on.”

This insight often resonates with midlife professionals who’ve built careers on being dependable and indispensable—but who are quietly burning out behind the scenes.

2. Your Body Already Knows

The second lesson Lara shared is one that science—and psychology—both support: our bodies often sense the truth long before we consciously admit it.

During a pivotal coaching session, she found herself weighing two potential career directions. On paper, both seemed viable. But when she spoke them aloud, the difference was unmistakable. One left her sounding flat and emotionless. The other? She lit up.

“The decision was made—I just needed to be okay with verbalising it.”

It was a powerful reminder that how we feel physically—our energy, tone, posture—can tell us far more than a pros-and-cons list ever will.

3. Stop Drafting Behind Other People’s Passions

Perhaps the most striking insight Lara offered was this:

“There’s only so long you can draft behind someone else’s passion.”

She had spent years using her formidable skills on projects that mattered deeply—to other people. And while she admired those colleagues and cared about the work, it wasn’t her mission. Eventually, even the most competent professionals feel the disconnect.

In her redesign journey, Lara realised she wanted to apply her skills to a very different problem: supporting people who are grieving while navigating the legal and emotional responsibilities of settling a loved one’s estate. A path that combines her organisational strength with deep empathy.

Redesigning Work with Intention

Lara’s transformation didn’t happen overnight. It emerged through layered conversations, small experiments, and honest self-reflection—much of it inside Midlife Unstuck’s Fierce Emporium programme and 1:1 support.

She didn’t burn everything down. She designed forward. And in doing so, she found what many midlife professionals are quietly longing for: a sense of energy, ownership, and joy in their work again.

Curious What Joy at Work Might Look Like for You?

Whether you’re wrestling with loyalty, craving a change you can’t yet name, or simply wondering if it’s too late to do something more meaningful—this story is proof that clarity is possible.

🔗 Explore how you can begin your own career redesign journey:
Work With Lucia

Related:
🔗 Midlife Worklife Satisfaction Report

[00:00:00] Why former clients are sharing their "notes to future self"
Lucia Knight: Hi, I'm Lucia Knight and this is the Joy At Work Podcast. Today I'm joined by one of my former clients, someone who, like so many of us, had a moment of weight. Is this what work is supposed to feel like? And instead of brushing it off and cracking on, they paused and they chose to design their work life differently.
I've asked each guest to share the three most important insights they learned about their future work life that they never ever want to forget. And these aren't just light reflections. They're the result of three, six, or 12 months of deep work together, and now they're in a position to capture those timeless notes to their future self.
For some saying yes to my invitation, took a little bravery and a lot of what I call powerful vulnerability. Some had to dig deep because they really value their privacy. Some said yes because they understood the potential power of having a touch point to return to every year, but mostly they said yes as an act of kindness gifted to me and to you.
Let's dive in.

[00:01:16] Lesson 1: Don’t confuse loyalty with bad boundaries
Lucia Knight: lara, what is the very first worked life lesson that you never want to forget?
Lara: Don't confuse loyalty with bad boundaries.
Lucia Knight: Tell me more.
Lara: Loyalty's really important to me. It's a very natural mode I get into, and I always thought I was bringing that part of my best self to work, and I've learned that sometimes that just means the boundaries were a little too permeable. Let's just say that you know it. You can feel like you're giving a lot of yourself and not getting stuff back.
And that confuses it when you think it's about loyalty, but if you look at it as a boundary issue, it gets a lot clearer about what was going on.
Lucia Knight: Ooh. I could ask you so much more about that, but I'm not going to, 'cause we're trying to keep this short.
[00:02:13] Lesson 2: Your body knows the truth—find a mirror
Lucia Knight: Okay, Lara, can you share with us the second work life lesson that you never want to forget?
Lara: So if you're someone like me who has zero ability to hide your emotions or how you're reacting to something. When you're facing a decision, it's important to find a mirror. And that could be like an actual mirror, reflective surface, direct camera. Or, in my case, it was another person who is someone who can reflect back to you how you sound, how you look, the discrepancy between the words that you're saying and the emotions that you're clearly feeling.
Lucia Knight: Okay. Have you got an example of that?
Lara: Well, it was a conversation with you, Lucia, in which I was trying to weigh two options for my future career direction. And if you just read them the words on paper, you might think, oh, these are, you know, Lara's equally compelled by both of these. But the visual difference and the audible difference was stark.
I mean, I think we both just burst out laughing when we talked about how bored I was by option number one.
How excited I was about option number two. It was just there was no contest, the decision was made and I just needed to be able to like be okay with verbalizing it.
Lucia Knight: Yes. And that was, I do remember that moment because it was so obvious, and I think we recorded that because we knew it was going to be an important decision making thing.
And, uh, your whole body was flat.
Smaller and weirdly for you, not very emotional.
And then you talked about the other idea,
which on the face of it wasn't perhaps so obvious that
it would be exciting, but your whole body and your pace of language and your gesticulation and everything sounded happy. So would you like to share? What that, that final direction idea is?
Lara: Well, as best I can, uh, articulate it at this point, but I want to work with people, when they are facing. When they need to settle an estate of a loved one. so they've, they're experiencing grief, they're experiencing loss. It's, pretty fresh, but they've been given this enormous responsibility of being an executor. I'm not sure if that's what it's called, everywhere in the world, but in the US it's often called an executor.
And they have never done anything like this before. And they're grieving at the same time that they have to do all this weird, complicated emergency, not emergency, but some of it urgent, some of it not. Some of it's gonna be drawn out stuff, so they need help getting things done while they're grieving.
Lucia Knight: Absolutely fabulous. This is a problem in the world that connects deeply with you
and is very, very needed in the world, and it suits your superpower so perfectly. I'm super excited about it. So even when you were talking about. A potentially very calm and emotional subject that you know could be described as not exciting to some people.
Your whole body showed how excited you were. It was powerful.
Lara: Yeah.
Lucia Knight: Fabulous.
[00:06:01] Lesson 3: Stop drafting behind other people’s passions
Lucia Knight: Okay, so what is the final work life lesson that you never, ever once forget?
Lara: There is a big difference between bringing your skills to making them useful, to problems that are somebody else's passion and things that are your own. And. I spent a lot of time working with some really brilliant people on really important problems that they were just top-notch experts in, and I learned so much from them and I care about these, these problems, they're just not my problems.
I mean, they're not my problems to be part of. There's only so long you can draft behind other people's passion. And there was a process of unlocking, you know, the fourth superpower in talking with you, for me that it really helped me set a priority. Like, no, that is the, that is the piece that I want prioritize in picking the problem that this is applied to.
So the other three are all, all things that I have done within other settings for other people's problems. And I, they're still relevant to my, to my problem. but this fourth one helped me say, no, this is the thing I haven't been able to do, but I want to do.
Lucia Knight: So you haven't been able to do it ever in your other work before? You want to find a way to get this final superpower in?
That's good. You said something marvelous there. I try to scribble it on. There's only so long that you can draft behind someone else's passions. Ah, and I don't often use that word passion, but the way you've used it, I love it. So I've got this image of you cycling fast behind someone on their mission versus you pausing, stopping, getting off their bike or that bike and choosing your lane.
Thank you so much for sharing those with me.
[00:08:07] What joy at work means to Lara now
Lucia Knight: My very final question I did not ask you, I did not ask you to prepare any of this is what do you hope that Joy at work will or might look like or feel like to you.
Lara: I hope it feels like
excitement for every workday. Instead of just, you know, thinking of it as drudgery or, and instead of feeling like, well, I'm supposed to feel a little bit bad about work because it's work.
Lucia Knight: What would you like to feel instead?
Lara: I would, Hmm, I would like to feel so many things. I would like to feel like, every every step of work gives me more energy than it takes, so, so a lot of being energized by my work is a major, major goal for me.
Lucia Knight: Lara, I hope you never forget these three work lessons because you deserve joy at work forever.
[00:09:21] Invitation to explore your own redesign
Lucia Knight: Laura and I work together one-to-one on top of her time in the Fierce Emporium, the at-home work life redesign program, you'll find a link in the notes section sharing the three career makeover programs on offer to suit your personality, your desire for speed and support, and of course your budget.
They each help you create a new career strategy, whether that means big or small change so that you can experience less stress and more joy at work.