Why Your Next Career Chapter Could Be Your Strongest Yet
Returning to work after a career break can bring a strange mix of excitement, uncertainty and self-doubt. You may have years of experience behind you, yet suddenly find yourself questioning whether your skills are still relevant, whether employers will see your value, or even whether you still belong in the workplace.
At our recent Back To Work Connect community event, Returning with Confidence, executive coach and bestselling author Alana Kirk joined us to explore where those doubts come from – and, importantly, what we can do about them.
The session looked beyond simply telling Returners to “be more confident”. Instead, Alana encouraged us to examine the beliefs we carry about ourselves, our careers and what success is supposed to look like.
Here are some of the key messages that stood out.
Your Career Break Is Part of Your Story – Not a Gap in It
One of the most powerful ideas from the session was the concept of our “hyphenated lives.”
Modern careers are rarely one straight line. We work, care, learn, change direction, experience redundancy, raise families, deal with unexpected life events and sometimes completely rethink what we want.
All of those experiences shape us.
A career break does not erase the skills and experience you had before it. And the time you spent outside traditional employment wasn’t necessarily time when you stopped developing.
Life experience can build skills employers value every day:
- Resilience
- Adaptability
- Problem-solving
- Communication
- Organisation
- Leadership
- Perspective
Instead of asking, “What have I lost while I’ve been away?”, perhaps a better question is: “What have I gained during this stage of my life?”
Confidence Often Starts with the Story We Tell Ourselves
A recurring theme throughout Alana’s session was the connection between our beliefs, thoughts and actions.
If somewhere underneath everything you believe:
✖️I’m too old.
✖️I’ve been out too long.
✖️Technology has moved on.
✖️No employer will want me.
✖️Everyone else is more qualified.
…those beliefs inevitably influence how you approach your return.
You might avoid applying for a role you could do. You might undersell yourself on your CV. You might enter an interview already expecting rejection.
That is why rebuilding confidence isn’t simply about positive thinking. It’s about becoming curious about the beliefs influencing your decisions and asking:
Is this actually true?
Or is it something I have come to believe?
Meet Your Three Confidence Superpowers
Alana introduced three practical “superpowers” that can help challenge limiting beliefs and move us forward:
1. Curiosity
Rather than immediately accepting the critical voice in your head, get curious about it.
Where did that belief come from?
Is it based on evidence?
Would you say the same thing to somebody else in your position?
And importantly, does your definition of success today still match the definition you had ten or twenty years ago?
Returning to work can be an opportunity to reassess what you actually want from the next stage of your career.
2. Intention
Once you understand what you want, you can start making decisions with greater purpose.
That might mean applying for a different type of role, considering another industry, reconnecting with your network, volunteering, updating a skill or simply having conversations with people doing work that interests you.
You don’t have to have your entire career mapped out. You just need to make the next intentional move.
3. Self-Support
Returning to work doesn’t have to be something you do alone.
Ask yourself what would make the journey easier.
- Do you need practical support?
- More information?
- A course?
- Someone to review your CV?
- A conversation with somebody already working in the industry?
- Or simply other Returners who understand what this stage feels like?
Confidence doesn’t always come before taking action. Sometimes it grows because you take action – particularly when you have the right support around you.
Listen to More Than Your Inner Critic
One of the practical exercises explored during the event was particularly useful for anyone whose inner critic tends to dominate the conversation.
When you’re thinking about returning to work, write down what different parts of you have to say.
What does your fear say?
What does your wisdom say?
What are you proud of?
What makes you angry?
What does your ambition say?
Fear is allowed a voice – but it shouldn’t be the only voice making the decision.
When we deliberately look at a situation from different perspectives, we often discover that the story isn’t quite as negative as the one our inner critic has been telling us.
What Does Success Look Like for You Now?
This was another important message from the session.
The career you wanted at 25 may not be the career you want at 45, 50 or 60.
And that’s okay.
Your priorities may have changed. You may want flexibility, purpose, financial security, progression, a completely new challenge or simply work that fits better with the life you have today.
Rather than automatically trying to return to where you left off, use your career break as an opportunity to ask:
What does success look like for me at this stage of my life?
The answer doesn’t have to match anyone else’s.
“Am I Too Old to Return to Work?”
It was perhaps inevitable that age came up during the Q&A.
Ageism is a genuine concern for many midlife Returners, but Alana’s message was clear: age should not be the reason you decide you have nothing left to offer.
Experience brings something different to a workplace.
Years of navigating careers, families, relationships, difficult decisions, change and uncertainty can build judgement, perspective and resilience that simply cannot be learned from a textbook.
The challenge is learning how to recognise those qualities in ourselves – and communicate them confidently to employers.
The Bigger Takeaway
Perhaps the biggest message from Returning with Confidence was that confidence isn’t about returning to the person you were before your career break.
You’ve changed.
Your life has changed.
And your experience has grown.
The goal isn’t to erase the break or pretend it didn’t happen. It’s to recognise everything you bring with you because of the career you had and the life you’ve lived since.
So, if you’re considering returning to work and that voice in your head is telling you that you’re too old, too rusty or too far behind, get curious.
Challenge it.
Ask what evidence you have for believing it.
And then listen to the other voices too – your experience, your wisdom, your ambition and everything you’ve already overcome.
You don’t need to have everything figured out before you move forward. Sometimes confidence begins with simply taking the next step.
At Back To Work Connect, our community events are designed to give midlife Returners practical advice, expert support and, just as importantly, the opportunity to hear from and connect with others navigating the same journey.
A huge thank you to Alana Kirk for leading such an insightful and thought-provoking session, and to Tesco Ireland, whose support helps us continue to provide community events and resources for Returners across Ireland.
