The Authorship Awakening: 5 Ways to Go From Autopilot to Agency
For decades, we've built a whole vocabulary around the moment someone starts questioning the career they worked so hard to build.
Mid-career crisis. Midlife crisis. Identity crisis. All centered around the word, crisis. As if something is wrong with you. As if what you're feeling is dangerous.
And well, I’m sick of it.
Just because you’re wondering, “is this really it?” or “I don’t know if I want this anymore,” or “I don’t even know what I want!” doesn't mean you're falling apart. It means you're finally starting to pay attention.
What's happening is that you're actively switching off autopilot, a mode you may have been on for months, maybe even years. That always-on habit of going through the motions, executing repetitive tasks, getting stuck in routine until you stop registering that you even have options. You've shown up and performed what was expected of you for so long that it hadn't occurred to you that any of it was optional.
Now, you're waking up to the power of choice. You’re recognizing possibility instead of relying solely on predictability. You're realizing that staying put isn't mandatory. You're noticing that you can choose something different.
You’re not in crisis. You’re in an awakening.
Going through an awakening is the active step of catching yourself mid-routine, asking why you're still doing this, and making an intentional shift because you can finally acknowledge you have a choice.
It’s the exact moment you realize you've been following someone else's outline for your life:
The title you were supposed to want
The timeline you were supposed to hit by X age
The definition of "success" you inherited before you even had a say in it
And for the first time, you're slowing down and pausing long enough to ask if any of it was ever yours.
That's what I call the Authorship Awakening, where you decide to stop being a character in a story someone else is writing. Instead, you decide you're the author of your career, and you decide to pick up the pen yourself.
But once the awareness sets in, a new question takes over: Now what?
Realizing you’ve been following someone else’s script can feel both liberating and disorienting. Here’s how I recommend you navigate the Authorship Awakening and how you can start writing your own next chapter, without burning everything down on impulse.
1. Audit the current story.
Before you decide anything or make changes, I encourage you to spend one week paying attention to three things:
What you're doing purely out of habit - tasks you execute simply because that's how it's always been done and nobody's questioned it
What you're doing to keep someone else happy - actions taken to satisfy a manager, a parent, or an old version of your own expectations.
Energy dynamics - what actually gives you energy versus what drains/depletes it.
All you have to do first is track these things and jot them down as they come to you so you can reference them later.
2. Name the rules you never signed up for.
Somewhere along the way, someone handed you a script, and you started following it before you ever agreed to it. Write down what those rules are, examples below:
"I have to hit Director by 35."
"A respectable career means staying in this industry."
"I can't waste the degree I paid for."
Seeing them written on paper strips them of their power, and allows room for a deeper question that you can run them against: Who wrote this rule, and do you still truly agree with it?
3. Get honest about what staying is doing to you.
What is it costing you to be complacent and stay where you are?
What have you stopped applying for because it felt safer not to try?
What have you tolerated because the salary made up for it?
How much of you are you sacrificing for the work?
That's the golden handcuffs at play. Job security comes with real trade-offs, ones you may not have recognized were impacting you and your life.
4. Run a small experiment.
You don’t have to quit anything or blow up your life to make changes here. Authorship means testing a plotline before you commit to the whole draft. You can do a few things:
Informational interviews - Talk to a few people doing work you’re genuinely curious about. Ask about their day-to-day and career journey.
Micro-learning - Take on a small project or short course in something you've been considering to add to your knowledge base.
Dedicated time: Carve out two hours a week for a skill, a side project, or something that has nothing to do with your job title.
When I started my career blog for women in 2018, I didn't leave Salesforce to do it. I wrote in the hours I had, while I kept showing up to the job that paid the bills. That one small move eventually became this business.
5. Redefine what success actually is to you, on your terms.
Your old script likely measured success by prestige, compensation, and how the job title sounded at a networking event. Ask yourself what actually matters to you right now. Is it those things? Don’t think about what mattered to the version of yourself chasing the next promotion, or what would impress everyone else. Write down "What is most important to me in my career?" and begin filling it in based on present-day values.
I share all of this with the caveat that none of this requires having the whole next chapter figured out right away. This awakening simply means that you’ve stopped performing on autopilot long enough to notice you have options and you have real pathways now to get there.
If you’re needing support and curious about how to put this into practice with The Career Authorship™ Framework, book an alignment call with me here. We will briefly connect on your current career story, what needs to change, and what working together could look like.