I loved this Katie! One thing I've noticed coaching executives, and in my own life, is that people tend to overestimate the cost of changing and underestimate the cost of staying. We spend so much time calculating the risk of the leap that we forget to calculate the cost of staying somewhere that no longer fits.
Are we going to see your calculation before your last career change? 😊
Once you go for what you want it is so liberating. I studied drama at 35, I just looked for a 1-year program. Once I did that there was so much room in my head and heart. And such a burden left me. I was so happy! And there were people there a lot younger than me and others even older than me. It was great. I had been thinking about it for many years. After that experience and how well everything worked out, I don’t hesitate to make changes anymore.
Thank you for sharing, Michaela! I love that you finally gave yourself permission to do it! It really does feel like sometimes, all it takes is one action to fill that part of us that's been waiting for years.
And yes, I'd love to share mine! It might have to be a follow-up post 😊 I've wanted to study Japanese and engage in cultural studies since university but never did. Now at 31, I'm thinking of doing exactly what you did: enrol in a short course and see where it takes me.
It’s often fear that keeps us in avoidance, especially with numbers of making a new move. But the truth is a simple rearrangement actually guarantees more of that stability in the long run. Not always sexy, but it works :)
This maps almost exactly onto something I keep running into — the discomfort of "this is genuinely wrong for me" and the discomfort of "this is just hard and I need to stay in it" feel identical from the inside. Same nervous system response, completely different verdict.
Your anxiety maths/actual maths split is basically a diagnostic for that exact confusion. The feeling can't tell you which one you're in. Only the number can. Stealing "survivable, not safe" — that's doing a lot of quiet work in one phrase.
This comment really got me thinking. You're right...from the inside those two experiences can feel almost identical, which is probably why we second-guess ourselves so much. love the way you described it as the feeling needing the number to make sense of what's actually happening.
Maybe the second-guessing isn't a bug and it's what happens when you finally start taking the decision seriously instead of just reacting to the discomfort. People who never second-guess it are usually the ones who leave too fast.
I love this article. Anxiety maths has stopped me in my tracks so many times! I want to build something that's mine outside my 9-5, and every time I think about the number of people that are so far ahead of me. Is it even worth starting? But as you said, the best time may have been yesterday...second best time is today!
I totally hear you, Thea. Thank you so much for sharing. The anxiety maths can be so debilitating at times 🥹. It was something I really had to unlearn too. Instead of constantly fighting against time, I started leaning into it and completely rethinking my relationship with it, which is where the idea of Multiple Lives Theory came from. This is your life. You get to live it at your own pace, and do whatever you want with it! Rooting for you!
This hit me harder than I expected, Katie. Especially the part about anxiety maths running in the background, unexamined, humming away and generating reasons to wait. I’ve carried that hum for years – not just about careers, but about almost everything that mattered.
What struck me is how similar this is to something I’ve been thinking about in a completely different context: the way we let algorithmic anxiety run our lives without ever writing it down. We feel the manipulation, the narrowing of options, the quiet closing of doors – but we never compute it. We just live inside it.
Thea, you said "is it even worth starting?" – and that question is the binary Katie deconstructs so beautifully. Michaela, your story about studying drama at 35 made me realise: the actual maths of starting isn't just about money. It's about the room that opens in your head and heart when you stop asking for permission. And Melissa, yes – fear keeps us in avoidance, but what if the rearrangement isn't just about stability, but about reclaiming the narrative of your own life?
I wrote something recently about how we live in Plato's cave and don't even know it – how most of us mistake shadows for reality because we never turn around and do the actual calculation. Katie's article feels like a map out of that cave. Not a guarantee, but a compass.
If anyone here is curious about what happens when you start questioning the narratives we're handed – about time, about worth, about who gets to decide what's "too late" – I've been exploring exactly that in my own writing. Not with answers, but with questions that refuse to stay quiet.
Thank you for this, Katie. You've given me a new number to write down
I loved this Katie! One thing I've noticed coaching executives, and in my own life, is that people tend to overestimate the cost of changing and underestimate the cost of staying. We spend so much time calculating the risk of the leap that we forget to calculate the cost of staying somewhere that no longer fits.
Yes exactly this! I love the way you have framed it here! Thank you for sharing this ✨
Are we going to see your calculation before your last career change? 😊
Once you go for what you want it is so liberating. I studied drama at 35, I just looked for a 1-year program. Once I did that there was so much room in my head and heart. And such a burden left me. I was so happy! And there were people there a lot younger than me and others even older than me. It was great. I had been thinking about it for many years. After that experience and how well everything worked out, I don’t hesitate to make changes anymore.
Thank you for sharing, Michaela! I love that you finally gave yourself permission to do it! It really does feel like sometimes, all it takes is one action to fill that part of us that's been waiting for years.
And yes, I'd love to share mine! It might have to be a follow-up post 😊 I've wanted to study Japanese and engage in cultural studies since university but never did. Now at 31, I'm thinking of doing exactly what you did: enrol in a short course and see where it takes me.
❤️ love it - looking forward to hearing about it 😊
It’s often fear that keeps us in avoidance, especially with numbers of making a new move. But the truth is a simple rearrangement actually guarantees more of that stability in the long run. Not always sexy, but it works :)
Ahhh you’re so right. Most of the time all it takes is a simple calculation that can create more peace and stability than months of overthinking!
This maps almost exactly onto something I keep running into — the discomfort of "this is genuinely wrong for me" and the discomfort of "this is just hard and I need to stay in it" feel identical from the inside. Same nervous system response, completely different verdict.
Your anxiety maths/actual maths split is basically a diagnostic for that exact confusion. The feeling can't tell you which one you're in. Only the number can. Stealing "survivable, not safe" — that's doing a lot of quiet work in one phrase.
This comment really got me thinking. You're right...from the inside those two experiences can feel almost identical, which is probably why we second-guess ourselves so much. love the way you described it as the feeling needing the number to make sense of what's actually happening.
Maybe the second-guessing isn't a bug and it's what happens when you finally start taking the decision seriously instead of just reacting to the discomfort. People who never second-guess it are usually the ones who leave too fast.
I love this article. Anxiety maths has stopped me in my tracks so many times! I want to build something that's mine outside my 9-5, and every time I think about the number of people that are so far ahead of me. Is it even worth starting? But as you said, the best time may have been yesterday...second best time is today!
I totally hear you, Thea. Thank you so much for sharing. The anxiety maths can be so debilitating at times 🥹. It was something I really had to unlearn too. Instead of constantly fighting against time, I started leaning into it and completely rethinking my relationship with it, which is where the idea of Multiple Lives Theory came from. This is your life. You get to live it at your own pace, and do whatever you want with it! Rooting for you!
This hit me harder than I expected, Katie. Especially the part about anxiety maths running in the background, unexamined, humming away and generating reasons to wait. I’ve carried that hum for years – not just about careers, but about almost everything that mattered.
What struck me is how similar this is to something I’ve been thinking about in a completely different context: the way we let algorithmic anxiety run our lives without ever writing it down. We feel the manipulation, the narrowing of options, the quiet closing of doors – but we never compute it. We just live inside it.
Thea, you said "is it even worth starting?" – and that question is the binary Katie deconstructs so beautifully. Michaela, your story about studying drama at 35 made me realise: the actual maths of starting isn't just about money. It's about the room that opens in your head and heart when you stop asking for permission. And Melissa, yes – fear keeps us in avoidance, but what if the rearrangement isn't just about stability, but about reclaiming the narrative of your own life?
I wrote something recently about how we live in Plato's cave and don't even know it – how most of us mistake shadows for reality because we never turn around and do the actual calculation. Katie's article feels like a map out of that cave. Not a guarantee, but a compass.
If anyone here is curious about what happens when you start questioning the narratives we're handed – about time, about worth, about who gets to decide what's "too late" – I've been exploring exactly that in my own writing. Not with answers, but with questions that refuse to stay quiet.
Thank you for this, Katie. You've given me a new number to write down