Why Your Job Looks Good on Paper but Feels Wrong

The Hidden Identity Shift Driving Career Misalignment for Women

From the outside, your career makes sense.

You’ve built credibility.
You’ve progressed.
You’ve made “good choices.”

And yet-something inside you has gone quiet.

You’re not unhappy enough to justify leaving, but not energised enough to feel fully alive in your work. The role that once fit now feels heavy, constricting, or strangely disconnected from who you are.

Before we talk about the neuroscience of this, I want to pause here-because I’ve lived this moment myself.

When I Lost My Mojo (and Didn’t Know Why)

In 2015-2016, I returned to my corporate role after having my first child, while pregnant with my second.

On paper, everything still looked solid.
Same organisation.
Same capability.
Same career trajectory.

But internally, I felt completely disconnected.

I sat on the outskirts of the work-emotionally and psychologically. The politics drained me. The uncertainty wore me down. The perceived competitiveness and rigid structures frustrated me deeply-not just in what I was doing, but how I was allowed to do it.

I’d lost my mojo.

Not in a dramatic, walk-out-the-door way.
In a quiet, grinding, survival-mode way.

I was counting the days until parental leave, conserving energy, doing what I needed to do-but no longer feeling like myself at work.

When redundancy came during my second parental leave, it was hard. Of course it was. There was fear, grief, and uncertainty.

But if I’m honest?

It was also a relief.

That moment became the catalyst for something much bigger than a career change. It gave me permission-eventually-to redesign my work and my life around who I was becoming in that season.

I explored the areas I genuinely loved.
I built in variety and flexibility.
I stopped trying to squeeze myself back into structures that no longer fit.

What surprised me most was how long it took to name this new identity.

Calling myself an entrepreneur.
A business owner.
A leader.
A coach.

Those labels didn’t come easily-even though the work itself felt deeply aligned.

What I understand now-through both lived experience and years of studying neuroscience and identity-is this:

What I was experiencing wasn’t a motivation problem or a confidence dip.
It was a neuroscience-driven identity shift.

When Success and Identity Fall Out of Sync

Research from Harvard Business Review shows that disengagement often stems not from workload or skill gaps, but from misalignment between identity and role.

In simple terms:
Your job no longer reflects who you’ve become.

From a brain perspective, identity is not fixed. It evolves as your values, priorities, and life context change. Yet careers are often built around decisions made years earlier-before motherhood, leadership responsibility, life experience, or deeper self-awareness.

This creates what psychologists refer to as identity lag:

• Your external role is optimised for a former version of you
• Your internal values and nervous system have moved on

The friction you feel isn’t resistance-it’s misalignment.

The Brain’s Role in Career Discomfort

Identity and the Reticular Activating System (RAS)

Your Reticular Activating System (RAS) filters what feels relevant, meaningful, and motivating.

When your work aligns with your values and identity, the RAS supports:

• Focus
• Energy
• Engagement

When it doesn’t:

• Motivation drops
• Disengagement increases
• You start questioning yourself rather than the system you’re in

This is why capable, high-performing women often feel flat or restless without knowing why.

Your brain is flagging a mismatch.

Threat, Reward, and the Cost of Staying Misaligned

The brain is constantly scanning for threat or reward.

In misaligned roles, many women unknowingly operate in a low-level threat state:

• Over-functioning to maintain safety
• People-pleasing to preserve belonging
• Suppressing intuition to avoid disruption

Over time, this leads to emotional exhaustion and burnout.

Burnout here isn’t about doing too much.
It’s about being someone you’re no longer aligned with for too long.

The Values Shift Many Women Experience

This is where the work of Claire Zammit provides a powerful lens-particularly when applied to careers and leadership.

Her research shows that as women grow in experience and inner authority, their relationship with power and success changes.

What once motivated you-status, security, approval-may no longer be enough.

Instead, many women begin seeking:

• Meaning and contribution
• Integrity between values and work
• Creative expression
• Sustainable impact without self-sacrifice

This isn’t ambition fading.
It’s ambition evolving.

From Autopilot to Agency

Many careers are built on autopilot-responding to expectations, opportunities, and external definitions of success.

Fulfilment comes from agency:

• Conscious career choices
• Work designed around values and energy
• Roles that fit who you are now-not who you were ten years ago

This is the foundation of my Recharge Your Career work.

Not fixing what’s “wrong” with you.
But helping you realign with who you’ve become-and designing from there.

If Your Job Feels Wrong, Listen

That discomfort isn’t failure.
It isn’t ingratitude.
And it isn’t something to override.

It’s information.

Your job may still look good on paper-but your brain, values, and identity are asking for something more aligned, more intentional, and more true to who you are now.

And that’s not a crisis.

It’s an invitation.

If you wanna elevate your career experience as a mid career woman, you can enroll to my Recharge Your Career.