I sat down with Nyam Adodoadji last week; a somatic practitioner, poet, and guide for creative leaders in transition; and one thing she said has been sitting with me ever since: the career ladder we were all handed (college, job, climb the rungs) was never actually a choice. Most of us were never shown an alternative. And once loans and bills enter the picture, the “next logical step” becomes less about what you want and more about what you can't afford to question.
Nyam knows this from the inside. She landed in product management at a Silicon Valley startup almost by accident, and what followed was a familiar cycle: burnout, crying in bathrooms, working hours that ate everything else. In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, she hit a wall and finally asked the question underneath it all: is this just going to be my life? That question led to a planned year-long sabbatical, travel to Ghana, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and Portugal — and, notably, not the clarity she expected. She didn't come back with an answer. She came back with a new set of questions, and a career helping other people ask theirs.
Here's what stuck with me from our conversation:
The body knows before the mind admits it.
When the mind is busy rationalizing “this job is fine, this is just how it is”; the body often keeps score anyway. Panic attacks, exhaustion, and burnout aren't malfunctions. They're data.
The practice: Before you can hear the subtler signals :the intuition, the “something's off”; you have to be able to hear the basic ones. Hunger. Thirst. Tiredness. Corporate life trains us to override all three. Start by just noticing when you're ignoring them.
“Desire fog” is real, and it's not a personal failing.
Nyam pointed me to a book, The Magic of Knowing What You Want by Tracy G., and the term in it that I can't stop thinking about is “desire fog”; that common, disorienting state of genuinely not knowing what you want anymore. Pragmatism gets there first and shuts the question down before curiosity has a chance.
The practice: Fear isn't good or bad — it's information. When something scary comes up, pull it apart: what part is practical, what part is actually out of your control, and what part is just an old story doing its job a little too well.
You don't have to blow up your life to change it.
The biggest misconception about career change is that it's binary; quit everything or stay put. Most of the real movement happens in the gray area: a conversation with someone doing the work that interests you, a class, a low-stakes experiment that gives you real information instead of more research.
The practice: Ask yourself what's the minimum legible information you actually need to take the next step. Then take a micro-action, reflect on what you learned, and repeat. Lead with the learning goal, not the method — what am I trying to find out, who do I need to talk to, how will I apply it?
Decisions get easier when you know what season you're in.
Not every trade-off needs to be permanent. What's non-negotiable right now — this season, this year — versus what you can live with for a while is a different question than “what's non-negotiable forever.” Nyam calls the internal compass for this her “energetic heartbeat”; how you want to feel, used as a beacon when the path forward isn't obvious.
If you're in the middle of your own version of this: weighing a decision, feeling the fog, trying to tell the difference between what you want and what you were conditioned to want; that's exactly what this work is for. You don't need the whole plan. You need the next small, honest step.
You can connect with Nyam on Linkedin and if you want to join the next live conversation in this series, head to learnmindfully.co/events to see what's coming up.
This episode of In Her Words is available wherever you listen to podcasts.