Career Change Isn’t Either Or: Why Feeling Stuck Doesn't Mean You Have No Choice

Not everything needs reducing to either/or.

A lot of career decisions get reduced down to two options.

Stay or leave.

This works or it doesn’t.

I’m stuck or I’m clear.

It sounds simple enough when you say it like that. Clean. Logical. Decisive.

But if you’ve ever found yourself sitting in that space where neither option feels quite right, you’ll know it doesn’t feel simple at all. It feels frustrating. Constricting. Like you’re being asked to choose between two things that don’t actually reflect what you want.

And that’s often the moment people start to feel stuck.

Why “either or” thinking keeps you stuck

The problem isn’t always the situation itself. It’s the way we’ve been taught to think about it.

When everything gets narrowed down to two options, your world shrinks with it. And if neither of those options feels workable, it’s very easy to assume there isn’t a way forward at all.

You might recognise the thoughts:

• If I can’t leave, I have to stay. 

• If this isn’t right, something must be wrong with me. 

• If I don’t know what to do, I must be stuck. 

But most of the time, that isn’t actually true.

It’s not that there’s no choice. It’s that you can’t yet see the full range of choices available to you.

The idea of “the and”

This is where something I call the and  becomes really useful.

Instead of thinking in either-or terms, it allows two things to be true at the same time.

You can feel tired and still know what you want.

You can be in a role that no longer fits and still have agency within it.

You can feel uncertain and take a step forward anyway.

That doesn’t suddenly make everything easy. It doesn’t remove the complexity.

But it does give you more room to move.

Your career isn’t happening to you

One of the biggest shifts people make when they start to see things this way is realising that their career isn’t just something that’s happening to them.

It’s something they are shaping, all the time.

Sometimes in obvious ways ... the roles you go for, the decisions you make.

But just as often in quieter ones ... what you agree to, what you question, what you tolerate, what you stop carrying.

Those smaller choices don’t always feel significant in the moment. But they add up. And over time, they shape the direction you move in.

Choice doesn’t have to be dramatic

When we think about change, we tend to think in big, visible moves.

Leaving a job. Changing direction. Starting something new.

And yes, those choices exist.

But they’re not the only ones available to you.

Choice also lives in the everyday.

It shows up in moments like:

• saying what you actually think instead of holding back

• pausing instead of automatically agreeing

• noticing when something doesn’t feel right and not brushing past it

• allowing yourself to be curious about something without needing to justify it

From the outside, those moments might not look like much.

But they’re often where change actually begins.

Why this matters for career change

If you’re thinking about your next step, this is where things start to open up.

Because the question shifts.

Instead of asking,

What’s the right move?

you start asking,

What choices are available to me that I haven’t been seeing?

That’s a very different place to think from.

It moves you out of feeling stuck and into something more active, even if nothing has changed yet on the outside.

You already have more agency than you think

Even in situations that feel complicated or constrained, you’re still making choices.

The difference is whether you’re aware of them.

Because once you start to notice them, something shifts.

You begin to see where you do have influence.

Where you do have options.

Where you’re not as fixed as you thought you were.

And from there, your career starts to feel less like something that’s happening to you, and more like something you’re participating in.

Listen to the full episode

I go into this in more depth in Episode 13 of the Proactive Empowered Careers podcast,  where I explore how “the and” changes the way you think about choice, agency, and what’s actually possible.

🎧 You can listen to the episode below ⬇️