When You're Not Quite Sure How You Feel About What's Changed
Leaving a long career - through retirement, redundancy or simply choosing something different - can bring a more complicated mixture of feelings than you expected
Perhaps you looked forward to stepping away from work for years. Perhaps the decision was made for you, redundancy arrived earlier than you expected, or you accepted a package that seemed too sensible to turn down. Or perhaps you’re still working, but something has shifted and you’re wondering whether you want to carry on in quite the same way.
Whatever brought you to this point, you may have expected your feelings about it to be reasonably straightforward. Then you discover that they aren’t.
You can be pleased to have more freedom and still miss being part of a team. You can know that leaving was the right decision and feel a pang when you hear what’s happening in your old organisation. You can be relieved that a demanding role is no longer consuming your life while missing the stimulation, status or sense of being in the middle of things.
If redundancy was involved, the mixture may be different again. You can be angry about what happened while also recognising that you weren’t entirely happy there anyway. You can have financial security, a good relationship, friends, interests and plenty to look forward to — and still wonder why this stage of life feels rather more complicated than you thought it would.
None of those feelings has to win. And they certainly don’t have to appear in equal measure.
Mixed Feelings don't mean you've made the wrong decision
We’re rather fond of tidy narratives. We imagine ourselves reaching the end of a long career, closing the office door and moving confidently into the next stage. Or perhaps circumstances intervene and, after the initial upheaval, we expect ourselves to “move on”.
Real life tends to be less orderly.
A career isn’t just a job that disappears from the diary. Over many years it may have provided challenge, friendships, recognition, routine, income, status, belonging and a reason to get out of bed on a wet Tuesday morning. It may also have brought pressure, frustration, difficult people, exhausting meetings, Sunday-evening emails and rather too many demands on your time.
So why would you expect to have one simple feeling about leaving it?
You may miss parts of your working life without wanting the whole thing back. You may love parts of your life now while still wishing other things were different. Those experiences can sit alongside each other without one invalidating the other.
When the change wasn't entirely your choice
For some women there is another layer: you didn’t decide that this was the moment to leave.
A restructure happened. Your role disappeared. You took voluntary redundancy. Or you found yourself outside an organisation you had expected to remain part of for several more years. You may even have decided afterwards that retirement was the sensible option, but that is different from choosing, entirely on your own terms, when your career would end.
And perhaps you don’t want it to end. You may want another role and be discovering that finding one at this stage of your career is harder than you expected.
That matters too.
Silver Reset isn’t about pretending that every unexpected career ending is secretly an exciting opportunity, or assuming that the answer must now be retirement. Sometimes circumstances are disappointing. Sometimes the employment market doesn’t respond to years of experience in the way you reasonably expected it to.
At times like these, it can be useful to separate three rather different questions:
What happened to me?
How do I feel about it?
What do I want to do next?
You don’t have to answer all three at once.
Perhaps the first step is simply making sense
When something significant changes, there’s often a temptation to move quickly towards “What am I going to do about it?” It’s an understandable question, particularly if you’ve spent much of your working life being someone who solves problems and gets things done.
But there may be another question worth asking first:
What am I actually feeling about what’s changed?
Not what you think you should feel. Not what other people assume you must feel. And not necessarily the answer you give when someone cheerfully says, “You must be loving all that free time!”
Perhaps there’s relief alongside disappointment. There may be pride in what you achieved, anger about how things ended, excitement about having more freedom or uncertainty about what comes next. Gratitude and loss might both make an appearance. Or perhaps the most accurate answer at the moment is simply:
I’m not quite sure.
That’s an answer too.
So ... what hasn't changed?
When circumstances alter significantly, it’s easy to focus entirely on what has gone - but a job ending doesn’t erase the person who did it.
Your experience hasn’t disappeared. Neither have your judgement, humour, curiosity, relationships, abilities, values or all the other things that made you more than the title on your email signature.
Your circumstances may have changed considerably, but you don’t have to assume that everything else has changed with them. That gives you somewhere much more steady from which to consider what comes next.
Try a Simple Three-Column Test
Take a sheet of paper and create three headings:
WHAT’S CHANGED? | WHAT HASN’T? | WHAT MIGHT I WANT NOW?
Don’t turn it into an exercise you have to complete. Simply jot down whatever occurs to you.
Under What’s changed?, you might notice that you no longer have the same professional status, your mornings are now your own, or you don’t see the same people every day. Perhaps you have more freedom.
Under What hasn’t?, you might write that you still love solving problems, you’re still ambitious, you still enjoy being around interesting people — or you still don’t want every minute of your life scheduled.
And under What might I want now?, perhaps it’s some structure, another role but not quite like the last one, more time outside, or a different way of using your experience.
Or perhaps:
I genuinely don’t know yet.
That's also a valid answer. This isn’t about creating an action plan - it’s about noticing.
A Silver Reset Reflection
Before you leave this page, spend a moment with one unfinished sentence:
What I’m beginning to realise is…
Complete it however you like. One sentence is enough, and you don’t have to turn the answer into a plan.
Sometimes recognising what’s there is the useful bit.
Somewhere to capture what you're noticing
If this has started a few thoughts, the Silver Reset Roadmap gives you somewhere to capture them and take a wider look at the different areas of life that may be changing too.
It isn’t about creating a new life plan or deciding immediately what comes next. Think of it as a place to pause, take stock and explore what matters to you now.
The Roadmap is a free fillable PDF, so you can download it and type your reflections directly into the document, or print it if you prefer working with pen and paper.