Episode 17: Your Next Chapter Isn’t Selfish
Letting Go of “Good” Jobs That No Longer Fit
Feeling Done at Work? It Might Be Time to Start Anyway
Summary
You can be grateful for your job and still know it's not working for you anymore. In this solo episode, Ellen gets honest about what it feels like when your career starts to feel more like a cage than a calling—and what to do next. Whether you're burnt out, stuck in a role you're good at but don't love, or haunted by guilt for even thinking about leaving, this one’s for you. We unpack people-pleasing, patriarchy, and how internalized workplace gratitude keeps us trapped. Ellen shares her own turning point and introduces the “Start Anyway” mindset—because clarity doesn’t come before action, it comes from it. You don’t need a five-year plan. You need permission. And maybe this episode is it.
Takeaways
You can be grateful and still be done.
Feeling thankful for a job and also knowing it's time to move on aren’t mutually exclusive—you’re allowed both truths.
Your next chapter isn’t selfish.
Choosing change, especially when you’re burned out, is an act of self-leadership—not betrayal.Being great at something doesn't mean it's right for you.
Many people stay in roles because they’re good at them, not because they love them. That’s not success—it’s stuck.Permission is more powerful than a plan.
What keeps most people stuck isn't lack of clarity—it’s waiting for someone else to say it’s okay to leave. What if that person was you?Start with a sentence.
“If I gave myself permission, I would…” This small journaling prompt can help uncover big truths. Say it out loud. Then take a step.
Notable Quotes
“Wanting more doesn’t mean you’re selfish—it means you’re paying attention to yourself.”
“Staying stuck doesn’t make you noble. It just makes you stuck.”
“You are not betraying your past self by choosing a future that fits better.”
“Growth doesn’t always look like climbing the ladder—sometimes it looks like stepping off.”
“What if the person giving you permission to change...was you?”
Chapters
00:00 – Intro: The Voice Saying “I Think I’m Done Here”
00:50 – Gratitude and Guilt Can Coexist
02:00 – Center Stage, Maureen, and the Career You’re Good At But Don’t Love
04:15 – Why It’s So Hard to Leave a Role That Feels “Safe”
06:00 – Ellen’s Moment of Clarity on the Front Step
07:40 – Who Benefits from You Staying Stuck?
08:50 – Your Next Chapter Isn’t Selfish
09:40 – Why You Don’t Need a Plan—You Need Permission
10:30 – The “Start Anyway” Framework and Why It Exists
11:35 – Journal Prompt: “If I Gave Myself Permission…”
13:00 – First Steps Toward Something Different
14:00 – Closing Pep Talk: You’re Not Alone
Keywords: Burnout, leaving your job, workplace boundaries, women in leadership, people pleasing at work, toxic workplace culture, career transitions, quitting your job, mid-career change, emotional labor, permission to change, workplace guilt, Start Anyway, patriarchy at work, redefining success
Transcript
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:01.184)
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Heart at Work podcast. I'm Ellen Whitlock Baker and today I want to talk about something I know a lot of us feel, but rarely talk about out loud. There's that little voice in your head saying, I think I want something else. I think I'm done here. I think I might be ready for a new chapter. And then just as fast, comes the guilt, the spiral. Who am I to want more? Other people would kill for this job. I should just be grateful. Does that sound familiar? Let's get into it.
Let me say this upfront. You can be grateful for the job you have and know it's not right for you anymore. You can respect your team and realize you've outgrown the work. You can feel pride in what you've built and still want something totally different. Wanting more doesn't mean you're selfish. It means you're paying attention to yourself.
But here's the thing, especially for women, we're taught that wanting something for ourselves is suspect, that ambition has to be justified, explained, wrapped up in service to others.
So I love the movie Center Stage, which is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary, which makes me feel 100 years old. But if you haven't seen it, one, you're truly missing out on some terrible acting, but fun dancing and 90s goodness and two, it's about a group of ballet dancers who are training to become professionals and hijinks and life lessons ensue. Like the best movie for a recently graduated theater kid to fall in love with. But it's a silly movie, but I have never forgotten this one scene. And I guess I should say this is a spoiler alert, but I don't know. I'm not sure it's as juicy as like the Sixth Sense. So you might be spoiled about the ending of Center Stage.
So Maureen is the best dancer in the company and she's our villainess, sort of. She has this very intense stage mom who pushes her hard and we see her fall in love with this normal guy, AKA one that doesn't know how to do fuetes and start to think about whether she actually wants to be a ballerina or not. Maureen of course gets the main role in the big performance at the end, but her mom's in the audience watching it and she looks up and she sees during the performance that not Maureen, in fact, a very young Zoe Saldana, is in the lead role and Maureen's nowhere to be found. So mom runs out of the theater into the lobby where Maureen is waiting for her and confronts her.
And Maureen says this to explain her decision: “That's what ballet would be for me. A life of wishing I found something I really loved instead of something I just happened to do well.”
That line gets me in the gut still because I have absolutely had this revelation. And I bet some or a lot of you have as well. And I've had a lot of friends and coaching clients who have stayed way too long in jobs that were draining them because they were good at them and because they were safe and because they were respected in that job and because they had people depending on them, even if they were miserable doing it.
Yeah, I've had clients say things like, I feel like I'm abandoning my team if I leave, or I built this role, I can't just walk away from it, or my boss gave me this opportunity, they're gonna hate me if I leave. And I totally get it, I have been there. But I want you to think about the fact that a lot of current work culture and the patriarchy in general wants us to be grateful for our jobs. Don't expect too much, don't rock the boat, be productive, be safe, take care of everyone else first.
And women are even more prey to these expectations than men, like we've talked about many times on this podcast. It's seen as selfish sometimes, often, to choose something different than safe. To say, you know what, I don't actually wanna do this anymore, out loud. To force your way through the layers and layers of guilt and shame and expectations heaped on all of us.
To break through the surface and say, I am choosing something else. And this is even harder if like Maureen, you're really good at whatever you do. You climbed the ranks, you got the degrees or certifications, you probably sacrificed to do all of that. So you can't give it up, you're stuck. my gosh, I get it, I get it so much.
I was really good at my job and I poured years into it, aimed high, got to speak on stage at big conferences and be an expert, bring teams up, start new programs. And I didn't realize that I didn't want to do it anymore until it finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I know exactly the moment when I said it out loud.
I know exactly the moment when I said it out loud. I was talking to my best friend on the phone. I was sitting on my front step. It was a summer day. It was hot. And I was talking about a hard day at work, which there were a lot of at that point in my life. And I said out loud, I don't think I want to do this anymore. I I surprised myself by saying that. I didn't even know that's how I felt until it came out of my mouth. But that was it. That was the moment. And something eased within me when I said that out loud. It was a tiny step forward, but a big revelation said out loud. And of course, it was immediately followed by guilt and this fear like, true fear. Like Elsa in Frozen, I pushed it down. I concealed, don't feel-ed it until I didn't think those terrible words again because it was too late. It's too late to start over, too late to pick another career. I couldn't let my family down. So I stayed on that career path for four more years and I emerged this haggard burned out version of myself.
Like I always imagine those when I think about burning out or you emerging from the workplace as a burned out person. I picture those poor unfortunate souls in the Little Mermaid, like the shriveled up remains of the mermaids after they've given Ursula their souls. But that's ultimately what I felt like. it actually did me more harm to conceal all that and push it down and stick with it than quitting earlier would have done.
So let me ask you something. If you're staying in a role that's burning you out, if you're constantly pushing down your own needs to serve the mission, the team, all the shoulds, if you're exhausted, if you're underpaid, if you're under supported, if you're crumbling, who benefits from that? Because it's probably not you. And honestly, it's probably not your work either, because there will come a time when you get to the IDGAF stage.
Staying stuck doesn't make you noble, it just makes you stuck. And usually the people who are most afraid of being selfish are the same ones giving way more than they're giving back, are the same ones giving way more than they're getting back. So let me be the voice in your ear today. Your next chapter isn't selfish, it's survival, it's sustainability, it's a radical act of leadership to say, I'm choosing myself this time.
Because if you don't, you run the risk of becoming a shriveled up mermaid with no soul. And no one wants that.
So, okay, if this is resonating with you, you're thinking, great, but what the hell should I do next, Ellen? And I will not tell you it's easy. I will not tell you it's gonna be something you can journal about for a month and figure out.
There aren't enough platitudes and Adam Grant quotes in the world to make you feel great about divesting from a career that you've poured everything into. So what you do is you take one tiny step and then you take another and so on until you're actually able to take that big leap that you're looking for. This is actually one of the reasons I created the Start Anyway workshop because so many of us aren't lacking clarity, we're lacking permission.
We think we need this perfectly laid out plan. We think we need the timing to be just right. We think we need someone else to say, yeah, okay, it's okay. You can go now. But what if that someone was you?
And I'll be running the Start Anyway workshop again later this year. So if you're listening and thinking, yeah, this is hitting way too close to home, make sure you're on my list so you don't miss the next one. I'll drop the link in the show notes. But I want you to know it is hard and you're not alone.
And it's totally okay to feel this way. It is not easy to feel this way, but it's okay. You're okay. And here's the truth. Growth doesn't always look like climbing the ladder. Sometimes it looks like stepping off the ladder and building your own thing or walking away from a career you thought would be forever or just saying, this isn't working for me anymore.
And that is not a failure, that's insight. You are not betraying your past self by choosing a future you that fits better. And here's a way to start.
So here's something I teach in the Start Anyway workshop. Grab a pen and a notebook, find a quiet place and complete this sentence.
“If I gave myself permission, I would _______”
Don't do it perfectly. Don't wordsmith. And don't stop writing. Just get it all out there. It doesn't have to make sense. No one will ever see it but you. It's for you. Answer it honestly. “If I gave myself permission, I would _______”. Then put down your notebook, go on a walk, dance around the room, do something else, call your bestie. Tomorrow, answer the same question again:
“If I gave myself permission, I would______”. Your answer will be clearer. Repeat if necessary until you get to the less fuzzy version of what you would do if you gave yourself permission. Then take the first step. If you would quit your job and become a full-time artist if you gave yourself permission, have coffee with a full-time artist or reach out to one on a Zoom call or take a painting class.
If you would move across the country to a farmhouse, raise goats and make artisanal goat cheese, read a book on animal husbandry, take a step and remember you're not gonna do it perfectly and it is not gonna feel comfortable. But putting a toe in the water of something different will feel incredible. If that's all you ever do, that's fine. If you decide to stick it out at work, that's fine, you do you.
But I promise you, that you will feel tons better if you have this conversation with yourself. Start anyway. So if you've been feeling the itch, the pull, this quiet knowing that your next chapter is calling you, I hope this helped you learn how to hear it more clearly. I hope this helped you learn how to hear it more clearly, or at least remind you that it's okay for you to not wanna do what you're doing anymore. It might be time to explore your options and that is okay for you to do. Your next chapter isn't selfish, it's necessary and it's yours to begin. So thank you so much for being here. See you next time and I hope you'll catch us on the next episode of the Hard at Work podcast.
