What if you’ve been following the wrong career advice?

If you’re ambitious, you’ve probably asked yourself some version of this:

What does it take? How do I get from where I am to where I want to be? What do I need to do? Who do I need to become?

If you’re anything like me, you operate on a fairly simple principle: effort is no object.

Tell me what I need to do. I’ll do it.

Which is probably why ambitious people are so susceptible to career advice in the first place.

We want to know: What does it take? How do I get from where I am to where I want to be? What do I need to do? Who do I need to become?

So you collect advice from people who seem to have figured it out.

Be louder. Speak up. Take up space. Be more visible. Network. Stay consistent.

And you’re too ambitious not to try. So you do.

I certainly did.

But time and again, I had to realize that the same tactics that worked beautifully for someone else didn’t seem to work for me. At all.

I bought the yellow statement blazer. (There’s a whole podcast episode about it.) I put myself in front of audiences where I could barely catch my breath. I made bold statements about my career ambitions in front of senior leaders without quite believing them myself.

It wasn’t for lack of trying.

I tried being louder. Speaking up. Taking the stage. Doing all the things ambitious people are told will move their careers forward.

And some of them probably did.

But not to the extent that would have satisfied my ambition.

So there came a point where I asked myself what was probably the kindest question I could have come up with, as someone who was ready to try every successful leader’s top tips:

Is there another way? One that nobody has advised me to try yet?

One that only my own inner voice could really know.

But you know what happens when you become really good at doing the things you’re supposed to do.

You become so good at following other people’s voices that you stop hearing your own.

Maybe that’s the career crisis so many millennials quietly find themselves in.

We’ve spent so long looking outside ourselves for the answer to a question nobody can really answer for us.

Because the truth is, nobody actually knows what it takes. For you.

People know what worked for them.

And that distinction matters.

Careers aren’t formulas. They’re deeply personal. What moves one person forward can leave another feeling like they’re performing a version of themselves they don’t particularly recognize.

And if I’m honest? I think that’s the beauty of them?

We’re not looking for a predetermined path anymore. So why do we keep asking for directions?

It’s not that all advice is bad. Or ill-intended. It’s just one interpretation of what a certain career trajectory could look like.

We don’t need to reject career advice altogether.

Maybe we just need to stop treating it as instruction.

Take what fits. Leave what doesn’t. And get better at recognizing the difference.

How?

By spending a lot more time with ourselves, perhaps. Writing. Sitting with things. Asking really good questions. Listening for the one voice that can actually inform a career path that is extraordinarily yours.

So the question stops being: Who do I need to become to get where I want to go?

And becomes: How do I get there without losing sight of who I already am?