Embracing Midlife Career Transitions with Therapist Nick Nordberg

In this episode of the Relational Psych Podcast, host Dr. Carly Clayney talks to Nick Nordberg, a licensed mental health counselor specializing in life transitions. They discuss the topic of midlife career changes, sharing Nick's personal journey from business analyst to therapist. The conversation highlights the importance of being open to change, listening to oneself, and the challenges and rewards of such transitions. They also explore the broader implications of career change, including fear, regret, and the pursuit of meaningful work. The episode emphasizes the value of exploring one's vocational calling, regardless of age or circumstances.

Links:

Nick Nordberg: https://www.relationalpsych.group/our-team/nick-nordberg

Let your Life Speak by Parker Palmer: https://www.amazon.com/Let-Your-Life-Speak-Listening/dp/0787947350

© Relational Psych 2023

W: www.relationalpsych.group
E: hello@relationalpsych.group
P: (206) 589-1018

Transcript

[00:00:00] If you want to learn about psychological growth without getting lost in complicated language, you're in the right place. This is the Relational Psych Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Carly Clayney, licensed psychologist and the founder and CEO of Relational Psych. On this show, we learn about the processes and theories behind personal growth.

Please keep in mind that this podcast isn't a substitute for therapeutic advice, but we're here to point you in the right direction.

Carly Claney: today on the podcast, we have Nick Nordberg. Nick is a licensed mental health counselor and a therapist at Relational Psych. He specializes in men experiencing life transitions and adolescents who are needing support with self esteem and emotional regulation.

And the topic that we have today is normalizing midlife career changes. So Nick, thanks for being here [00:01:00] today. 

Nick Nordberg: Thanks for having me. 

Carly Claney: Yeah. I'm curious for this topic, normalizing midlife career changes. What about it excites you? Why are we talking about it today? 

Nick Nordberg: I think because it's something I did and want to normalize it for other people as well normalize it for myself.

I spent my career as a business analyst slash project manager in a variety of different companies. And when I was in my mid thirties, decided to go back to school and become a therapist, something very different than what I thought about growing up and what I did most of my career. So yeah, I think it's something more people should have as an option.

And it feels okay to switch streams midway. 

Carly Claney: I love that. Like even what you just said, having it as an option, like knowing it is a path that people do take in life, you're allowed to take in life and can be really beautiful, like really successful to, to pivot. Like you have. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, totally. I feel the perennial question you get as a child is what do you want to be when you grow up?

Everyone wants to know where are you going to [00:02:00] be? What do you want to do? And I think it's a great question. I posed to kids I work with all the time. I feel like these days there's a lot of pressure to identify really early on. What are you going to do? What are you going to study? Just to make sure you have a plan, make sure you know what you want to do, what it takes to get there.

And I think that's great. There's a lot of good reasons for that. It keeps kids engaged in school, helps them understand why they're studying what they need to study, helps to avoid the drop off that occurs after you graduate high school without a plan, go to college, just work some jobs that are really unfulfilling.

It's good to have a plan, but it's also, I think, important to Be open to your life changing that plan. And I think that's what happened for me. People can have the drive to know what you want to do, but also to be open to the fact that may change, or that may take a little while to really solidify what really works for you.

I think that should be okay. 

Carly Claney: Yeah, both of those feel really important. The fact that things [00:03:00] can change, I think, as you were saying that I was thinking how it's so nice to have an idea of what you want to be or a direction of focus, but it can breed the sense of it. It must stay that way. I, if I have a direction, I must see it through indefinitely.

And I think what you're bringing up is that's not the case for everybody. Whether it's because you change or Life circumstance changes, or maybe that path that worked for a while. It doesn't hit in the same way in terms of that life satisfaction or some kind of meaning there. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. For me, how I answer the question of what I want to be when I grow up.

It changed so many times. I think at one point I wanted to be a soap actor, a Soap opera actor at one point, I wanted to be an exercise physiologist, a photographer computer programmer. I think my mom joked that my interest would always change because it would change what magazine I subscribed to.[00:04:00] 

Computer world, photography world, runner's world, just changed frequently. And after high school, I found myself working kind of business analysts project manager type jobs that I fell into. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed solving problems. I was good at it. Got me promotions, got me doing things that, that I enjoyed and it was good and it was fine.

And I thought that's where I was going to continue. Studied for a long time to get my project management professional certification was a big life goal for me. Did a lot of studying and just a lot of process to even, To be able to sit to take that exam, but it probably wasn't a year or two after actually finishing that certification that I decided to quit and go back to school and become a therapist.

I'm pretty proud that I did that, but yeah, ended up, I don't see it as a waste. I still take a lot from what I learned in that job. Even joke, it's I'm like an analyst manager. My goal is to be a psychoanalyst, and I was a business analyst before that. So it's just [00:05:00] analyzing people, analyzing situations and helping people figure out what's wrong.

It's a common thread there, 

Carly Claney: I'm curious in that transition, either for yourself or for other people who are in a similar position, is, does there tend to be a way it goes, meaning does the career change start to fester?

Did it fester inside of you? Were you unhappy with the position that you had? Or is it more of an abrupt change? Is there something there that might be something to predict? 

Nick Nordberg: A little, for me personally, a little bit of both. What happened for me, it's, My life changed radically after having a child pretty difficult birth experience that really upended my life and resulted in a divorce and needing to be the sole caretaker of my child.

So what I found is then coming to work felt very different. I was dealing with a lot of difficult things at home and then I would come to work and talk about accountants needing to. [00:06:00] better book their journal entries. And it felt very dull and very unimportant. And it was very hard to straddle both those worlds.

And I was doing therapy myself and I felt like this is much more important. I need to be in this world both with both feet, and for me, it was the, not just the sense that I want to be a therapist, but I want to become a therapist. I knew that going back to school would be difficult, not just academically, but personally in the school I wanted to go to, asked a lot of you personally.

So I felt like it was a bit of a. Psychological bootcamp of unpacking kind of your past and unpacking the things that have impacted you and what you wanna do with your one precious life. And I knew I needed to undergo that to survive where I was at. So it's not just that I wanted to be a therapist, I wanted to become, and I wanted to then make use of the crap that I had been through and the difficult things and put it to some sort of use to help other [00:07:00] people going through something similar or something different.

Carly Claney: Yeah, 

Nick Nordberg: that was what it was for me. I was finding myself unsatisfied. By this point, I was starting to date again. So going out on dates and feeling like you're auditioning your life and what you want out of life and what you do and continually felt myself coming up lacking. And found myself saying a lot if I had to do it all over again, I would do X, Y, Z.

If I had to do it all over again, I would do this instead, or I wouldn't have done that. And that started to rain on me a little bit. And I kept telling myself it's too late. It's too late to start over. And the more I kept saying that, the more I really had this burning in me to find out if that was really true.

Is it really too late? And so all at once, I felt that building over a couple months, I was like, I got to do this. I got to take the jump and go back to school and see if this is going to work. It may not, but I won't be able to live with myself if I don't answer that question.

That's what it was for me. 

Carly Claney: I appreciate you sharing [00:08:00] from personal experience because I think the themes about that feel so resonant of other people's experiences, even if the details would be so different. The things that really struck me were this awareness or like a coming to realize how you actually felt about your life or about your job.

And then a listening to yourself, a listening to yourself, even as you talked out loud about how you were talking about your job or how you Maybe we're starting to think that doors were closed, but then you were curious that maybe they aren't closed which led to that investigation. I think that key of just really listening to yourself felt very significant about.

One of those trigger points that the turning point for you and in the story, 

Nick Nordberg: it felt like an impetuous decision. But after I said it out loud to myself, I heard and I was like, oh, that is actually, I think what I want. So it was impetuous. But also, yeah, something about that spoke to me. I knew it was actually what I did need to do.

I think for some people, it's different. I [00:09:00] think sometimes people just get burnout. They find themselves dreading getting the Sunday scaries before going into work, feeling like this is not what I want. They're tired. They're not eating. They're not feeling well physically. Sometimes people feel a misalignment between their personal values and what they're having to do in their job.

And just as you get older you feel that strain and you feel like I can't do this anymore. So for some people, I think that's what leads them to consider a radically different decision I think the existential issues at play, the older you get, the more you start to think about someday I'm not going to be here.

Someday I'm going to be on my deathbed. And think did I value how I spent my time? Did I wish I had gone into the office more? What are you going to want to pass on as your legacy? And sometimes when you start to answer that question, you think about what you've been doing professionally and think, no, that's not, that made me a lot of money that, that gave me some success.

I felt like I was good at it, but I don't know that's what I [00:10:00] want to be remembered for. So for some people, that's what drives their decision to change suddenly. 

Carly Claney: Yeah. Can you speak to some of the pros and cons about taking the leap, whether it is like acknowledging all the things that you just said of the drives towards this conversation and then.

What it would be like to actually commit to a change. 

Nick Nordberg: We'll start with the cons. It's expensive. It is definitely like you change trajectories and you have to start over again, even if the career you choose is equally, rewarding. It can still take a while. Going back to school is expensive. Starting at a lower rung is expensive. And then just personally, professionally being an older person entering into, a workforce, a job where other people are younger, you feel a little setback. You're like, okay, I feel younger now and maybe not the best of ways. [00:11:00] So it's hard.

You feel like you're learning again. You feel like you're so much more mature. You had to understand certain things and then you're. Starting over again with a younger crowd, that can be hard. Yeah being older and going back to school, you're not as young as you used to be, not as used to, to late night study sessions.

That's difficult as well. Feeling like an outsider feeling an imposter syndrome, I think, is a big one, going back. Pros, though, you do bring a lot of life experience. Especially for something like therapy, you bring something that others. Don't have so that feels good at times as well.

I think sometimes it makes you feel younger in, in good ways. you get the chance, you get a new lease on life. You get to start new at something you get to find out, even if it's a mistake, it'd be a great mistake. Sometimes you have to fail your way to.

Understanding yourself better. 

Carly Claney: Yeah. What I'm hearing in that is so much of risk and investment on one hand, and then the payoff of growth and development and satisfaction, [00:12:00] and it'd be so nice if we knew that the path forward was just going to be all of those good, satisfying, meaningful Things and yet I think it's never without those pieces of investment.

So when you said even it's an expensive transition, yes, expensive in money, but I'm thinking also the cost emotionally of the risk that it takes to imagine a different life for yourself. 

Nick Nordberg: At the same time, I did come across an article in Forbes when I was thinking about this that did say talking about changing careers, mid career.

They did find though that workers who change jobs mid career are significantly more likely to be employed at age 60. Older workers who change jobs voluntarily tend to have wage increases compared to those who don't, or those who are forced to switch jobs. 

I think part of that is also it stays off the burnout. If you do change tracks before you get burned out, it does tend to help your career last a little [00:13:00] bit longer. 

Carly Claney: That makes a lot of sense rather than just powering through. I have this image of someone who's unhappy in their, I don't know, tech job, corporate job, whatever it might be.

And it's not doing it for them, but the fear of change, the fear of the imposter syndrome just keeps their head down, just barreling through until maybe five, 10, 15 years later, it really does reach that break point, it's no longer a choice, maybe for them to have not just maybe choices of different paths, but choice of energy of, could this be something you choose for yourself rather than that burnout that just extinguishes your flame?

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, totally.

And so a book I was reading recently that was recommended to me by a friend is let your life speak by Parker Palmer. About the art of finding your vocation took a long time for him to settle on what he ultimately wanted to do, trying a lot of different careers before he got there.

And so it really spoke to this idea [00:14:00] of sometimes your vocation needs to be chosen after reflecting. The life you've been through, the failures you've gone through not so much of what do I want to do, what is going to make me the most money, what's going to make me the most successful, but what have I noticed the common themes of my life be and what can I do with that information to help better inform what I want to actually do as a job and as a vocation?

So one thing he says is before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. 

Carly Claney: Oh, that's powerful. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah. Yeah.

Carly Claney: It reminds me of what we had said earlier about in your path, that listening to yourself, allowing yourself to go on a development of yourself, not just who, how you spend your time or what you're doing day to day, but a transformation inside. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, exactly. I needed to listen to what the circumstances of my life were telling me was actually important to me. [00:15:00] And what I actually needed to feel like I was fulfilling my call for my life. 

Realized that it was something different than what I was doing and something different than where I had been going. 

It wasn't a transition I expected to make, but was consistent with Circumstances of my life that were beyond my control, but you can't change it.

You can just adapt to it and say, what do I want to do now that I'm going through this? What do I want to do with these experiences that I can't change? 

Carly Claney: Yeah, that feels really important because it's a lot. It seems like it validates how much. Is out of your control, the things that are happening to you aren't choices likely that you or other people would have made for themselves.

It also seems like in this process, there can be bringing in things like values, like who you are includes what you value. And maybe there's a misalignment of values or maybe even needs, again, I'm thinking of that choice thing. You might be in a situation where your [00:16:00] needs aren't optimally getting met. And once you can acknowledge that and maybe recognize what you actually need, it creates a path towards less. Resistance less fighting against yourself. There's more of a ability to actually accommodate what you need. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, totally.

I think I'm remembering a quote by Carl jung, Once I accept myself as I am, then I am most likely to change or words to that effect. That there's a sense of what I want to be sometimes feels imposed from the external world. The art of happiness is discovering who you really are.

And being that on purpose, and so it takes a lot of listening and takes a lot of listening to your life, your successes, and probably more importantly, your failures to be able to say, okay, this is who I am. And this is what's going to make me the most happy. And how do I need to adjust course to to accommodate that. 

Carly Claney: Was there any other themes from that book that stand out to you? 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah. So vocation at its deepest [00:17:00] level is this is something I can't not do for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone else. And don't fully understand myself, but that are nonetheless compelling. I feel like that, that really resonates with my choice to go back to school and become a therapist of, I don't know that I'm not going to succeed at this.

I don't know that this is going to work, but damn it, I have to find out, and I did have a hard time explaining it to people. It came as a surprise, the same as a sudden course change, but, Once the idea was there, I had to see it through, I had to figure out if this is what's going to work and that's really compelling when you, you have something you were just like, I, I may crash and burn, but I'm going to regret it if I don't find out, 

I had a client tell me a couple of months ago about a study. They read where people, when you have the choice to make a decision between the risky choice and the non risky choice. [00:18:00] People almost always regret the path not taken more than the path taken, even if that path ends up in failure.

But that's, that sticks with people more often, is the choices, the roads they didn't go down. I think I had a sense of that. I had a sense of, this idea is stuck in my head now, and if I don't see it through, I'm always going to wonder. And better, it's better to choose and potentially fail than to have that sticking out in your head as, What if I hadn't done this?

Carly Claney: I really resonate with that, especially with the idea of, as you said, that I think the what if feels like so hard to come out of. There's no end to that almost, whereas with failure, you can work through failure, you can consolidate what happened or what didn't happen and you can actually reconcile.

Nick Nordberg: You learn so much from it. 

Carly Claney: Reminds me last year that relational psych, we were doing this really big risk with our business and expanding it [00:19:00] outside of Washington, which is where we are into Texas. And within three, four months, we decided to stop the expansion, to pull it back. It wasn't successful in the way that we needed it to be, and we pulled out of it.

And there's so much about that. That I had to learn and that I had to grieve and the investment piece that expensive piece, not just with again money, but with time and energy. It can be hard sometimes to think what was wasted or what was what was lost about it, but it's invaluable how much I had to learn in that process.

And for me personally, one of the ways I think about it is I had to learn the end of my ambition and that felt really important that I couldn't have learned that except through experience. But then all of these other lessons about myself and the business and partnership and all of these things, again, it could only come through actually doing it rather than just thinking about it or imagining it [00:20:00] or All the hypotheticals.

Yeah, that really resonates with me what you said about really seeing it through making it real. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts for people who might not have this level of conviction or compelling reasons? Maybe they have ideas about change or they're not happy with where they're at, but there's not a true calling towards something else.

Nick Nordberg: That's a great question. So it's important to listen to it. I think it's important to to talk to people about what you're feeling to see what solidifies and it doesn't need to turn into a career change. There doesn't need to be a pressure to change anything. And yet your life is trying to say something is unsettled and something needs to change.

It may not be major, maybe minor. But that's a great place where, professional help can come into play, whether that be therapy or life coaches or spiritual direction, talking to someone about, Hey, something feels unsettled, unsatisfactory. And sometimes you have to be okay with, I [00:21:00] don't know.

I don't know what that is. I think there's pressure to identify what is wrong, what does need to change, but oftentimes the answer comes in the waiting, you're wandering a path and have to see where it goes. But the important thing is to ask the question and to admit that what I'm doing doesn't seem to be working.

And I do need something else. That can be a scary thing to say. Yourself on its own. 

Carly Claney: Yeah, but the intention of the exploration in that feels so important. It also makes me think too. It seems like when you get to that point when you know, something's off or you're not wanting to stay where you're at, even if you don't know the perfect next choice or next path, any change might get you closer to that. So maybe you have to experience something different and maybe that's not the right thing, but it'll tell you more about the next thing. And then the next thing. And I imagine that path can feel really scary or [00:22:00] intimidating. But it's a path towards actually learning through doing 

Nick Nordberg: You got to do something and make a choice. You got to fail. 

Carly Claney: There any other points from that book or themes that come to mind? 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah. One thing he says is as young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are. Expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood, but to fit us into slots. I feel like that describes school a lot, it's a fit into a category to identify a thing again, like I said earlier, there's good reasons behind that. You want to not leave high school without a plan. You want to get some traction, but sometimes that looks like putting you into predetermined slot that you may not have totally figured out yet.

I'm a big fan of gap years, honestly, like I think some people think a gap year is just putting off college, but I learned about it recently, [00:23:00] like you can apply, you can get accepted to college, and then you can write them and say, I'd like to defer for a year or two, and they'll hold your application. So it gives you a chance to explore life a little bit more with still the expectation that you're going to go to college, you're going to return. You're going to continue your path, but it gives you the chance to let life marinate a little bit. I think that's important. 

Carly Claney: Yeah, having more life experience, maybe some more development. Seems like it takes the pressure off of you have to know this right now because it's August and you're starting school just because rather than the forcing that it comes from just being more ready. 

Nick Nordberg: I've also encountered some clients who maybe are searching a little too much for the perfect thing and might need a little bit of a push to start somewhere. Maybe it is a particular slot. They start just to start something. And this kind of goes back to why [00:24:00] it's not such a bad thing to change midstream.

It takes that pressure off, start by becoming a doctor or a lawyer, start by going into computer programming knowing that doesn't have to be what you're going to do long term. You can start with something more traditional and know that you can change it.

Carly Claney: It reminds me of what you were saying before about vocation. That word just strikes me and how much it holds. I think a lot of times we conflate the idea of vocation and career.

They're one in the same or they have to be equal to each other. Do you have thoughts about for people who maybe have never felt that buzz about their career? Or maybe they have a sense of vocation and other elements of how they spend their time, like in their home, with their friends, volunteering.

Does vocation have to be in their career? 

Nick Nordberg: No, it definitely doesn't. In fact, there's so many people who do pursue their job. So religiously, but they don't even think about what excites them outside of their job. So if you have that sense of what's [00:25:00] exciting you with your hobbies or your friends or your family, you're already an advantage to a lot of the workforce.

So it doesn't have to be met through your job, I think, but we do have to ask the question. What does excite us? What does compel us? What keeps us living on this earth and keep us growing? Whether it's something that pays us money or not, what are we here for? 

Carly Claney: And does your job provide that in a way?

Does it light you up to do that? Or does it provide the resources to then go and do that somewhere else? 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, for a lot of people, it does. They can say, yeah, I don't really like what I do, but that's okay because I have something exciting to come home to. And that's awesome too. 

You just have to have something you're passionate about wherever you're finding it.

Carly Claney: Yeah. Yeah. So how about someone who's listening to this? And even by clicking on the title of it, they probably outed themselves as they're curious about a midlife career or mid career change. [00:26:00] What are other signs that they might consider? What could be Signs to themselves, or maybe even a partner that you might be noticing that you're in this position 

Nick Nordberg: checking out at work.

Not being as excited by success. I think, getting promotions doing well, but it doesn't feel as rewarding as it used to think would be a big indicator. You're doing your job. But it's so what, I think that's something to pay attention to burnout. Like I said, just dreading going to work.

Not being even excited to talk about what you did with your day. That's sad. We spend a great number of hours at our job. We would at least hope we're excited to tell people about it. What we did, what obstacles we overcame, things we enjoyed, and if you're finding you're not doing that's a big indicator that it might be something different.

Carly Claney: Yeah,

I'm also thinking, I think we talked about this earlier, but that misalignment in like values where maybe what you're doing, it, it works, but there's something that [00:27:00] it goes against about how you either View the world or where you want the world to go to i'm thinking maybe you work for a corporation that doesn't align with your values. Or The industry that you're in something like that where it's it feels like it's hurting you to continue in that 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, I do hear that from a lot of young tech workers that I work with i'm not sure what i'm doing Whether or not it's evil, and that can be answered in a lot of different ways.

Sometimes we have to do a little bit of stuff that doesn't align with our values, but maybe there's ways we can make up for that outside of our work life. But sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes we do wrestle. Some of us are very ethical and think, oh, I am not contributing towards something good.

And that hurts me. I could do it for a while. I did it for the money. I did it for the success and the work relationships. But sometimes the older you get, the more you think about what am I going to leave behind? And is it a net good for humanity or is it not? And sometimes that really does compel us.

I [00:28:00] can't. Ignore that much longer, sometimes that means we can be a force for change. Corporations are not unchangeable. It's not like directions can't be shifted, but that's overwhelmingly difficult to do at times. 

Carly Claney: Yeah, 

Nick Nordberg: but sometimes, sometimes we have to be the lone voice.

That speaks out and remains in the job remains in the unethical corporation and says, hey, I think. I need to be noisy and I need to make people uncomfortable. And that's okay too. And that's fulfilling. You're doing this, you're speaking up, you're being a potential for change and that's okay too.

That's valuable. And that, that can leave us feeling better about how we spend our time because I'm not just doing it passively. 

Carly Claney: Yeah. 

Nick Nordberg: But for others, they may say, I can't do that, I can't be effective in that. So I do need to jump ship and do something that I can live with. I can live with myself. I can, at the end of my days, I can look back and say, that was valuable.

I did something good for humanity. I did something [00:29:00] good to leave the world behind better than I came into it. 

Carly Claney: It was also so valuable, both to feel like a theme that we're talking about to acknowledge it to listen or to notice that's where you're at. And then to pay attention to what you need, whether to adjust something within or bring about bigger significant change.

Nick Nordberg: Totally. Totally. 

Carly Claney: I find myself thinking about the word normalize. And if there's ways of preparing people in this process to normalize what they might feel, both to note that they might, they're in the process of considering the change, but also within the change there's going to be a whole host of emotions and you brought up imposter syndrome and all of that.

What are other things to just expect from the process?

Nick Nordberg: Fear, expect fear, expect. Regret in some regards, not necessarily Oh, that was a bad choice but elements of regret elements of, Ooh, was this a good choice? Missing some of what their old job was, that, that happens too. There's aspects of my [00:30:00] job that I enjoyed.

I enjoyed solving the problems, that. Easier to solve as a business analyst than as a therapist sometimes. So expect some aspects of missing. That's okay too. Yeah. 

Carly Claney: I wondered guilt too, maybe guilt of the privilege of being able to shift if they're in a situation where they have the resources to take the hit or maybe they have a partner who's supporting them.

So it enables them to take a risk, but yeah, I imagine maybe some conflict of, do I even deserve to, to do that? 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. In some ways there's a fair criticism I've heard lately about the self kind of empowerment, self actualization movement is, it's very privileged.

Some people are working dead end jobs that aren't very fulfilling, but they have to. They have to put money on their plate for their family. They don't have the privilege to do what inspires them the most. [00:31:00] They're just trying to survive. So if you are in a position where you can change everything, there's going to be some guilt associated with that.

I'm getting to make a choice. Not everyone gets to make. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. You do. If you are afforded the ability to do it. I think others who are less privileged, if they were given the chance, they would probably do it too. Does it mean you need to stay and suffer just because others don't have the same choice. 

Carly Claney: Hmm. What are some next steps? Someone's in this situation. And what are paths forward? 

Nick Nordberg: talking about it with others, talking with your friends and your family and admitting that I'm not really satisfied with the amount. I'm curious about doing other things. Therapy, life coaching, spiritual direction to have someone walk you through that a little bit more, especially if you need some help solidifying what is next going back to school.

It may seem like that going back to school is what you do after you decided, but sometimes that can be the path going back to [00:32:00] school may help you decide that this isn't for me and that's not a waste either. You learn something along the way, even if you don't see it all the way through. So taking actual steps, actionable steps to find out more about the vocation you're curious about is important.

Carly Claney: Yeah.

Nick Nordberg: I think what not to do is just to sit and stew about it and wonder that never ends up well, because then it's an unanswered question. If you don't pursue it in some way that regret will linger on and be the thing that if only I had done this, I'd be so much happier. You got to answer the question one way or the other.

Carly Claney: Yeah, I think that's hard for anybody who's been sitting on the question for a while and then what starts to maybe simmer to the surface is this fear of it's too late. I've been thinking about this for five years. I've been sitting wondering for 10 years, like now it's too late.

You're shaking your [00:33:00] head. What do you have to say to that? 

Nick Nordberg: What I'm picturing is going back to school and I was in an odd position in my mid 30s. Most were younger. There weren't a lot in the mid 30s that are in the grad school, but there were several older couples as well.

Couples, husband and wife doing it together. Who were at retirement age and then they decided, Hey, I want to become a therapist. And I thought that was really beautiful. 35, I am definitely not too old. There are others older than me doing it and therapy is a great career for older people.

It's a great, Irvin Yalom is what still in his mid 90s. I don't know if he's still practicing therapy, but you can do it for a long time. You can do it as a young person, you can do it as a middle age and you can be a great older therapist as well. Yeah, it really isn't too late. It's your one life.

In death is the only thing that's too late. 

Carly Claney: Yeah, because I could imagine even if maybe, yeah, you only have a number of years left of your career. If you've been in 1 career for a long time, or if you've taken a break [00:34:00] for a long time, but those years will happen, whether you could stay put in those years, or you could really get something new in those years.

They're coming anyway. Yeah to take a sense of maybe ownership over those years and take the risk. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah, you're never too old to be who you are.

Carly Claney: You mentioned a little bit about talking to people, both, coaches or therapists, but also in relationship. And it made me think this is outside the scope of this conversation, but I'm thinking about people, either parents or partners or friends who are witnessing someone in their life that they love, who's going through some of these questions. What are ways to support them? What are things that, You or someone else in your position would have wanted to hear or would have wanted to be asked. Have any thoughts there? 

Nick Nordberg: I think, it would have been helpful to hear other people who might be struggling with the same thing.

Maybe they haven't taken the path. Maybe they have stayed where they're at. But they've [00:35:00] had those longings as well. That's still important to hear, too. You don't need to always follow it to know that, hey, you're not the only one wondering about this, too. I think, any amount of relatability anyone who's been there would have been great to hear stories of other people who have changed careers kind of midstream as well and how it's worked out for them.

Carly Claney: Yeah, back to that normalizing it. Even as you said that I'm thinking everyone, everyone maybe has had experience of doubting where they're at in their career. I think it would be really surprising if someone hasn't had those thoughts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Totally to different degrees, but to be able to share that in a vulnerable way with each other and say yeah, you're not alone. Or maybe I won't take the same steps that you will, but I get it. I totally get why these things are coming up for you. 

Nick Nordberg: And no matter what you do that, the sharing of vulnerability builds relationships every time 

helps you understand each other better 

helps you understand yourself better. 

Carly Claney: [00:36:00] Definitely. Any final thoughts or recommendations? 

Nick Nordberg: I think just step on in. The water's fine. Jump right in. Jump right in. You can always get out. That's the thing. You can always change your mind. No matter what you're doing in life, you can always change direction. You don't need to have 1 career, you don't have 2, you can have 3, you can always change.

Nothing is too late.

Carly Claney: I love that. And also, as you say that, I'm thinking you can always take a break. You can always, you don't have to be pedal to the floor the whole time you're in this transition. It's okay to take a break. Take a breather or take a pause. It doesn't mean that things have stopped. 

Nick Nordberg: Yeah. And if you have the flexibility and ability in your life to take a sabbatical when you're feeling this, that's an excellent thing to just to say, okay, I don't know what's next, but I want to take a break from what I am doing and experience more of life and maybe return to doing exactly what you're doing.

And that's fine. I think you'll come away with [00:37:00] a fresh perspective regardless. Big fan of sabbaticals. 

Carly Claney: Thank you so much for sharing again, both your experience personally, but also just some of these bigger like themes and supports for people of all different life situations. I'm curious if anybody's listening to this and wants to have you be that partner, a thought partner to work with in some of these themes.

Are you available for clients? Can you talk a little bit about your work? 

Nick Nordberg: Yes, I would be available. I love having these conversations. I love exploring kind of the existential issues of life. People who are curious about the mismatch between what they were meant to do and what they are doing.

I love working with older teens, young adults and. Even in mid career professionals are asking this very question. It's an exciting conversation to have regardless of what they choose. They always, I think, come away with a renewed sense of who they are and what they want to look like. 

Carly Claney: It's something you said earlier, but like the [00:38:00] exploration matters, like it's going to be so rich regardless of what comes from it.

Being with yourself and with someone else in that process is going to be life changing. 

Nick Nordberg: Absolutely. 

Carly Claney: We'll put your contact information in the show notes and thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. 

Nick Nordberg: Thank you for having me.

Appreciate it. 



Carly Claney: Relational Psych is a mental health group practice providing depth oriented psychotherapy and psychological testing in person in Seattle and online in Washington State. If you're interested in mental health care for yourself or a family member, please reach out. Our website is relationalpsych. group.