Navigating a Career Pivot with Resilience
Changing your path doesn’t mean starting over
A few years ago, Lucinda worked in tech. Now, she runs her own piano studio.
Sometimes a pivot starts with job loss. Other times, life changes first. A move, caregiving, burnout, or simply realizing the path you’re on no longer fits can force you to ask the same question: What now?
When I heard about Lucinda’s career pivot, I had so many questions. How did she make it work? Was this always her dream? Did she begin teaching piano while still searching for tech jobs? When did her backup plan start to feel like her main path? What did she miss about tech, and what did she realize she still carried with her?
Lucinda lost her job unexpectedly, just like many others. Living in Central Washington, she looked for a remote job, but with few callbacks and her unemployment benefits ending, she had to consider new options. What worried her most wasn’t just the paycheck. She was more concerned about keeping the life she had built around her faith, her service, and her animals. Her job has always been a way to support her life mission, not its center.
We often hear about companies that pivot and celebrate young people who take bold steps off the usual career path. In the startup world, ‘pivot’ has become a buzzword. But in our own lives, especially during unemployment, pivoting can feel much harder. The silence of a saturated job market can make us doubt ourselves and wonder if we’re unemployable, not just unemployed. If we can challenge that inner critic, though, a pivot can become a positive change that leads to something new.
If this sounds familiar, keep reading to see how Lucinda navigated her career change by relying on resilience. She graciously answered my questions and shared even more than I expected. I’m sharing her story because it might encourage you to consider a new direction, too.
A Pivot Is Not Freefall
Sometimes you know something has to change long before you know what comes next. That uncertainty can make a pivot feel more like stepping off a cliff than choosing a new direction.
But a pivot is not freefall. It means you keep moving forward; it’s a change in direction, not a complete stop. That’s different from what I called “professional identity purgatory” in my job loss article, where the real crisis is feeling stuck. Losing your job isn’t a pivot; that is something that happens to you. The pivot is what you may choose to do next.
A pivot means you keep moving forward; it’s a change in direction, not a complete stop. That’s different from what I called ‘professional identity purgatory’ in my job loss article, where the real crisis is feeling stuck. Losing your job isn’t a pivot; that is something that happens to you. The pivot is what you may choose to do next.
Through a resilience lens, having and making that choice matters. Earlier in this series, I wrote that agency, the belief that you can act to influence your outcome, is one of the strongest buffers against stress and a strong foundation of resilience. A pivot restores agency, even when you didn’t choose the circumstances that made it necessary. It also borrows from personal agility: when new data comes in, you adjust.
Lucinda’s story isn’t unusual. We are seeing this kind of reinvention everywhere. Colleagues are moving into new industries, developers are building AI skills, and early-career people are reconsidering paths they thought were settled. Companies are changing too, sometimes in completely opposite directions.
That is what makes this moment so unsettling. There is no single “future of work” to prepare for. The signals are mixed, and as I mentioned in my job loss article, uncertainty puts our brains on edge. When the job market sends mixed messages, it can be stressful even before you decide anything.
Pivoting is Not Starting Over
Some of my coaching clients say they feel they have to ‘start over’ in this tumultuous job market and uncertain economy, but I don’t think that’s true for most. Someone moving from Agile coaching to process improvement isn’t starting from scratch, and neither is a developer moving into AI. Even a tech professional opening a piano studio isn’t starting empty-handed. She brings years of problem-solving, learning, working with customers, business know-how, and discipline, plus everything else from her life story.
In earlier articles, I talked about losing your sense of identity and professional pride. Instead of asking, ‘Who am I now that I can’t do that job?’ it helps to ask, ‘What was underneath that role that still belongs to me?’
Lucinda’s journey shows us this. She taught piano as a young mother in a rural area. Later, at 38, she went back to school to earn a degree in administrative management and IT to support her family. Now, she’s teaching piano again, bringing all the skills and experience she’s gained over the years. She isn’t going back to where she started; she’s moving forward and building on everything she’s learned.
A Structure to Help You Pivot
Jenny Blake’s book, Pivot, offers a four-step structure: Plant, Scan, Pilot, and Launch. Each step includes a resilience skill, and Lucinda’s story shows all four.
Plant. This step is about knowing what grounds you—your skills, values, strengths, relationships, and needs that are still yours. Two questions from my job loss article fit here: What was I doing when I was at my best? Which parts of my work are skills I can use elsewhere, and which are tied to a role that’s going away? Your answers might be, ‘I’m in the zone when I’m creating,’ ‘I lose myself working with plants or animals,’ ‘I’m the organizer,’ ‘I’m the go-to person when something needs to get done,’ or ‘I’m the peacekeeper.’ None of these are job titles, and none disappear with a layoff.
For Lucinda, faith keeps her grounded. She had never built her whole identity around her job, so although losing it was disruptive, she still had a strong sense of what mattered to her. The job was just a way to support her family and live out her calling, not the calling itself. After the job ended, she had space to focus on ministry work that mattered most to her. Her teaching skills also came from her faith community, so she had been preparing for this new path long before the layoff.
Research on resilience shows the same thing: people who base their self-worth on values and relationships, not just one job, handle losing that job better. Lucinda did just that, staying rooted in her faith and purpose while bringing her whole self to the transition.
Scan. This step is about noticing what real opportunities are appearing, not just what you hope for. It’s more about curiosity than predicting the future. Where do you see energy? What are people asking for? What problems keep coming up?
Years earlier, Lucinda considered three ways to earn income for early retirement: teaching piano, teaching IT skills to the Hispanic community, and training horses. Each option needed something different, like a studio, resources, or land. She also looked into buying a franchise with a coach and realized it wasn’t for her. Figuring out what you don’t want is just as helpful; it’s part of the scan.
Pilot. This step is about trying out a small, low-risk test before making a big commitment. You don’t have to bet your whole identity on something new right away. Teach one piano student. Take an AI course. Volunteer for a different project. Consult, shadow someone, or build something small. Herminia Ibarra’s research in Working Identity says we figure out who we’re becoming by trying things, not just by thinking about them. Small experiments also keep the pressure low, so you can think more clearly.
Lucinda’s test run began at a local music teachers’ meeting. She joined both the Washington State and National Music Teachers Associations, where other professionals confirmed there was demand before she fully committed. She also found out she could grow her business by working with other local teachers and taking students from their waitlists.
Launch. This is the bigger step, taken once you have enough evidence to move forward. For Lucinda, this happened when her unemployment ended, and she decided to run her studio full time. The real costs set in: studio rent, self-employment taxes, and the need to stay careful with money during slow months. She’s kept adjusting her business plan and recently landed a big contract with a grant in a school district.
The Resilience of Pivoting
Lucinda’s story doesn’t end with a tidy “happily ever after.” Building a steady business takes work, and the financial reality is very different from her career in tech. She still misses parts of that world, and she told me that some days the business does not make much sense on paper.
But for Lucinda, success was never going to be measured by income alone. Purpose matters just as much.
Her advice is practical: expect income to fluctuate, stay frugal, and build around something larger than the paycheck.
Faith is a cornerstone of Lucinda’s story. Researchers often list faith, purpose, and meaning as key supports for resilience. In Lucinda’s case, faith was what stayed steady while everything else changed.
Three other supports appear in her story, and they’re common in many stories about resilience:
- Community. Other local teachers and her professional groups turned what could have been competition into a supportive network. Every teacher she met had a waitlist, so working together made more sense than competing.
- Continued learning. Many of her students are neurodivergent, so she took a detailed course on teaching them, led by another piano teacher. This course changed how she teaches.
- Skills carried forward. She uses tools like SharePoint, Teams, and Boom Cards in her lessons, and she created an AI-powered progress tracker with photos and badges to motivate her students. She hasn’t shelved her technical competencies and experience; she brought them into her studio venture.
We often think resilience means holding on through the storm. But Lucinda shows us that resilience also means being flexible: letting go of old plans when things change, staying rooted in what matters, and letting the rest evolve.
Adaptability + Agency
When we’re pushed to make a change, our inner voice can get loud:
- I chose the wrong career.
- I wasted all those years.
- I should have seen this coming.
But considering a pivot gives us another way to look at the story. Start by talking back to your inner critic. Instead of erasing what came before and starting from nothing, decide what still matters, what you want to carry forward, and what may need to change.
A good pivot does not require you to leave your past behind. Pivoting as a resilience skill means combining the ability to adapt with the agency to choose your next move. For Lucinda, her faith and sense of purpose stayed firmly planted while her career changed around them. For you, that steady point might be a skill, a relationship, your values, your lifestyle, or a calling.
Consider: What matters enough to bring with you into your next chapter?
To Do
Reflect: What are you trying to keep because it truly matters, and what are you holding onto just because you’ve already put time or effort into it?
Nudge: Pick one possible change and make it even smaller. What’s one simple, low-risk experiment you could try before deciding if it’s worth a bigger commitment?
Reset: A strong pivot starts with a steady foot.
To Read
Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One by Jenny Blake. A former Google career development specialist lays out a practical, four-step method for making small, smart moves in a new direction. Side note: This is also great guidance for leaders and coaches who want to develop better conversations with their teams or clients.
To Watch
“Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling,” Emilie Wapnick (TED) talks about people she calls multi-potentialites, who explore many interests and jobs throughout their lives, building from transferable skills. I found this helpful as a reminder that you can build a career from all parts of who you are, not just one job title.
Next
Sometimes what we carry forward helps us adapt. Other times, what we carry from the past can make it harder to move forward.
Next, we’ll explore how past trauma can show up in the present, and what helps us move forward when it does.
