Your Life Isn’t a TED Talk

And that's the point

We’ve been sold a story.

The visionary founder who “always knew” he’d build something huge. The coach who found her ‘true calling’ after one life-changing retreat. The career changer who had one crystallising moment of clarity.

Great stories, mostly bullshit.

These people aren’t dishonest.

They’re just doing what humans do: making sense of a messy journey by telling it backwards.

Steve Jobs said “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

Yes, I’m aware of the irony of quoting a keynote speech. But he wasn’t wrong.

Because nobody’s TED talk opens with “I stumbled around for fifteen years, hated most of my jobs, and kind of fell into this thing by accident”.

But that’s closer to the truth for most people.

Including me.

The myth of the mapped-out life

Last week I wrote about the difference between wanting to change and being ready to change.

About how we’re often stuck in Contemplation, designing plans for a version of ourselves that doesn’t exist yet.

One of my subscribers read it and sent me this:

“I’m ready for change. I’m in a job that’s comfortable, but I feel like I’ve outgrown it. I need to find my new path. But I don’t know what to change TO.”

I read that and went: yep.

Because I could have written this message myself at so many stages of my life.

You may have done the hard bit. You know you’re ready for change. But being ready doesn’t help much when you have no idea where you’re going.

The self-help world loves telling people to “get clarity” and “find their purpose.” But most people are stuck by exactly that question.

And whether you’re 25 and wondering what to do with your life, 40 and outgrowing the career you worked so hard to build, or 55 and feeling the pull towards something completely new, the feeling is the same.

Something needs to change. Followed immediately by: ok, but change to what?

My gloriously patchy CV

I’m 42 and I always joke that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

My first job was in a call centre. I hated it.

Then commercial and business development roles.

Did recruitment for a bit. God I hated that too.

Got my masters in my 30s.

Spent 10 years in innovation and legal tech. That was super fun until my spectacular burnout.

I became a certified health coach. Started a newsletter and a podcast.

I also DJ at events like the Singapore Grand Prix, because it’s fun and why not.

For years, I looked at people with their clean, linear careers and thought: what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just pick a thing and stick with it?

I remember reading Lean In when it came out in 2013 and I thought Sheryl Sandberg had it all figured out. I felt so inadequate because my CV looked nothing like hers or the other business leaders I admired.

(In hindsight, turns out, the people that we measure ourselves against aren’t always worth measuring up to...)

The pattern only shows up in the rearview mirror. While you’re living it, it just looks like a patchwork. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. Real life is not a keynote. That’s how it actually works.

And the research backs this up. Herminia Ibarra at London Business School found that people reinvent their careers through experiments, not endless self-analysis.

You don’t think your way into a new path. You experiment your way into it.

John Krumboltz took it further: unplanned events aren’t just inevitable, they’re also useful.

The skill isn’t having a perfect plan. It’s staying open.

Even identity works like this. You become something because you kept showing up, not because you discovered a calling.

One thing leading to another, none of it obvious at the time.

I created opportunities, and when something showed up that felt right, I jumped.

When it didn’t work out (and plenty of times it didn’t), I took the setback as a learning experience, even when it just felt like failure.

There was no strategy, no grand masterplan.

Just: keep moving, stay open, see what happens.

At 42, I’m on my fourth career pivot, currently writing this from Colombia in the middle of a year-long trip I planned with zero certainty about what comes after.

If you'd told 25-year-old me this is where I'd end up, she'd have been terrified, and absolutely here for it!

You don’t need a grand plan to go all in. You just need one next move you can stomach.

Your tiny experiment this week

So if knowing the destination isn’t the starting point, what is?

Try one of my favourite coaching questions: If you knew everything was going to work out, what would be your next move?

Read it again. Slowly.

It doesn’t ask for a five-year plan. Doesn’t ask you to define your purpose or justify anything. It just asks for one move.

Some people get an answer immediately and then spend ten minutes talking themselves out of it.

Others draw a complete blank.

Both are useful.

If nothing came up, it usually means you've been stuck in your head too long. The answer won't come from more thinking. It'll come from doing something, anything, different.

Now make it stupidly small.

• Not "quit my job" but "message that one person on LinkedIn whose career makes you curious and ask how they got there"

• Not "start a business" but "spend one evening sketching out the idea

  Not "change everything" but "change one thing this week and see how it feels"

One move. This week. Not a commitment. An experiment.

Experiments don’t fail. They just give you data. Ten minutes of trying usually teaches you more than ten hours of spiralling.

Clarity is overrated. Action isn’t.

With love,
Noemie x

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P.S: The best things in my life came from messy, imperfect action, not from waiting until I had it all figured out. I’d love to hear yours. Hit reply with one sentence: what’s your next move?

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