Stuck in Career Change or Job Transition? Why Exploration Sometimes Keeps You in Limbo
There is a particular kind of stuckness I see again and again in my work around career change and job transitions.
It doesn’t belong to people who are afraid to start. It belongs to people who have already done a lot.
You have reflected deeply about your current job and next professional step. You have researched roles, organisations, and sectors. You have talked to people about career paths, job moves, and transitions. You have explored options, sometimes for years. You may have volunteered, trained, or tested ideas on the side. You care about making thoughtful, ethical choices.
This stuckness shows up both for people considering a major career change and for those who “just” want to change jobs. Sometimes it’s about moving sectors or roles. Sometimes it’s about leaving a job that no longer fits and finding the next one. The scale may be different, but the underlying tension is often the same.
And yet, despite all this exploration, something still isn’t moving.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not lazy, confused, or avoiding a decision. You may simply be caught in a form of limbo that is much more common than we tend to admit… a phenomenon well recognised in research on career transitions
Many people experience this kind of career limbo when they are considering a career change or thinking about changing jobs. They may feel stuck between staying where they are and taking the next step, even after months or years of career exploration. This is one of the most common moments people seek career change coaching.
The comfort and the trap of career and job exploration
In many career transitions, you are often encouraged to explore rather than rush. To keep your options open. To wait until you feel clearer before making a career move or changing jobs.
Much of this advice is wise. Exploration can be a healthy alternative to impulsive decisions. It allows you to gather information, test assumptions, and respect the complexity of your life and responsibilities.
But exploration has a shadow side.
At a certain point, it can quietly turn into a way of staying safe rather than moving forward. Not because you are afraid, but because staying in possibility feels less costly than choosing.
Possibility requires no loss. Commitment always does.
Waiting for the “true calling”, even when changing jobs
For many people, staying in limbo is linked to waiting for what they sometimes call their true calling.
Not just a job or direction, but something that will feel right, obvious, and settled. Something that will remove doubt. Something that won’t require explanation, justification, or difficult conversations.
Even when people are not changing careers, this shows up as waiting for a next job that feels unquestionably right, as if it should arrive without trade-offs, risk, or the need to explain the move to others.
The idea of a true calling can be comforting. It suggests that when the right thing arrives, movement will be easy.
The difficulty is that this version of calling often functions as a guarantee. A guarantee that we won’t regret our choice. A guarantee that we won’t have to give anything up.
In practice, most meaningful career paths and job moves do not arrive fully formed. They emerge through contact, trial, disappointment, and adjustment. Waiting for a calling that removes uncertainty can keep both careers and job changes on hold indefinitely.
Underneath the idea of a true calling, there is often a deeper concern about getting it wrong.
Not wanting to make a career or job mistake
Alongside this, another powerful force that keeps people in limbo is the wish to avoid getting it wrong.
This is especially true for conscientious, high-responsibility people. People who have made good decisions in the past. People who feel they only get one shot, or that a wrong move would say something painful about their judgement.
In job change, this often shows up as worry about making a wrong move on the CV, leaving a stable role too soon, or having to explain a change that doesn’t look like clear progression.
From this place, experimentation can start to feel reckless rather than informative. A step that doesn’t work out can feel like evidence of failure rather than part of learning.
Over time, avoiding mistakes can quietly become more important than learning.
The irony is that not choosing also shapes our working lives. It just does so slowly, and often invisibly.
“I don’t want to rock the boat unnecessarily, at work or at home”
And yet, the fear of getting it wrong is rarely just about you.
Very often, staying in limbo is not only about personal caution. It is about relationship.
Many people are part of systems that rely on stability. Partners, children, finances, workplaces, extended family. A job change or career move doesn’t just affect the individual. It shifts the balance of the whole system.
Staying undecided can feel like the kinder option. The less disruptive one. A way of protecting others from anxiety or uncertainty.
But over time, limbo can strain relationships and workplaces more than movement does. Something essential remains unspoken. Energy leaks out through frustration, withdrawal, or quiet resentment.
What looks like indecision is often a form of loyalty.
When career or job exploration stops being helpful
At a certain point, exploration stops being helpful when it no longer creates contact with reality.
Some signs that this may be happening:
- You have many conversations about roles or options, but nothing changes between them.
- You feel informed, but not more alive in relation to work.
- You keep refining possibilities rather than trying anything concrete.
- Plans stay hypothetical and timeframes dissolve.
- Movement always depends on someone else being ready.
At this point, exploration may be functioning less as discovery and more as a way of keeping your working life on hold.
Over time, this raises a different question.
How long can you stay in limbo?
This is a question many people avoid asking, because it sounds like pressure.
But it doesn’t have to be.
A more useful question than “Am I ready yet?” is:
How long can I stay here before the cost outweighs the safety?
Limbo is not neutral. Over time, it has consequences.
Energy drains. Curiosity turns into tiredness. Confidence erodes quietly. Work starts to feel flat or heavy. Life feels smaller, lived in brackets.
This is especially true when staying put becomes the default, even though you already know you have outgrown your current role.
Waiting can be wise. Waiting without review can quietly turn into self-abandonment.
Exploration needs some limits. Without them, you don’t feel safer. You start to feel like your life is on hold.
The question, then, isn’t how to eliminate uncertainty, but how to move with it.
From certainty to “safe enough” movement
The shift that often needs to happen is not from confusion to clarity, but from waiting for certainty to accepting what is safe enough.
Safe enough does not mean reckless. It does not mean blowing things up or making irreversible decisions.
It means recognising that clarity often follows action, not the other way around. Decision-making under uncertainty research shows that trying to eliminate uncertainty often increases stress and narrows perspective.That learning requires contact. That some uncertainty has to be carried rather than eliminated.
Most meaningful career changes and job moves begin not when we feel certain, but when waiting for certainty has started to cost more than moving with care.
How I work with clients at this stage
This is where coaching can help. This isn’t about pushing you to decide faster, or convincing you to take risks you’re not ready for. It’s also not about staying in reflection indefinitely. The work sits in between: supporting movement while staying in relationship with the fears, responsibilities, and systems you’re part of.
In practice, that means we pay attention to where exploration has become a holding pattern, what you may be protecting by staying where you are, and what feels genuinely risky versus what simply feels unfamiliar. We work with fears of making mistakes or rocking the boat, rather than trying to override them.
Clients often tell me that what changes first isn’t their job, but their relationship to the decision itself. They become clearer about what matters, more honest about what has been keeping them in place, and less paralysed by the need to get it right. From there, movement tends to follow in ways that feel grounded rather than forced.
This is delicate work. It’s not about dramatic leaps, but about helping you move forward without rushing, and without staying stuck in endless preparation.
A closing reflection
At this stage, it can help to sit with a few questions.
- What are you protecting by staying in possibility?
- What would you lose if you stopped exploring and started committing?
- What would safe enough look like for now, in relation to your work?
- How long has this phase already lasted, and what is it beginning to take from you?
If these questions resonate, you are not broken or behind. You may simply be standing at a threshold.
And thresholds are meant to be crossed, not occupied indefinitely.
If you’d like support navigating this edge, whether you’re changing jobs or rethinking your career more broadly, you can book a consultation with me or send me a message. We can explore together what might help you move forward without rushing or forcing a decision.