As a career and transitions coach, the starting point for so many conversations is often the same: a feeling. It’s the quiet hum of dissatisfaction beneath a life that, from the outside, looks perfectly successful. My clients are smart, capable, and hardworking, but they realize they're searching for something more than just a typical promotion—they need a map to a career that feels not just productive, but true.
I’ve always believed that the most powerful guides for these complex transitions are often found in stories. For me, that started as a childhood fascination; I practically lived in the library, convinced that every book held a secret key to understanding the world. This enduring love of deep learning and new perspectives shapes how I approach coaching today. It’s why we dive into these non-fiction books together—they don't just give us answers, they give us a shared language and fresh lenses to navigate the biggest challenges in our work and lives.
My favorite genre has always been science fiction. Not for the laser guns or spaceships, but for its power as a thought experiment. Sci-fi takes our world, with all its familiar anxieties about purpose, belonging, and success, and places it in an unfamiliar context. It strips away our assumptions and forces us to see our own lives from a startling new perspective. By exploring a society on a distant planet, we can suddenly see the unspoken rules of our own culture with perfect clarity.
That is why I’ve decided to launch this series, blending my two greatest passions: coaching and science fiction. We’re going to be diving deep into one of the most profound novels of the 20th century, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
Written in 1974, this book is not about aliens or interstellar war. It’s the story of two worlds with opposing ideologies—one a stark, anarchist society that values contribution above all, the other a lush, capitalist world built on possession. The journey of its protagonist, a brilliant physicist named Shevek, as he travels between these two worlds is a masterclass in the very themes my clients and I wrestle with every day: authenticity, fulfillment, fear, balance, and what it truly means to build a meaningful career.
Over the next seven articles, we will use Shevek’s story as a lens to examine our own personal and professional lives. We will extract powerful, practical coaching lessons from his struggles and triumphs. My hope is that by looking to the stars, we can find a clearer path right here on Earth. Let’s begin by exploring the powerful idea that you cannot make a successful career—you can only be it.
