---
title: 'Changing Careers at 30 Changed My Life'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=pkLE6yL6g-U'
video_id: 'pkLE6yL6g-U'
date: 2026-08-18
duration_sec: 637
channel: 'Alison Marie'
---

# Changing Careers at 30 Changed My Life

> Source: [Changing Careers at 30 Changed My Life](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pkLE6yL6g-U)

## Summary

The video is a personal narrative about leaving a career as a therapist at age 30 to become a life coach. The creator shares nine lessons learned during this major life transition, focusing on themes like outgrowing dreams, listening to your inner voice, embracing reinvention, and the importance of boundaries and self-reflection.

### Key Points

- **Dreams Change** [00:14] — The creator's dream of being a therapist changed when she realized her approach didn't align with her intentions. She wanted to help people move forward, not just process past trauma.
- **Listen to Your Inner Voice** [01:07] — External opinions are biased and based on others' experiences. Learning to trust your own voice and drown out outside noise is crucial for pursuing what you truly want.
- **Reinvent Yourself** [02:31] — You are allowed to reinvent yourself at any time. New experiences provide feedback that can lead to personal changes and growth.
- **Get Out of Your Comfort Zone** [03:35] — Growth happens outside of what is familiar. Taking aligned action and pushing yourself to try new things leads to amazing growth and experiences.
- **Burnout Is a Sign** [05:09] — Burnout is your body telling you something needs to change. It affects relationships, health, and happiness, and should be a signal to stop and reassess.
- **Rediscover Yourself** [06:16] — Every experience is a lesson and a teacher. Leaving something behind is an opportunity to rediscover yourself and grow into a better version of yourself.
- **Identity Beyond Prestige** [06:44] — The creator's confidence was tied to prestigious schools, but she realized that true happiness comes from who you are as a person, not job titles or external achievements.
- **Reflection** [07:21] — Reflection is a powerful tool for growth. A daily journal prompt—what happened, what felt good, what didn't—can quadruple growth and provide feedback for change.
- **Power of Boundaries** [08:27] — Boundaries are deeper than just saying no. They vary by relationship and can be verbal or shown through actions. They are about respecting your energy and personal values.
- **Each Experience Is Your Teacher** [09:23] — Personal growth is a lifelong journey. Getting comfortable with self-reflection and knowing yourself is crucial, as your relationship with yourself is the one constant.

### Conclusion

The video concludes by encouraging viewers who feel burnt out or stuck to consider making changes, emphasizing that it's okay to outgrow dreams and that change is not starting over but growing from previous experiences.

## Transcript

this wasn't just quitting a job. This was quitting my entire identity and everything I had spent all of my 20s working towards. If you're in a place change or just want to know someone else's perspective on what it's like to
with you the nine lessons I learned and I hope that you find them helpful, too. changes with seasons and it's okay to outgrow a dream. My biggest dream from the time I was 18 until 30 was to be a therapist. I wanted to get licensed. I
wanted to have my own private practice. But that all changed when I realized the way I was showing up and helping people didn't align with my intentions going into the field. I didn't want to help people work through trauma in the past.
people figure out where they are now. And instead of spending so much time looking in the rearview mirror, I wanted to help people move forward. Recognizing that dreams change and evolve over time is so important because the person you
are changes, too. You're not the same person you were 10 years ago that you yourself, you want to also be able to adopt that in the choices that you make for yourself and what is and isn't right. So instead of holding on to the
flexibility and openness to knowing that that's going to change over time can going to know what's right for you except for you. Where I think a lot of listen too much from outside noise and outside voices. People are going to have
you should or shouldn't do. You have to getting from other people, it's all biased. It's all coming from their wrong and right, from their own personal failures, from what they've seen other
what's right for you besides you. Learning to listen to that voice and drown out the noise of other people and outside voices is so important because it's going to help you go after the things that you want. And sometimes you
didn't tell anybody that I went into coaching until I already had clients and I was doing it for a few months. Then I started telling people because it was outside noise. I didn't want opinions of
the thing that I wanted to do. And once I felt like I was comfortable sharing it asking, "Do you think I should do this? Should I not do this?" It was going was one of the most empowering things that I've done. I would never
I've had because that was my path and those were the lessons that I needed to learn. I am so grateful for the time that I had as a therapist and I'm so I had during that transition as I was changing careers because that's shaped
who I am today. This is one of my favorite lessons is that you're allowed to reinvent yourself at any time. Every single day we have new experiences. Through those new experiences, we have feedback from it. That feedback tells us
taking that, we can create different changes for ourselves. Reinventing yourself is one of the things that I'm always wanting to do. I want to be in a knowing that each year that I do that, I'm going to grow so much as a person.
I'm going to learn so much more and I'm going to be so much stronger. A year ago, I had no idea that I would be doing YouTube videos right now. Fast forward a year, through the experiences that I've had, I've decided to pivot. I was so
one-on-one with clients, providing that helping people create the changes that they want. And then I started thinking, show up in other ways. I want to be able to create a channel where I can share
what I know from the 10 years that I've spent working with clients from therapy to coaching and bring it to you here. Discomfort of getting away from what's familiar is one of the most important things you can do because what is
familiar isn't always what's good for you. For this one, I am going to say it is taking aligned action and getting out of your comfort zone. That is where the happen in the familiar. It doesn't happen in what you know. It happens in
comfortable for too long, that means you're not growing. You want to push yourself to learn and try and experience new things. Those are going to be the when you look back on it a year or two years from now to see all of the cool
things and amazing growth that came from simply getting out of your comfort zone. Therapy was very familiar. I knew that field and that path, but it wasn't and what was truly going to make me happy. When I decided to leave therapy,
it came from taking that aligned action of like, this doesn't feel right. I took about what I really wanted. I tried different things. I watched so many videos of people who went through the same programs that I went through and
left those and went into coaching. I found another girl who went through another therapy program. I don't think she ended up getting licensed, but then started coaching and I went to free webinars. I signed up for their
freebies. I did all of these things where I took aligned action on the path that felt right and I explored this new path before I dove in. Granted, I also like looking back probably could have started a little bit sooner, but I was a
little nervous to make that shift. But I took actions that felt right until I was ready to make that decision. Burnout was one of the biggest signs that the fit for me. This is your body telling you something needs to change. Burnout
affecting relationships, affecting your health, affecting your happiness. I was physically like, I can't do this anymore. I'm so tired. I'm so grumpy. I'm so depleted. Like, you shouldn't want to spend the weekends laying in bed
re-energizing to start over the next week. The weekends are supposed to be for you to have fun, to enjoy life, to go do the things that truly matter to not something that you need to persevere or deal with or overcome. It's a sign
that you need to stop and take a break and listen to what is and isn't working for you. I would consider my last work environment a toxic environment. But at that experience. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't unexperience that
because that helped me stand up for myself, build better boundaries, re-evaluate what was truly important to me. And ultimately, it gave me the push to leave therapy, which I may have ended up leaving either way to go into
more aligned with me. I don't see this as leaving something behind. I see this as an opportunity to rediscover yourself. I truly believe every experience that we have is a lesson and a teacher. And if
you learn from that and take away from that? And how can that help you grow and evolve and become a better version of yourself? What I didn't realize was so much of the confidence that I had in myself and my self-worth was connected
connected to getting into Berkeley, to getting my masters at USC. I had this something I had worked for for 10 years, but at the same time, it didn't make me happy. So what's the point of putting so much effort into things that don't
actually make you happy? And for me, the journey to finding who I am outside of the prestigious schools, the surface clear on what truly matters to me and
pursue things that make me happy. What matters is who you are as a person. What needs, that you're in alignment with your values. We can, of course, have values that are career-based, but that can't be our whole identity. Do what
makes you happy. That is the thing that matters more than anything. It doesn't matter the job title. It doesn't matter any of that stuff because that can go away tomorrow. The next one is all about reflection. Reflection is one of the
Doing this is going to give you the feedback you need to make the changes that you want. A journal prompt that I like to give almost everyone is a daily day, what happened, what felt good, what didn't feel good, and if there's
going forward tomorrow. the clients that do this reflection, the growth that they have quadruples. If you're reflecting, you're taking that feedback in and you can't unknow something. If you're making the same decisions each and every day
that don't feel good, like you're not waking up early, you're not doing your and you sit there and you write it day after day, that in itself is going to there and be like, "Another day I didn't do this." If you don't have a practice
right now, try to integrate it in your life in some way. Try to take that time to sit with yourself and reflect on what it is that you want for yourself and how step after that would be asking yourself, "What can I do different today
or what can I do different tomorrow?" And then following through with that. One of the biggest lessons I learned with leaving therapy is the power of boundaries today is very different from my understanding of boundaries 10 years
understanding of boundaries of like, I'm going to say no. You don't need to have deeper than this and they vary so much depending on relationships. If you're doesn't respect boundaries, you're going to have to reiterate this boundary
multiple times. Sometimes a boundary is verbally saying it. Sometimes a boundary comes out in your actions. Boundaries also go within yourself. Knowing your limits and what does and doesn't work for you and honoring those is so
life that you feel like you need to be setting better boundaries, ask yourself, something in your actions? Setting boundaries isn't just about respecting energy, your personal values. Making sure that you are in alignment with
to you. Not everyone's going to respect your boundaries. And that's not for you to figure out. That's for them to deal with. The last one is each experience is your teacher. Personal growth and development doesn't just stop at a
hit a certain milestone. This is something that you're going to be doing for the rest of your life. So getting really comfortable with self-reflection, getting really comfortable with knowing yourself and loving yourself truly on a
level fluff is one of the most important things that you can do for yourself. And it's something that you're going to be so grateful that you did later on. So I say do the work, do the self-reflection, strengthen yourself, strengthen your
love, know your worth, know who you are outside of job titles, outside of relationships. Because at the end of the day, when life changes and you go that you have is still that relationship with yourself. You are the one constant
evolving and changing. If you're watching this and you're in a place where you feel burnt out, stuck, or like you've outgrown your current path, I and encouragement to start to think about what that next step would look
like for you and to remind you that it's okay to make changes. It's okay if longer a dream or what you wanted for yourself now looks completely different. It's not starting over. It's growing on the previous experiences that you've
description that can be a great starting off point if you want to get those completely free. And I hope you hit subscribe so I can see you in my next