The Career Change Studio

Episode 54: That Sunday evening dread is a signal. This episode is about learning to read it rather than ignore it or manage it away and using it as the starting point for making real changes. The difference between situational dread and chronic dread  Why chronic dread rarely improves on its own, and what actually changes things Three practical steps to start taking the signal seriously this week...

Episode 53: This episode is about your lunch break. But it is really about something bigger, the habit of noticing what you need and actually doing something about it even in a small way. If you are exhausted by a job that is not right for you and cannot find the time or energy to work on what comes next, this is where you can start. In this episode you'll learn The thought errors that keep y...

Episode 52: When you get made redundant your instinct can be to jump straight into job hunting activities:  update your CV, get on LinkedIn, start applying. And yes, that advice is relevant eventually. But if you skip straight to the practical steps before you've dealt with what redundancy actually does to you, everything becomes harder than it needs to be. In this episode, Career Change Coac...

Episode 51: Career change coach Dana Stevens has been looking around secondary schools with her youngest son, and the conversations she has been having with him about change, decisions and the fear of getting things wrong have been striking her as exactly the conversations she has with her clients every day. In this episode she shares what came up, and why the simple way we explain things to child...

Episode 50: Career Change Coach Dana Stevens uses the story of creating this podcast as a live demonstration of how the brain responds to new things, why those first fearful thoughts are not facts, and what you can actually do with them.  An honest, practical and personal episode for anyone who has ever let their brain talk them out of something that mattered. In this episode you will learn: Why t...

Episode 49: Nobody decides to live to work. It just happens, gradually, when you design your career around what is in front of you rather than what you actually want your life to look like. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens explores the difference between living to work and working to live, what the second one actually means in practice, and how you get from one to the other.  In t...

Episode 48: What does it actually feel like to go through the Life-First Career Accelerator? In this episode Dana is joined by Juliette, who was part of the January 2026 cohort, for an honest and moving conversation about where she was when she joined and where she is now. Juliette arrived after a redundancy feeling, in her own words, unemployable and ready for the scrap heap. She felt she had no...

Episode 47: Most people who are trying to change careers are not stuck because there is nothing out there for them. They are stuck because they are approaching it in the wrong order. In this episode, career change coach Dana Stevens explains why going straight to the CV, the job sites and the applications before doing the foundational work is the thing that keeps people going round in circles, and...

Episode 46: September has a particular energy. A sense of possibility. But for most people that feeling passes without anything really changing. In this episode, career change coach Dana Stevens talks about how to actually use the September fresh start rather than just feel it.  This is an episode for anyone who has felt the September pull before and watched it pass without anything shifting. In t...

Episode 45: So many people who want to change careers say some version of the same thing:  "I just do not feel like myself anymore."  "I have lost my spark" In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens explores how that happens, why the obvious solution of just getting a new job is rarely the complete answer, and what actually getting your spark back looks like in practice...

Episode 44: One of the most common things that stops people from starting to work on changing their career is the belief that they have to have it all figured out first. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens challenges that idea. She draws a clear distinction between having a direction and having a perfect plan, explains why you need the first and not the second, and shares two honest...

Episode 43: You have probably heard of a money story, the set of beliefs about money that were formed in childhood and shape your financial life as an adult. Career change coach Dana Stevens believes we are all carrying an equivalent work story. A set of beliefs about what work is, what success looks like, what we deserve from it and what is possible for someone like us, formed long before we had...

Episode 42: If the thought of changing careers feels like the thought of losing yourself, this episode is for you. Career change Coach Dana Stevens explores why so much of our identity gets wrapped up in our job title, particularly when we have committed to a career for decades, and what to do about it when it is time to change.  In this episode you will learn: Why leaving a career that has been c...

Episode 41: Are you coasting right now? And if you are, is that genuinely what you want, or just what feels easiest? This episode is about the difference between coasting and growing. Why one feels safer. What the other actually costs. And what to do when your brain tries to talk you out of the thing you most need to do. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens shares a personal story tha...

Episode 40: If a holiday is the only thing keeping you going right now, this episode is for you. Career Change Coach Dana Stevens talks honestly about what it actually means to live from holiday to holiday, the exhaustion of getting there, the body finally letting go and getting ill, the dread creeping back before the holiday has even ended.  In this episode you will learn: Why holidays cannot fix...

Episode 39: Have you ever worried that you're not as good as everyone else? That maybe you don't belong in your job? Do you feel like a fraud? Do you worry that people will find out that you don't really know what you are doing? If so, you've experienced Imposter Syndrome. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens encourages you to think differently about Imposter Syndr...

Episode 38: Overwhelm is one of the most common things that keeps women stuck when they are thinking about changing careers. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens gives you a practical tool to reach for the next time overwhelm starts to take hold.  In this episode you will learn: Why overwhelm is a feeling and not a permanent state, and what that means for how you work with it The wave...

Episode 37: So many people who want to change careers are struggling to belief that it is possible for them.  In this episode, Career Change coach Dana Stevens unpacks the thought cycle that keeps people stuck in that gap between wanting something and believing it is possible.  In this episode you will learn: Why belief is built through small evidence rather than arriving fully formed before you s...

Episode 36: Your brain is always going to tell you that changing careers is too hard, too risky, too much effort. In this episode, Career Change Coach Dana Stevens asks a different question. Not how would you do it, but is it actually worth it, and only you can answer that. If you have been waiting for a plan before you let yourself want something different, this episode will help you start with t...

Episode 35: If you have been thinking about changing careers for a while but have not yet made a move, there is a good chance you are carrying some guilt about that. You may be thinking 'I should have done this sooner', 'I have wasted so much time' or 'why did I leave it so long?'. In this episode, Career Change coach Dana Stevens makes the case that that guilt is not...

Episode 34:  One of the most practical and underrated things you can do when you are thinking about a career change is to deliberately surround yourself with evidence that another way of living and working is possible.  Not just for inspiration, but because seeing real people with real lives making real changes genuinely updates what your brain believes is available to you.  In this episode you wi...

Episode 33: Have you been told that the key to changing careers is to find your passion? And have you then tried to locate said passion and come up more or less blank? In this episode, Career Change coach Dana Stevens dismantles the follow your passion narrative and explains why it is one of the most unhelpful ideas in the career change conversation. If you have been holding back from making a mov...

Episode 32: All or nothing thinking is one of the most common thought patterns people get stuck in. It is the thinking that tells you the choice is between staying exactly as you are or throwing everything away and starting from scratch. Between doing something perfectly or not bothering at all. Between total success and complete failure. In this episode Dana explains what all or nothing thinking...

Episode 31: What if you could stop focusing on escaping where you are and start moving towards something that genuinely lights you up? In this episode, Career Change coach Dana Stevens makes the case for why joy is not just a nice thing to think about but one of the most practically useful tools in the career change process.  In this episode you will learn: Why escaping what you do not want is nev...

Episode 30: This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and Career Change Coach Dana Stevens wants to talk about the experience of struggling on in a job that no longer fits and the impact that can have. So many people can tell themselves a story that it is their fault; that there must be something wrong with them or it's a sign they are broken. In this episode Dana challenges that story, make...