Ever find yourself thinking, “I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up”?

You’re not alone — and more importantly, you’re not behind.

In this episode, I respond to a heartfelt question from a 43-year-old marketing director who's feeling stuck and unsure about their future. We unravel the pressure-packed question we've all heard since childhood — “What do you want to be when you grow up?” — and offer two far more useful ones instead.

You’ll hear:

• Why we’re still haunted by career expectations that began at age five
• 
  
• A mindset shift that turns work from obligation to opportunity
• 
  
• Two powerful questions that can reframe your midlife work life
• 
  
• How to connect your superpowers with real-world problems that matter
• 
  
• A peek inside how we tackle this inside the Fierce Emporium programme
• 
  

If your brain has been circling the same old questions for years, this is the episode to help you stop the spiral — and start designing something better.

🎥 Watch the video – Do I just need a new job or a new strategy?

👉 Watch now

📥 Free download – Five Questions to Ask When You’re Feeling Career Stuck

👉 Download here

💬 Join the conversation – You’re not too old, and it’s not too late.

👉 Midlife Unstuck Community Invitation

If this episode sparks something, please share it with someone who's quietly wondering the same thing.

Hi, I'm Lucia Knight and this is the Joy At Work Podcast.

Here is this week's question from a listener.

Hi, I'm a 43 year old marketing director, who has worked for two decades

so far and I still don't have any idea what I want to be when I grow up!

If I'm lucky, I might be able to contribute actively to something for

another 20 years - that means I'm about half way through my career.

Is it too late to begin to discover what I want to be when I grow up?

You'd be surprised how often this question comes up,

or maybe you wouldn't because for a lot of us, it started when we were

about five and a half years old.

Remember that you're at a big family lunch.

You've taken a humongous bite of your egg and onion sandwich.

Mm, I know that's a bit weird.

It's a Northern Irish thing.

And here comes Auntie Nula.

So Lucia, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Sweetheart?

Q. Internal panic.

If you know any kids, please stop asking them that question.

It doesn't help.

It makes them feel like they should know the answer.

But they don't.

It makes them feel like they have to know, but they don't.

And when they don't, they feel behind before they've even started, and

they will get asked the very same question, approximately 572,000 times

before they finally land on a job.

And that job is likely to be nothing like their childhood answer.

I told the world from the age of about five to 12 years old that

I wanted to be a hairdresser.

Everyone had an opinion on that one, and the truth is, it's way too early

to decide at five and a half or even 14 and a half years old, we know next

to nothing about careers or ourselves.

We don't know what lights us up, what drains us, or what kind of daily graft

or craft could make us genuinely happy.

But somehow we're expected to pick a lane and stick with it.

It's madness.

Fast forward to adulthood, especially midlife.

And we're still haunted by that same old question as our listener is only

now it's heavier because now it's also about bills and status and lifestyle.

It's about identity, boredom, and burnout.

It is about life's busyness and the enduring juggle, as well as worry

about if it's too late to change.

So here's the shift I want you to make, instead of asking, what

do I want to be when I grow up?

Try asking what do I want to do on repeat?

Because work for almost all of us is a repeating cycle.

So the real magic happens when you get to do something that feels good

and energizes you, something you actually want to do again and again.

That's the shift from I have to do this to earn, to, I get

to do this every day to earn.

That tiny word get is powerful.

It turns obligation into opportunity.

And if you've been with me for a while.

You've heard me bang on and on about superpowers.

These four activities that light you up, fuel your motivation

and make time disappear.

The four activities that feel good in your body as well as your brain, and when

you know specifically what those are, you have the ability to start designing a

life where they're built into every day.

So the better question to ask yourself again is, what do I want

to do on repeat and get paid for it?

But wait, there's more.

There's a second question, and this one supercharges your clarity.

What problems for others do you care about solving?

The answer to this question provides the purpose and meaning to the

activities you choose to do on repeat.

So pick a problem for others that excites you and do that when you

connect the activities you love doing, your superpowers, with a real world

problem for others that matters to you.

Your career suddenly has meaning.

I know, I know I've made that sound simple, but you know, it's not.

Because you've been thinking about this for a long time.

And the what am I going to be when I grow up?

Question has been circling in your brain for years.

Which is why in the Fierce Emporium, that's my career makeover

program for midlife professionals.

We take a very structured step-by-step approach to this very thing.

We go deep, we identify all the problems that genuinely resonate with you.

We narrow them down using a filtering method I've developed

and tested over years.

We creatively explore what it could or might look like to solve the final

three or four problems that make it through our analysis process using your

four very specific, unique superpowers.

And then we get real and practical about which gaps in your experience,

skillset, knowledge, and network you need to fill or close in order to

be able to solve these problems, and whether you have the energy, the time,

or the desire to fill those gaps.

And finally, you choose deliberately, consciously.

Intentionally you decide which activities you want to get paid to perform on

repeat in service of a problem you care about, because let's face it,

none of us have time nor energy to waste on endless navel gazing,

circular thinking, or trial and error.

We have jobs, kids, aging parents, changing bodies, health scares, emotional

strains, complicated relationships, and more than a few of life's battle scars.

What we need are methods, proven methods that work, that have helped hundreds

before us that bring clarity without exhaustion, that give us the best chance

of actually being happy or even joyful during the hours we spend working.

If you want the little extra help, I've popped two things into the show notes

for you, a short video to help you decide whether you just need a new job or

whether the rest of your work life could benefit from a whole new career strategy.

I've also included a downloadable resource.

It's called Five Questions to Ask and Answer When You're Feeling Career stuck.

And if someone you care about keeps wondering what they want to be when they

grow up, send them this episode right now.

It might help them stop those circular thoughts and start taking action instead.

And finally, please, please, please, please, please stop asking the

children in your life what they want to be when they grow up, and ask

them what they love doing instead.