There is something I have been noticing more and more in my conversations with clients, friends, and former colleagues in tech and games: there is a growing fatigue with the industry. People are tired of working in tech. They are tired of working in digital. They are tired of games. And when we look at the games industry, it is no longer experiencing the same golden years that many of us who built our careers in the industry experienced. Week after week, we read about thousands of layoffs. People who thought they were safe suddenly lose their jobs. Some find another position, only to lose it again six months or a year later. Others keep applying and eventually reach a point where their nervous system simply cannot take it anymore. They feel exhausted. Unmotivated. Disconnected from their work. Sometimes they leave. Sometimes they are eventually let go because they are no longer able to perform at their best. If you find yourself in this place, first of all, know that you are not alone. Probably thousands of people are asking themselves the same questions right now: Am I in the right place? Am I doing the right thing? Does it still make sense for me to spend the next ten years of my life this way? And when is the right time to change? These are not only career questions. They are questions about identity, safety, purpose, time and energy. You could call it a mid-career or midlife crisis, and yes, I believe it is real. At a certain point in life, we naturally start asking ourselves: How do I want to spend my time? Where do I want to put my energy and my talent? Does what I am doing still make sense to me? From my coaching work, I have noticed that this process tends to move through seven different stages. They are not necessarily perfectly linear, and everyone experiences them differently, but they offer a useful map for understanding what happens when you are ready—or eventually forced—to change something about your work and your career. 1. The Trigger There is usually a trigger. Something happens that forces you to examine whether you are still in the right place. It can be an external event, such as losing your job, a reorganisation, a company closing, or simply seeing what is happening in the market and realising that the environment you built your career in is changing. It can also be much more internal. You start noticing that your health is suffering, that you are exhausted, that you no longer feel passionate about what you are doing, or that you are simply asking yourself whether this is really how you want to spend the next decade. With the rise of AI and automation, there is another question emerging as well: Does it still make sense to spend years developing skills that machines are increasingly able to perform? I see two very different ways people respond to this trigger: The first is to take ownership. They notice the wind is changing and decide they would rather initiate the transition while they still have resources, energy and choice. They don’t want to wait until they are forced to change. They want to own their destiny. The second is denial. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t need to change. I don’t want to change.” But if something inside you has already started shifting, ignoring it does not necessarily make it disappear. Eventually, the trigger becomes impossible to ignore. And for many people, that is when the second stage begins. 2. The Dance I call this stage the dance because it is a constant back and forth between the old and the new. One moment, you think, I’m ready. I want to change my life. Then the next moment, you convince yourself that everything is actually fine. “Maybe I don’t need to do this.” “What if I lose my friendships if I leave this industry?” “What if I don’t have enough money?” “What if I made the wrong decision?” “What if I end up under a bridge?” I have heard all kinds of versions of these stories in coaching. This is where the mind starts producing every possible argument against change. It is the ego trying to protect the identity it knows. Even when the current situation is no longer working, the familiar still feels safer than the unknown. And sometimes, if you can create a little distance from these thoughts, there is almost something humorous about the stories we create to avoid doing the work. But this dance is part of human evolution. Growing means letting something die. It means adapting, rebuilding, and sometimes creating a completely new identity. So if you are in this back-and-forth right now, it does not necessarily mean you are doing something wrong. It may simply mean you are in the middle of the transition. Eventually, however, the dance becomes exhausting. 3. Pain, Anger and the Threshold At some point, you get tired of going back and forth. Your mind becomes exhausted. Your body starts talking to you. You may notice health symptoms, chronic stress, frustration, anger or a growing sense that you simply cannot continue this way. This is often the moment when people who have been avoiding the decision are finally forced to confront it. I have clients who arrive at this stage saying, “I’m done. I’m tired of myself. I don’t know what to do anymore, but I know I can’t keep doing this.” The pain becomes greater than the fear of change. And that creates a threshold. Sometimes the trigger was enough to make someone move. Sometimes it takes years of discomfort before they finally reach this point. But eventually, something in the body says: enough. This is also why I pay so much attention to the body in my work. When the mind has spent years negotiating, rationalising and creating arguments, sometimes it is the body that finally tells the truth. 4. The Decision The fourth stage is the decision. And this is a very important distinction in my coaching work: I don’t want to work against someone’s will to change. There is very little point in pushing someone toward a new direction when they have not actually decided that they want something different. The decision creates momentum. “I’m done with this phase.” “I want to own my time.” “I want more stability and financial freedom.” “I want to feel vitality again, in my life and my work.” Once the decision is made in the body, something shifts. I experienced this myself in my career. Twice, I had the experience of receiving a surprise call telling me that my team was being made redundant, or that I was being made redundant, and that everything I had built would stay with the company. The first time, I told myself I would change something, but then I let the year happen. I tried another job. And then it happened again. That second time, I paid attention. I remember thinking, No more. That was the moment, three years ago, when I decided to own my time and own how I spend my energy and what I build. I did not want to spend my life knowing that someone in a company could simply make a decision one day and sweep the ground from underneath me again. That is why I built my own business. Today, I own my time. I work when I want to work. I don’t work when I don’t want to work. It is a gift, but it is also something I built for myself. And this is what I tell people I work with: it starts with a decision. It is not always a question of capacity. It is first a question of whether you believe you are ready to choose differently. 5. Grief But deciding to change does not mean that everything suddenly feels good. There is grief. Because when you change careers, a part of you is going to die. Maybe it is a fifteen-year career. Maybe it is twenty years. Maybe it is the identity of the achiever, the successful executive, the expert, the CEO, the person who knows exactly how the system works. Those identities often gave us something very important: safety. When I left my corporate career, I had to go through this myself. I had been quite known in gaming and associated with big companies and big titles. I had to ask myself: Who am I when I don’t have the glow of PlayStation, Voodoo, or another big company behind me? Who am I when I am no longer the CEO or the leader? That is a big part of career change that we don’t talk about enough. You are not simply changing what you do. You are letting go of who you thought you were. And that requires grief. 6. Acceptance After grief comes acceptance. Acceptance that the person you were is no longer who you are. Acceptance that your lifestyle may change. Acceptance that some relationships may change. Acceptance that the way you relate to money, success, purpose and even your own identity may be completely different. When I look back at my own transition, I also had to examine my relationship with money and status. At one point, I was earning very well and spending a lot because I felt that if I worked that hard, I deserved to spend that money. Restaurants, expensive things, a lifestyle that was partly compensating for how much time and energy I was giving to work. When I changed my life, I realised I didn’t actually need as much. My relationship with money changed because my relationship with myself changed. I didn’t need to compensate for what was missing in my life by buying things or creating a lifestyle that proved I was successful. Acceptance is also about asking a much bigger question: What am I actually here for? Am I here to maximise profit for shareholders? Or am I here to create something I genuinely believe is valuable for other people and for the world? That shift can change everything. 7. The New Self And then comes the seventh stage: the new identity. This is where the deepest work begins. When you strip away the job title, the company, the status, the salary, the industry, the role and the professional identity, who are you? Many people know exactly who they are when they are employed. They know how to operate within the system. They have learned the rules. They know how money works, how st
