How to Reevaluate Your Career After Unexpected Change
When a Layoff, Setback, or Life Change May Be an Invitation to Recalibrate
Nearly two years into a new, mission-driven role, I felt like I had finally found it.
Not just a good job. Not just a smart next step. A true fit.
I was helping people access lifesaving genetic information, work that felt deeply connected to my own experience with cancer. It gave meaning to one of the hardest chapters of my life. It felt purposeful. It felt aligned. Then, one Monday morning, it was gone. I was laid off unexpectedly. My belongings would be mailed to me. There would be no real goodbye. As I walked out, I passed a screen in the office playing a video of my family’s cancer story. I held back tears until I got to my car. And then, I couldn’t hold them back any longer.
What made that experience so painful was not just the loss of a job. It was the loss of something that had come to feel like identity, purpose, and proof that I had found my ikigai. At first, my instinct was to solve the disruption as quickly as possible. I told myself I would take a few months to regroup and then find another role in healthcare. Problem, solution, move on.
But unexpected change does not always need to be solved immediately. Sometimes it is asking us to do something else first: pause.
How Do You Know When It's Time to Reevaluate Your Career?
You may need to reevaluate your career when the assumptions that shaped an earlier decision no longer fit your current priorities, responsibilities, energy, or definition of success. An unexpected disruption can make that misalignment easier to see, but you don't need to wait for a crisis to reassess what you're solving for.
Four signals:
Your definition of success has changed.
The tradeoffs that once felt worthwhile no longer do.
Your energy consistently points away from the work, pace, or environment you're in.
You're staying primarily because the path still looks successful from the outside.
I’ve come to think of that pause as a form of grounded hope. In a recent conversation on Wisdom Stripes, I described it as the kind of hope that does not pretend everything will work out exactly as planned, but helps you stay steady enough to reflect honestly—to notice what has changed, what still fits, and what may no longer align.
That is the part we often skip. A layoff, health scare, caregiving season, burnout spiral or quieter season of restlessness can be painful and destabilizing. But it can also create something rare in adult life: distance from momentum. And distance can make reflection possible.
Not every disruption means you need to reinvent your life. Not every setback is a sign that your current path is wrong. But interruption can be an opportunity to look inward and ask a more honest question: Am I still on my path of least regret, or is a detour needed to stay aligned?
The Path of Least Regret® is a decision-making framework for clarifying what matters, evaluating difficult tradeoffs, and choosing a path you can stand behind when certainty isn't possible. In a career context, that means periodically asking whether the path you're on still reflects what you value now—not simply what you valued when you chose it.
Ask: What Am I Newly Solving For?
Career decisions don't happen in a vacuum. The priorities that shaped the right decision five years ago may not be the priorities shaping the right decision today. Responsibilities change. Energy changes. Relationships change. Ambitions evolve. So do the tradeoffs we're willing to make.
Before asking “What job should I pursue next?”, ask a more fundamental question: “What am I newly solving for?”
I think of the path of least regret as the path that best aligns with your values, priorities and peace of mind in the present moment. Not the easiest path. Not the safest-looking one. Not the one that impresses other people most. The one that feels most honest given who you are, what matters most now, and what you are newly solving for.
One reason these moments can feel so disorienting is that we assume the person we are today is the person we will continue to be. We make career decisions based on current ambitions, tolerances, and tradeoffs, and then expect those to remain stable. But they rarely do. Our responsibilities grow. Our energy changes. Our definition of success evolves. What once felt like the right fit can later feel constricting, not because we failed, but because we changed.
That is what I slowly began to realize after my layoff. Every few months, what I wanted seemed to shift. I no longer had the same appetite for startup volatility. But I also could not picture myself in a slow-moving corporate setting. I still wanted to grow professionally, but the price I was willing to pay for that growth had changed. I was starting to value autonomy and time with my daughters differently than I had before. My goals were evolving faster than I could articulate them.
The clarity did not arrive all at once. It came through space.
A close friend told me to “wait for the bells to ring.” Months later, I was invited to give the keynote at the grand opening of the new Stanford Hospital. Preparing that speech and hearing from the audience afterward stirred something in me. I realized I did not want to speak only about the storm of my diagnosis. I wanted to help others navigate uncertainty, setbacks, and change in their own lives. I wanted to show that silver linings are not always found by accident; sometimes they are created with resilience, intention, and agency. That was the turning point. Five days later, I built a website, and on the anniversary of my five-year remission, I launched Silver Linings. My purpose had not disappeared. It had evolved.
That is why I have come to see detours differently.
A detour is not necessarily evidence that you got off track. Sometimes it is how you stay on the truest path available to you now.
Should You Recommit or Recalibrate?
Recommit when:
the underlying work still aligns with what matters;
the problem is temporary frustration rather than persistent misalignment;
the tradeoffs still feel worthwhile;
you would still choose the same general path, even if some conditions need to change.
Recalibrate when:
your priorities or definition of success have materially changed;
the tradeoffs now cost more than you're willing to give;
the environment no longer fits the life you want;
you're staying mainly because of momentum, identity, prestige, or sunk costs.
A detour doesn't necessarily mean the original path was wrong. Sometimes both decisions were right for different versions of you.
The practical challenge, of course, is that most people do not create enough space to notice when a detour may be needed. We wait until misalignment becomes unbearable. We keep pushing because we are capable. We keep performing because the outside world still rewards us. We keep telling ourselves that once this quarter ends, once the kids are older, once the market improves, once things settle down, we will think more deeply. And then months or years pass.
A more intentional approach is to build in mechanisms for pause before life forces them on you.
One powerful practice is to conduct regular life strategy sessions. Companies step back to assess what is working, what is changing, and what priorities need to shift. We can do the same. Once or twice a year, step back and look at the major domains of your life—career, health, relationships, family, friendships, growth. Ask yourself: What is going well? What feels off? What has changed in me? What am I newly solving for?
Journaling can help too, especially if you use it to explore what is no longer working, what feels newly important, and what recent regrets may be teaching you about your current values. You can also create a personal board of advisors: a few trusted people who know you well enough to reflect back what they see. And sometimes the most practical move is the simplest one: block thinking time on your calendar. If you do not schedule reflection, urgency will crowd it out.
Above all, keep a pulse on your energy. What is draining you consistently, even when you are doing it well? What keeps pulling you forward? What kind of work, pace or environment now feels more costly than it once did? Those signals matter. They are often the first clue that something internal has shifted before you have words for it.
Try a 15-Minute Career Recalibration
Ask yourself:
What still fits?
What aspects of my work continue to give me energy, meaning, learning, or
satisfaction?
What feels different?
What costs, pressures, expectations, or tradeoffs have become harder to justify?
What has changed in me?
How have my priorities, responsibilities, ambitions, health, relationships, or definition of success evolved?
What am I newly solving for?
What matters now that may not have mattered, or mattered as much, when I chose this path?
Do I need to recommit or recalibrate?
Does my current path still broadly fit, or is a detour necessary to remain aligned?
We often think strong decision-makers stay the course. I believe strong decision-makers know when to recommit, and when to recalibrate.
Unexpected change may not tell you what to do next. But it can offer a rare and valuable invitation: pause long enough to notice who you are becoming, and whether your current path still reflects it.
Sometimes, the most aligned move is not to push forward harder.
It is to look inward, tell the truth about what has changed, and choose your next step from there.
Note: Adapted and expanded from an article originally published on Forbes on April 15, 2026. This version includes additional reflection questions and a practical framework for deciding when to recommit to your current path and when to recalibrate.
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ABOUT PARUL SOMANI
Parul Somani is a decision strategist, keynote speaker, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of The Path of Least Regret. A graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School, she combines behavioral science, strategic decision-making, and lived experience to help leaders navigate uncertainty and make values-aligned choices with greater clarity and confidence. Her work has been featured by Forbes, NPR, Inc., Oprah Daily, and Psychology Today.
Follow Parul on LinkedIn and Instagram, and receive a free decision-making guide when you join her mailing list at parulsomani.com/freeguide.
