The Career Warning Signs Most Professionals Ignore Until It’s Too Late

Why capable, successful people ignore the career warning signs and stay stuck the longest. And what a decade of ignored back pain taught me about career clarity

Ten years ago I asked my doctor to refer me for a CT scan because I had back pain. Nothing dramatic, just a niggle that wouldn’t leave me alone and had me a bit worried. The scan came back showing ‘severe degenerative change at L5-S1 level and probably pars defects’ in my spine.

And do you know what I did about it? As the back pain subsided and felt ‘ok’, I did absolutely nothing. 

The pattern I didn’t notice for thirty years

To explain why, I need to take you back to Singapore in the nineties.

I was a part-time fitness instructor and personal trainer, teaching around ten high impact classes a week which included Step Reebok, Slide Reebok (which, looking back, did me no favours at all!), and Nike’s Total Body Conditioning.

It was flattering that I was so fit, and had such defined shoulders (at that time) that people would stop me in the street to say that ‘they loved my arms’.  Thirty years later with a more sedentary lifestyle, needless to say, no-one takes a second glance at my deltoids any more!

In 1994 I won a silver medal at the Nike National Aerobics Championships, and that led to a two year Nike Elite sponsorship. As part of the Nike Elites team, we performed aerobics dance demonstrations in shopping malls, in discos, at corporate events as were invited to conduct the demonstrations of the ‘Great Singapore Workout’ fitness initiative back then.

Before that, when I was living in London, I trained for the New York Marathon. Long runs from Twickenham up to Richmond Park and back down through Bushy Park, usually with friends, one of whom was in the SAS and supremely fit (keeping up with him was its own kind of education!).

I trained too much, too fast, and I fractured the neck of my femur. I recovered from that and was relieved to be able to complete the marathon. 

I also ran the Manchester Marathon (I was thrilled with my time of 3hrs 39minutes when I was only aiming for 4hrs 30minutes!) However, I ended up with shin splints and small fractures in my metatarsals. I recovered from them and continued running and teaching high impact aerobics.

That’s the pattern I want you to notice, because for thirty years I ignored warning signs because my body always bounced back. Injuries happened, I got over them, and I kept going. So I built up a certainty that whatever went wrong, I’d be strong enough to handle it.

The heels I was told not to wear

There were people who tried to tell me otherwise.

My physiotherapist in Singapore said I needed a proper care plan and regular check ups. Not treatment for a problem, just sensible maintenance for a body doing an enormous amount of high impact work. I nodded, and I didn’t do it.

My podiatrist told me to wear my orthotics all the time. Not just for fitness training but for the corporate training and coaching work I also did at the time. But I didn’t because I wanted to wear  heels. Four inch heels, to be precise.

I’m a qualified image consultant (which is helpful as I’m able to assist my career transition clients with their visual image), so I’ve always been acutely aware that people do judge a book by its cover. Visual image matters, professionally and personally.

And it mattered even more once I moved to Sydney after my divorce and built my coaching practice. I was flying to Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Hong Kong to run career development and career transition workshops, on and off planes, rushing from airport to venue to hotel, standing in front of rooms full of professionals for hours at a time.

In four inch heels, of course.

Because how could I stand in front of job seekers and talk to them about presenting their best self at interviews and networking events if I wasn’t setting the example myself?

So I did that for years.

And every one of those hours, my posture was being thrown further and further out by shoes I’d been told not to wear.

And still I didn’t listen

I should have known better, because my body had already told me several time in most emphatic ways. Except I didn’t listen to the warning signs.

An so, ten years ago, when that scan came back showing degeneration, I made precisely the same call. The pain had settled down again, as it always did. I was still fit. Still going to the gym.

I’m strong. I’ll be fine.

The morning my leg gave way

A few weeks ago, I got out of bed and my leg shouted at me. The pain ran from my buttock all the way down to my ankle and I could barely walk. It came on so suddenly – sciatica.

And now I’ve spent the past fortnight housebound, unable to do the ordinary things I’d never once had to think about.

I’ve had a new scan which showed what a decade of doing nothing about the degeneration had achieved. Things have progressed, there now are disc bulges through my lower spine, and at L5/S1 the nerve has flattened.

So, I’ve been to the doctor 4 times, am having twice weekly physio visits, daily specific exercises to complete and am on a concoction of nerve numbing pain killers so I can sleep (and sit with a heat pack to type this).

What this has to do with your career

I’ve had a great deal of time to think while stuck in the house unable to walk more than a few steps at a time, and I keep coming back to my career transition coaching clients.  I can see many parallels with my experience and the experiences of my clients.

So this is exactly what I see, time and again:

Someone comes to me after a redundancy, or after burning out, and as we talk it becomes clear they’d known something was wrong for years. The Sunday evening dread and the slow loss of confidence. That feeling of being invisible in meetings and that they’d stopped growing in their career many years ago.

And like me, they carried on, because they were capable. They were good at their job and they coped.

I feel that’s the part we don’t talk about enough. Because it’s rarely ignorance that keeps people stuck in the wrong role, it’s actually competence! You’re strong enough to tolerate it, so you do, year after year, until something happens and the decision is made for you due to organisational restructure, downsizing, AI, offshoring … and a redundancy.

Nobody ever admired my orthotics

There’s a second pattern I recognise now too, and it’s the heels.

I chose how things looked over what was holding me up. And professionals do this constantly. The impressive title or a salary that’s hard to walk away from. Or the feeling you get when you mention that amazing organisation where you work when people ask what you do at a dinner party.

All of it looking marvellous on the outside but the foundation is giving way underneath.

Nobody ever admired my orthotics but they’re the reason I can still walk reasonably normally today!

Don’t start with your résumé

Another thing I’ve noticed these past two weeks is how tempting it is to reach for the wrong fix.

With sciatica, everyone wants to know the perfect stretch (or the best painkiller). Stretching and painkillers can help, but not in the long run if you’ve no idea why the nerve is irritated in the first place.

Careers work the same way. People come to me asking whether they should rewrite their résumé, or update their LinkedIn profile, or start applying more widely. All sensible things to do, and all completely useless if you haven’t worked out what you actually want next.

You’d be stretching a problem, like I stretch my hamstrings, instead of solving the problem.

Don’t start with your résumé. Start with YOU.

These warning signs aren’t the emergency

Here’s what I’d like to highlight, and I’m saying it as a (too proud) woman who ignored her own scans for a decade.

The warning signs aren’t the emergency. They’re the invitation. And you get to choose whether you pay attention while you still have options, or whether you wait until it’s too late and the choice is made for you.

I created my Prepare for the Year Ahead workbook for exactly this. It’s a reflective exercise to help you take stock of where you are in your life and career, what’s working, what isn’t, and what you’d like the months ahead to look like. It takes about an hour to complete, and it’s free.

Think of it as a scan for your career. What you do with the results is entirely up to you (though I’d recommend not waiting ten years to take action!)

Download the Prepare for the Year Ahead workbook here

Now I have a question for you. What’s the little voice in your head telling you? What have you ignoring?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.