What is Career Discernment?
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Maybe you’re thinking about leaving your job.
Or maybe you don’t want to leave, but something about your work no longer feels right. You feel stuck. You’re exhausted. You desire change but don't know what that change looks like. Your priorities have shifted. An opportunity has appeared that you didn’t expect, and you're excited about it—and maybe a little terrified. Something you once wanted no longer seems as important.
Career change often begins before we know what we’re changing.
That uncertainty can send us quickly into problem-solving mode: What jobs are available? What am I qualified to do? Should I stay or leave? What would I earn? What would happen if I made the wrong choice?
And underneath those questions, there may be anxiety, fear, excitement, grief, hope, or some combination of all of them.
Those questions and feelings are important. But in career discernment, we don’t start with the questions, “What should i do?
We start by paying attention to, “What is happening?”
Sometimes we don't have a firm yes or no. And the absence of a firm yes isn't necessarily a no. It can be an invitation to pause, notice, explore, and slow down before responding. We may need more information. Our circumstances may still be changing. Or we may simply need more time to understand what is happening within and around us.
That is the work of career discernment.
Career discernment draws on Ignatian discernment, an interpretive practice that helps us notice what is happening within and around us, consider what it might reveal about our relationship with the sacred, and respond with as much interior freedom as our circumstances allow.
Applied to our careers, discernment helps us pay attention not only to what we want to do, but to what our relationship with work is revealing about who we are becoming.
Career Discernment and Career Formation
I call this larger process career formation, the lifelong process through which work and our relationship to work shape who we are becoming within the realities of our identities, relationships, circumstances, and communities.
Career formation is happening all the time. Our relationships change. Organizations change. Opportunities appear and disappear. Responsibilities shift. The world around us changes, and we change with it.
Ignatian discernment helps us participate in that formation more intentionally, and when Ignatian discernment is used in our professional life, I call that career discernment.
That means a career question isn't always What job should I take?
It might be: What is this work asking of me? What am I no longer willing to give it? What else is becoming important? What choices are actually available to me? Who am I becoming here?
Our emotional responses to those questions are worth noticing, too. Feeling stuck, restless, anxious, afraid, energized, hopeful, or excited doesn't necessarily give us an answer. But those feelings can tell us where to pay attention.
What Career Discernment Looks Like at Lumin Living
At Lumin Living, career discernment isn't about optimizing your career or finding the one “right” path.
I don't assume that a pivot means finding a new job, that career progress means moving up, or that a good career decision should feel perfectly clear.
We start with the life you are actually living.
That means paying attention to both your interior life—your desires, fears, hopes, questions, convictions, consolations, desolations, and resistance—and the circumstances around you. Money matters. Bodies matter. Relationships, identities, caregiving, geography, discrimination, institutions, responsibilities, and opportunities matter. We cannot discern our way out of every constraint.
And we don't treat every feeling as an instruction. Fear doesn't automatically mean don't go. Excitement doesn't automatically mean go. Feeling stuck doesn't necessarily mean leave. Instead, we get curious about what those responses might be revealing and how they fit within the larger context of your life.
Together, we notice what is happening, become curious about what it might mean, and explore how you want to respond. Sometimes that leads to a new job or career. Sometimes the pivot is internal: changing your relationship with your work, loosening your grip on an expectation, setting a boundary, asking for something different, or recognizing that work doesn't need to provide everything you once expected it to provide.
And sometimes new information changes what you thought you were discerning.
Is Career Discernment the Same as Career Coaching or Career Counseling?
Not quite. There can be overlap, and career coaches and counselors use many different approaches.
Career coaching often focuses on helping someone identify goals and take action toward them. Career counseling may include career assessments, occupational exploration, and attention to psychological or developmental factors affecting career choices. Both can be valuable depending on what you need.
Career discernment at Lumin Living starts somewhere different. We don't necessarily begin with a goal to achieve or a problem to solve. We begin by paying attention.
You might arrive thinking, I need a new job. Or I feel stuck. Or I have an opportunity I'm excited about, but something is holding me back. Before jumping to an answer, we become curious. What is happening in your current work? What has changed? What are you longing for? What are you afraid of losing? What is energizing you? What circumstances constrain your choices? What assumptions about career or success are shaping the question? What is your relationship with the sacred revealing?
The goal isn't for me to tell you what career fits you best. I don't believe your career is a destination waiting for you to discover it.
Career discernment is about developing a way of proceeding when the path isn't clear. Career formation is what happens along the way: how our work, our choices, and the circumstances we encounter shape who we are becoming.
How Is Career Discernment Different from Spiritual Direction?
There can be a lot of overlap. You can bring career questions into spiritual direction, just as questions about relationships, identity, grief, desire, faith, and change may emerge during career discernment. Our lives don't divide themselves neatly into personal, professional, and spiritual categories.
The difference is primarily one of focus and duration. Spiritual direction is an ongoing practice of attending to your interior life and your relationship with the sacred. People often meet with a spiritual director regularly over months or years.
Career discernment is more focused. You might come with a particular career question, transition, feeling of stuckness, desire for change, or sense that something about your relationship with work is shifting. We may only need a few sessions to explore what is happening, what it might mean, and how you want to respond.
Neither requires you to arrive with the question figured out. Figuring out what you're actually discerning can be part of the work.
You don't need to know what comes next before you begin.
If you have a career question or a sense that something about your relationship with work is changing, book a discovery call. We can start with what you're noticing.
