What happens when work has become such a big part of your identity that you can barely imagine life without it?

Alison Hall had built a successful corporate career, but the demands of her leadership role were taking their toll. Approaching 50, she was already questioning whether she wanted to spend another decade working this way. The problem? She barely had the headspace to explore what might come next.

Then a serious breast cancer diagnosis forced her to step away from work for 15 months.

In Part 1 of this deeply personal conversation, Alison joins Lucia Knight to reflect on how her relationship with work changed before, during, and after her diagnosis. She shares what it felt like to leave a demanding career behind, the unexpected connections that helped her through treatment, and what she discovered she truly valued about working.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why Alison was questioning her successful career long before her diagnosis.
• How stepping away from work challenged her sense of identity.
• What 15 months away revealed about the relationships she'd built throughout her career.
• Why she began thinking differently about returning to work.

Coming in Part 2: Alison shares what happened when she was ready to return to work, why she chose not to go back to her previous role, and how she began approaching her working life differently.

You don't need a life-changing event to start questioning whether your work still fits the life you want to live.

Take the Joy at Work Quiz to start exploring your own relationship with work and what might need to change.

Could you spot the warning signs of redundancy before it happens?

Being left out of important meetings, sudden scrutiny of your performance, or a change in your manager's attitude might be telling you something. But would you recognise those signals early enough to do something about them?

In this episode, I'm joined by executive coach and former headhunter Adrian Evans, who shares how he spotted a client's redundancy six months before it happened—and what they did with that knowledge.

We explore the clues worth paying attention to, why preparing before a career crisis can make such a difference, and three practical ways to take greater ownership of your career.

Because career security isn't only about keeping the job you have. It's about creating options for what comes next.

Learn more about Adrian Evans

Discover your Executive Advantage Score

Find out how prepared you are for your next executive career move with Adrian's resource.

https://theexecutiveadvantage.co.uk/

Boost Your Joy at Work Quiz

Ready to think about what you actually want from the next stage of your working life? Take my free quiz to discover your Joy Readiness Score, your easiest quick win, and your biggest blind spot.

https://lucia-trqb5gnw.scoreapp.com/

What happens when the drive that made you successful starts getting in the way of enjoying your work?

For years, recruiter Suzanne Fuller thrived in a competitive, win-at-all-costs environment. She was successful by every measure that mattered to her company. But behind those wins was an uncomfortable truth: she was so focused on not losing that it was affecting her judgment, her choices, and her relationship with work.

In this conversation with Lucia Knight, Suzanne shares the surprising moment that made her question her need to win, the identity shift that followed, and how making room for failure opened the door to greater freedom, new opportunities, and more joy at work.

Could something that's always driven you be holding you back now?

If Suzanne's story has you questioning what's working for you—and what isn't—take Lucia's Boost Your Joy at Work Quiz. You'll discover your joy readiness score, an easy quick win, and a blind spot that may be standing between you and work you'd love to keep doing.

You've built a successful career. You're good at what you do. But perhaps you're starting to wonder whether your work could make a bigger difference.

The good news? You don't necessarily need a new job, a grand plan, or a complete career reinvention to make your work more meaningful.

In this conversation, I'm joined by Hannah Keartland, who helps business leaders turn their desire for positive impact into practical action.

We explore how to:

• Identify the issues that genuinely matter to you.
• Connect your personal passions with your organisation's strategic priorities.
• Stop pushing water uphill on initiatives that struggle to gain traction.
• Start making a difference through small actions within your existing sphere of influence.

Hannah also shares how one question in a leadership meeting can open the door to a different conversation — and potentially influence much bigger decisions.

You don't have to change everything to start changing something.

Take the Boost Your Joy at Work Quiz

Discover your Joy Readiness Score, your easiest quick win, and your biggest blind spot so you can start moving towards work you might want to do forever.

Hannah helps purpose-led business leaders who are stuck on something impact-related get unstuck — whether that's clarifying priorities, writing an engaging impact report, or designing a business where commercial success and positive impact go hand in hand.

She brings more than 20 years of experience leading innovation and finance at director and board level.

For more ideas on creating positive business impact, sign up for Hannah's Better Business Bites newsletter.

After working with Lucia, Lester had clarity. He understood the key elements he needed in his working life, the problems he wanted to tackle, the Kryptonite to avoid and the Superpowers he wanted to use more.

But as Lester puts it: the design is not the house. You still have to build it.

For him, that has meant finding more ways to use his Superpowers, experimenting alongside other people, learning the difference between simply spending time and using it with focus, and taking small steps that create momentum.

And that momentum matters. Because one of Lester’s biggest discoveries is that progress sustains joy.

When Lucia asks what work feels like now, his answer is wonderfully tangible: he’s relaxed. His shoulders are down. He’s learning, using his Superpowers and smiling in a way that reaches his eyes.

Lester’s story is a reminder that career design isn’t about finding one perfect answer. It’s about getting clear on what you need from work — and then having a way to keep building towards it.

Want to discover what work designed around you could look like? Explore Lucia’s career design programmes and find the right next step for you:

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/work-with-me

We like to think we can keep our personal lives separate from our working lives. But when something big happens — divorce, grief, redundancy or another major life change — it can affect how we show up at work long before we fully recognise it ourselves.

Divorce and identity coach Jonathan Burston knows this firsthand. During his own divorce, compounded by the death of his mother, Jonathan believed he was still functioning at work. Looking back, he realised he was barely surviving — and carrying uncertainty, loss and fear into his meetings, decisions and relationships at work.

Jonathan joins Lucia Knight to explore what happens when the weight of what we’ve been through starts shaping how we work — and how a difficult chapter can become an opportunity to reset rather than something we continue carrying into the future.

You’ll hear:

• Why major life events can affect our work even when we think we’re coping
• How career and identity can become intertwined
• The “invisible baggage” we can keep carrying long after something has happened
• Why a reset isn’t about pretending the past didn’t happen or trying to become who you were before
• The simple question Jonathan uses to shift attention toward what comes next
• Why meaningful change rarely begins with one enormous decision

Not sure what needs to change in your own working life?

Take Lucia’s free Boost Your Joy at Work Quiz to discover your Joy Readiness Score, your easiest quick win and the biggest blind spot getting in the way of work you might want to do forever:

https://lucia-trqb5gnw.scoreapp.com/

Going through divorce?

Jonathan’s free RESET Quiz is designed to help you identify where you are in your divorce journey and what you need most right now:

https://reset2breakthrough.com/ready/

You can spend decades getting good at your job without ever really understanding yourself at work.

That’s what Bridie discovered after 20 years in corporate roles. Through her work with Lucia, she began to see things about herself that had been hiding in plain sight: she was an introvert who could happily command a room, a natural networker who built relationships one person at a time, and someone whose time was far more valuable than she had been treating it.

Those discoveries didn’t just give Bridie a better understanding of her past. They changed what she wants from her work going forward.

In this episode, Bridie shares the three things she never wants to forget about herself at work—and why knowing how you work best can change the choices you make about your time, your relationships, and the environments where you can truly be yourself.

If you’ve spent years learning how to do your job but aren’t sure your work still fits who you are, explore the ways Lucia can help you design what comes next:

https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/work-with-me

What if enjoying your work has less to do with changing who you are—and more to do with understanding how you work best?

After working with Lucia, former Midlife Unstuck client Jay has three things he never wants to forget about his future work life: know his Superpowers and Kryptonite, stay experimental, and learn how to quiet the inner critic that can make every wrong turn feel like failure.

Together, those insights have changed how he thinks about work. Instead of forcing himself to be good at everything or treating an experiment that doesn't work as a personal failure, he can recognize what fits, adjust course and keep moving.

You’ll hear:

• Why something that feels easy to you may actually be one of your Superpowers
• How knowing your Kryptonite can help you respond instead of react
• Why treating decisions as experiments makes it easier to change course
• What Jay's inner critic was costing him—and what becomes possible when it gets quieter
• What work he could happily do for a very long time looks like now

Jay's answers won't necessarily be yours. But his story raises a bigger question: what would you need to understand about yourself to stop working against yourself?

Jay worked with Lucia one-to-one, alongside completing The Fierce Emporium—the six-week deep-learning phase that helped him understand how to design work around who he is and what he needs.

If Jay's story has you wondering what your own version of Joy at Work could look like, explore the three ways you can work with Lucia to start designing it.

Explore ways to work with Lucia