I’ve always thought the year starts on January 1st, no? I mean, I’d heard of “Chinese New Year” of course, but I’d never really paid much attention and I certainly hadn’t considered what it might teach me about how to change my career.

It’s what we’re taught isn’t it, the customs and stories we grow up with. The calendar tells us that December 31st is the end of the year and therefore January 1st is the start of the new one. That’s when the gym fills up and the planners come out. New Year’s resolutions, new goals, vision boards and career planning sessions. And we rarely question it.

But this year, I experienced Tết in Vietnam, and it made me question January 1st entirely. Tết is the Vietnamese Lunar New Year and the most significant, cherished holiday in Vietnamese culture. It marks the arrival of spring based on the lunisolar calendar, typically falling between late January and mid-February. So the beauty is, the actual date changes each year.

By 10:30pm on December 31st, my husband and I were asleep, tired from travelling, worn out from the year, celebrated-out from a fun family Christmas. But this Lunar New Year felt different. It felt unfamiliar, fresh, significant. So this time, we chose to savour it. We stayed up and marked the moments. We stepped into this next chapter, the Year of the Fire Horse, fully and intentionally.

After a wonderful dinner of mantis shrimp washed down with a couple of bottles of Saigon, we made our way to the hotel rooftop bar. At 11:55pm, the hotel staff rushed us into the lift, down to the lobby and out onto the streets to celebrate with the family who owns the hotel. Each family has their own private celebration, ritual and altar traditions. It was such a privilege to witness and be part of it. After the street fireworks, we headed back up to the rooftop for a larger display lighting up Cat Ba Town.

The atmosphere felt completely different. Not performative or resolution-heavy. It wasn’t about declaring who you would become. More so about honouring what had been, clearing space, reconnecting with family, remembering ancestors, and intentionally stepping forward.

It felt like a real beginning.

And when I woke up the next morning, I felt so ready.

Later that day, while riding with nothing else to focus on but feeling the wind on my skin, I realised how deeply this experience aligns with the work I do with my clients around the concept: you don’t know what you don’t know……. until you experience something different.

We Accept Default Timelines Without Question

I’m not sure about every culture, but in Western culture and certainly in the circles I’ve grown up in, if you want to start a business, change careers, leave a job, emigrate, get fit or reinvent yourself, you wait.

👉 You wait for Monday.
👉 You wait for the new month.
👉 You wait for the new quarter.
👉 You wait for the new year.
👉 You wait for your birthday.
👉 You wait for a milestone.

We are conditioned to believe that significance comes from the calendar. But the Lunar New Year reminded me that time isn’t universal. It’s cultural. And so are many of the rules we live by. Including the rules and old stories that have been laced into our brains about work, career paths, sabbaticals, career breaks, and when it’s acceptable to begin again.

How This Connects to “How to Change My Career”

One of the most searched phrases online is: “How to change my career.”

Not “how to get promoted” or “how to earn more” or “how to optimise my current career path” but how to change careers, like completely change. People are not just looking to progress, they are looking for alignment.

Most people who wonder how to change their career aren’t lacking intelligence or ambition, they’re waiting for permission, waiting for the right time, waiting for certainty. In some way, they’re waiting for their own January 1st.

But what if the problem isn’t a lack of strategy? What if the problem is that we’ve outsourced our sense of beginnings to the calendar?

What You Don’t Know, you don’t know

Before experiencing Lunar New Year in Vietnam, January 1st felt natural, logical, obvious, the only way. After experiencing Tết, January 1st no longer feels like the only legitimate time to celebrate a new beginning.

This is very similar to what happens when someone begins exploring how to change their career.

So many of the brilliant humans I work with assume there is one “right” path and only one way to measure it. That assumption holds true until they speak to someone who took a sabbatical and pivoted at 40. Or until they travel and talk to others who have done things differently. Or until they prototype a side project and gain exposure to new communities.

Suddenly, the old path feels arbitrary.

You don’t know what you don’t know…… until you do.

And once you’ve seen alternatives, it’s hard to unsee them.

Can you go back?

Maybe.

But you’ll never go back unchanged and nor will I.

I love the thought of a New Year aligning with the seasons, with spring, with renewal in nature and I have a feeling I might now be a two–New-Year kind of girl!!

How to Change My Career: There’s No Perfect Moment

When people ask, “How do I change my career?” they’re often really asking: When is the right time? When will I feel ready? When will it be safe? When will I know for sure?

But intentional beginnings don’t wait for a moment, they create one.

One of the thoughts that has stayed with me over the past few days is that you can bookmark your life anywhere. Just like a book, you can decide where the next act begins, not because of a date, but because of meaning. You don’t need a new year, a new month or a milestone. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of clarity to turn the page. A conversation with a friend, a trip to a new place, a sabbatical or just a quiet realisation on a random Tuesday.

A fresh page doesn’t need a new year and your second chance doesn’t have an expiry date. I thought I’d missed New Year celebrations for 2026 by sleeping through but it turns out beginnings aren’t dictated by the calendar, unsteady their definition by intention. 

Just like I got my second chance at welcoming in the New Year. You can do the same, intention is always available to you.

I encourage you not to wait for the calendar to decide your significance. You get to choose it, and yes, that may feel uncomfortable. Because if the calendar isn’t in charge, you are.

But go on, try it.

Prototype Your Next Chapter

Now that I’ve experienced another version of New Year, I’m not sure I can go back to simply accepting that January 1st is the only moment to celebrate or reset. It’s similar to what happens when you begin exploring how to change your career.

Once you prototype and test a different role, a side hustle, a new city, a different way of living or working, you suddenly realise the way you’ve been doing it isn’t the only way.

That doesn’t mean you immediately abandon everything. But it does mean your perspective expands and once it expands, the old model loses its inevitability.

Lunar New Year felt grounded, connected to ancestry, history and intention and that’s what career change should feel like. Not impulsive or reactive. Not driven by comparison to others but aligned to you, your values, your strengths, your vision. 

When someone searches “how to change my career,” they are often standing at the edge of misalignment. They’ve outgrown an old version of themselves. Their values have shifted, energy has changed and their definition of success has evolved.

Changing careers, like Lunar New Year, often starts with clearing. Letting go of old identities, outdated ambitions, external expectations and cultural norms that were never consciously chosen. Only then can you make space for something new, a vision shaped by your values, your season of life, and the future you’re brave enough to imagine.

The world gives us dates in the calendar, but we can choose our own turning points. It might be the day you book a sabbatical. The week you update your LinkedIn headline. The first small career experiment. The first honest conversation where you admit you want something different. These are the real beginnings.

They don’t trend on social media or wait for applause. They don’t align neatly with public holidays or others’ expectations of you. But they are far more powerful than January 1st because they are chosen and directed by you. They mark the moment you choose to change.

So, How Do You Change Your Career?

After three years of pure career transition coaching and twenty-five years in recruitment and career coaching, I can say with confidence that every journey is unique.

You might begin by asking yourself: what makes me believe this is the only path? Who decided this timeline for me? What would I do if I didn’t need permission?

These types of questions open up space and space is where new options start to appear and the moment you realise you have more choice than you thought is the moment things start to move.

You create your own reset and if I’ve learned one thing both through coaching and personal experience it’s that you don’t need certainty to begin. Certainty arrives as your journey along the path. If you wait for certainty, you’ll be waiting a very long time.

Only Next Year Will Tell

Now that I’ve experienced the Lunar New Year in Vietnam, January 1st feels different. Can I go back to treating it as the “real” start of the year?

Only next year will tell. Ha ha

What I do know is once you’ve experienced something different, a different culture, a different rhythm, a different career possibility you can’t unknow it. One of my friends once likened it to trying to get a tent back into its bag. Once it’s out, there’s no going back to the neat, compact version.

And maybe that’s what growth really is.

Not abandoning everything.
Not rejecting where you came from.
But widening your lens.
Realising that what felt inevitable was just one version.

If you’ve been quietly wondering how to change your career, maybe you don’t need a new year. 

You don’t need certainty to begin. You need space, courage, and the willingness to question what you’ve been assuming is fixed.

I’d love to help you create that space.

👉 Book a free discovery call here to explore your next chapter and start designing a career that feels aligned, intentional, and fully yours.