As a self-confessed achiever myself, there's one thing I know to be true.

Achievement is a double-edged sword.

As someone who works with driven professionals daily, I see the same pattern every time: achievers often face unique career challenges that others might not understand.

Here’s the paradox: success can trap you.

The higher you climb, the harder it can be to pause, reflect, and reassess.

Whether you’re early in your career, mid-way through, or considering how to make the last decade truly count, the pressure to always achieve more can feel suffocating.

If you’re nodding along, here are a few challenges you might recognise:

1. The Burden of Expectations – As an achiever, others expect you to always excel. But what happens when your heart isn’t in it anymore?

2. Fear of Change – “What if I lose everything I’ve worked so hard for?” Sound familiar?

3. Success Without Fulfilment – Achievers often tick all the boxes but feel a growing sense of “Is this it?”

So, what's the ultimate catch?
Constantly striving to achieve for others—to meet their expectations, to prove your worth, to maintain an external image—can be deeply depleting. It’s a fast track to burnout.

In contrast, when you align your achievements with what matters deeply to you, when you work in a way that uses your signature strengths, something remarkable happens. Instead of feeling drained, you feel energised.

You’re no longer just “working hard”; you’re building a career that is meaningful, sustainable, and uniquely yours.

That’s how people like national treasure Sir David Attenborough have achieved their success - and their ability to continue making an impact for as long as they choose.

By dedicating themselves to something they care deeply about and opting to work on their passion in a way that brings happiness and fulfilment, they sustain their energy and purpose over decades.

If you are also a self-confessed achiever, does what I have said echo with your experience?

If this article resonated deeply with you and you need to talk, why not book a discovery call and we can have a chat about how some career alchemy can help you feel fulfilled in work and life.
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#ChangeYourStory #PurposeDrivenCareer #BurnoutRecovery #CareerCoaching #Achievers 
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Founder and lead coach at Career Alchemy, Carolyn Parry has successfully launched her new book, 'Change Your Story: escape from a job you hate and create a career you love - on purpose'.

Packed with inspiring stories, actionable exercises, and practical  psychology/neuroscience-informed resources, this engaging and research-proven step-by-step career management guide and toolkit has been written to help you will: identify your future direction and get there confidently; discover what skills you need to future-proof your career; align your unique values, key strengths, talents, and skills to maximise your potential; create a long-term, purpose-driven career you love so you can, and experience greater impact, stability, happiness, success, and well-being, no matter how much the world of work changes.

Motivated by her own existential career crisis, Carolyn describes this as the book she wishes she had been able to buy when she was doing well in a career but which was eroding her soul.

You can buy Change Your Story as a signed limited edition direct from the author, or on Amazon as an eBook or paperback where it reached number one in the business diversity and inclusion chart and listed as in Amazon's Hot New Releases list. 

We are delighted to announce that our Founder and Lead Coach, Carolyn Parry is launching her new book shortly. Called "Change Your Story, escape from a job you hate and create a career you love - on purpose", it is designed to help those who are feeling lost, or stuck in a career rut, and uninspired by their work, particularly if it is meaningless, unfulfilling, and eroding their soul. 

Change Your Story uses a combination of inspiring stories, actionable exercises, and practical psychology/neuroscience-informed resources, this engaging and research-proven step-by-step career management guide and toolkit is designed to give readers the light-bulb moments they need to identify their future direction and get there confidently, discover what skills they need to future-proof their career, align their unique values, key strengths, talents and skills to maximise their potential and create a long term purpose-driven career they love. Working through the book will help the reader to experience greater impact, stability, happiness, success, and well-being, no matter how much the world of work changes.

You can find out more about the book and the launch here: https://www.careeralchemy.co.uk/create-your-story---the-book.html

Why stay unfulfilled and unhappy at work when this book can help you start to Change Your Story today?

What would you do with an extra day off per week?That's the question I asked on LinkedIn a few days ago as I shared the BBC article on the four day working week trial which outlines how popular and beneficial the move has been.
In the article, Faye, one of the staff at Citizens Advice in Gateshead who took part in the scheme explained how helped her.  She talks about the extra day giving her time to "recover and recuperate". It's little surprise that we all feel the need for that. As a more familiar post-pandemic normality began, it brought one slight problem.

The average British worker spends around 84,000 hours across their lifetime at work. The only thing we spend more time doing is sleeping (source: the Associate of Accounting Technicians).

According to experts and researchers in employee engagement, Gallup, every workplace has three different types of people.

At Career Alchemy, we call them stars, sleepwalkers, and saboteurs...

If you are feeling out of sorts with work and life, this article by Marianne Power in the Telegraph features practical advice and help from our founder, Carolyn Parry and other experts on how to make the most of the autumn and create a life you love.

It includes tips on how to develop a second income stream, explore the reality of changing location and more. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/why-should-make-resolutions-autumn-not-new-year/

 If you are in need of some career inspiration, a fresh sense of purpose, are considering a career change and work to get into work where you can make more of a difference, then the Change Your Story podcast is for you. Hosted by expert career and life coach, Carolyn Parry, you can find out more here.

If you are a business owner or senior manager struggling to attract and retain top talent at the moment, this short audio interview with Antur Cymru Enterprise, Carolyn Parry will help you understand the top three themes which are concerning your top talent and prospective recruits today. 

The COVID_19 pandemic has given millions around the globe an unforeseen chance to pause and reflect on their lives. Many had already been feeling the quiet stirring of discontent with their lives - a feeling which has been heightened as millions already in work experience furloughing and redundancy as the UK pauses and values rebalance from "me" to "we". At the same time, a complete generation of young people are left worried and confused about their futures. So what's the solution?

Career Alchemy Founder and Lead Coach, Carolyn Parry was a recent guest on The New Normal, a podcast run by Chris Webb and Helen Armitage of Sheffield Hallam University.

In the podcast, Carolyn talks about the way the world of work is necessarily changing, how society at large has been able to reconnect with what really matters to us and led us to appreciate how little we actually need to be happy. She talks about the shift in business values away from the intense spotlight on profit for shareholders towards a more balanced focus on solving the wicked problems the world faces and developing staff regardless of background, the new ways of working and how this creates a change to level up across the regions of the UK, how Coronavirus is speeding up trends towards automation, how retail is changing, and new opportunities within the gig economy, 

She highlights the democratisation of learning and how we should all be life long learners so we can protect our futures, how we will continue to see greater virtual collaboration and less competition across organisations: as we work together to solve common problems using new tools for distributed working which leads to the question of education and how it needs to repurpose itself to ensure our young people are able to find a clear why to help them create fulfilling and sustainable futures.

You can listen to the podcast here: