What to do when you’re drifting in life & work
What to do when you’re drifting in life & work
by Kate Maxwell
Ever felt like life’s just… happening to you?
In this episode, I share what to do when you feel adrift in life and work, and how to find your way back through grounded habits and identity-based goals.
This ep is a calm, practical guide for anyone in a season of uncertainty 🌊
Timestamps
00:00 – When life feels off-track
01:09 – The first step to stop drifting
02:08 – Finding the feeling you’ve lost
02:54 – What “on purpose” really means
04:26 – Easy ways to feel grounded again
06:43 – When ambition goes missing [if you listen to one thing, listen to this!]
09:55 – Turning drift into direction
Mentioned In “What to do when you’re drifting in life & work”
Atomic Habits by James Clear
The Co-Active Coaching “On Purpose” framework
If you’re ready to stop the drift, check out my services here.
Full Transcript
You know that feeling when life feels distant to you — like you’re a passenger?
It’s happening to you, not really with you, and you start to wonder: how did I even get here? And how do I get to be somewhere else?
How do you get to feel like you have a bit more agency again?
This episode is for you if you’ve been feeling unanchored, uninspired, and just... lost. And it’s okay to feel that way.
So I’m here to share a few things that might help you come back to yourself.
I’m your host, Kate Maxwell. I’m an expert at coaching media and tech pros who want to choose a new career direction.
This show exists to support you as you take the leap — with pep talks, tools and techniques. This is Blueprints to Becoming.
Feeling like you’re drifting in life and work is a pretty unpleasant feeling, so I just want to share three ways you might approach this and take some action around it.
Step One: Notice the Drift
The first thing to do, as I always say, is to notice it — to spot that this is an experience you’re having right now.
You feel like you’re drifting.
Being able to name that for yourself is honestly a huge, enormous first step because it means you can then go on to do something about it.
I suspect you’re already aware of it, since you’re here listening to the show. Maybe this is something you’re feeling right now.
Recognising the drift often feels like being detached from day to day life — feeling like you’ve not got any skin in the game. Like there’s nothing at stake, and yet somehow that’s not a good thing, right?
You start to feel like, because you don’t have any skin in the game, what’s the point? Does anything even matter?
And what does that mean for you — and for your career?
Once you’ve noticed that you’re in a drifting moment, where things are happening around you and to you but not with you or through your own personal power, the next step is to come back to how you want to feel instead.
Step Two: How Do You Want to Feel?
How do you want to feel?
What is the opposite of drifting for you?
I’ve talked before about personal power and agency — that’s a very personal thing by its nature. So what would it mean for you to be moving forward in a way that’s intentional? Driven by you and your hopes, your dreams, your desires?
What would that feel like? What would it look like? What would you be doing? How would you be behaving?
Get really familiar with the opposite of drifting so you have something to move towards.
When I think about this, I come back to a concept from the Co-Active Coaching approach about being on purpose.
When you live your life on purpose, it doesn’t just mean being intentional — it means being in active pursuit of the thing that’s your driving force and your driving energy.
That’s what it means to be on purpose.
Figuring out a purpose is a big ask and a process, but it’s worth exploring.
Step Three: Find Your Anchors
Drifting implies having no anchor and no grounding.
So beyond exploring your sense of purpose, here are some simple ways to think about how you might anchor and ground yourself in real life.
When do you feel grounded?
Is it when you’re alone — solitude — or is it about connection and being in communion with other people?
For me, that’s an extremely grounding experience.
For other people, it’s the opposite — time alone is what grounds them most.
Perhaps it’s a balance of the two.
Really striking that balance and flexing between those two ends, depending on where you’re at.
Do you feel more grounded in nature or in buzzing urban spaces?
Do you get energy from energy, or from stillness? Or something in the middle?
What activities are grounding for you?
Something I love — that always brings me back to a sense of solidity — is cooking.
I find it such a soothing thing to do.
“Cooking brings me back to the present moment — it’s so sensory and so anchoring.”
When I’m making something, you have to be at the pan — in the moment. It’s sensory, tactile, real.
Maybe for you it’s playing music, running, painting — whatever helps you be here and now, rather than in the fuzziness of the future or the anguish of the past.
Coming back to the here and now is fundamentally grounding — and can really help during times of feeling lost and drifting.
There’s something in this exploration of what grounds you that’s really about who you are, what you like, and where you thrive.
The more you know those things, the more you can seek them out, create balance, and start to design a life and career that fit you — a place where you feel you belong.
Step Four: Refresh Your Relationship with Goals and Ambition
The final thing you can do when you feel like you’re drifting is to reflect on your relationship with goals and ambition.
Feeling like you’re drifting in your career often suggests there’s a disconnect with your goals or ambitions.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have any or that you’re not ambitious — often it’s the opposite.
My clients often tell me they’ve lost touch with their ambition. They say, “I used to be ambitious, but that got lost — often during COVID.”
It’s hard to come back to the person we were before the pandemic. Our goals, dreams, and ambitiousness got lost somewhere in the mix.
So what’s your relationship now with goals and ambition?
Do you set yourself goals?
Do you feel like you’re an ambitious person?
Do you have that driving force?
If you don’t right now, think of a time when you did.
When have goals felt good? What ambitions have you had that you were proud to be working towards?
Did you realise those goals?
Did you move towards those ambitions?
And what can you learn from that time?
Another useful concept when thinking about goals and ambition is identity-based goals.
James Clear writes about this in Atomic Habits.
For example, last year I had a goal: I wanted to publish 50 podcast episodes.
And it didn’t happen. I think I closed the year with just under 25 — barely halfway to what I’d set.
I was disappointed.
But the real issue wasn’t the goal itself — it was how I saw myself.
“The shift for me was becoming the kind of person who puts out an episode every week — and behaving like that person.”
At the time, I didn’t see myself as that kind of person — consistent, organised, structured — even though I was those things in my corporate life.
So the shift was to become the kind of person who puts out an episode every week. That was the goal.
And it worked.
This year, I’m totally on track to finish with 50 episodes published — which is so exciting.
I’ve released an episode weekly for the last three months — a first for me in the podcasting space — and I’m proud of that.
It shows how powerful identity-based goals can be.
So, what’s the kind of person you want to be — or would need to become — to achieve some of your goals or ambitions?
How can that shift support you?
Wrapping Up
If you feel like you’re drifting in life or work — first, that’s absolutely normal.
You’re not broken. You’re not weird. You’re not a failure.
Sometimes we become disconnected — our day to day no longer matches who we are or where we’re going.
That evolution can make us feel lost for a while, until we find the next place we fit.
So my four tips were:
Spot the drift. Notice how you’re feeling.
Come back to how you want to feel instead. What’s the opposite of drifting for you?
Find your anchors. The spaces, activities, and moments that ground you.
Refresh your relationship with goals and ambition. Focus on who you’re becoming.
If you want to work through this feeling of drifting and come out the other side with clarity, check out my Decision-Making Guide — it’s a reflective tool to help you get back in touch with what truly matters.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Next time, we’re going to dig even more into what really matters — how to figure out what’s important to you.
I’ll see you there.
Remember: I’m in your corner. You’ve got this. 💙
* This blog post was co-created with AI, using my transcript. My aim is for the blog to be as verbatim as possible, so you’re in contact with me not the robots! Using AI means the blog can exist in the first place so it’s a use that works for me right now!
Any thoughts, let me know!
HEY THERE, I’M KATE!
I coach tech & media pros to create a new career direction.
