Career Change at 40: How to Start Again Without Risking Everything

When I wrote my book, I had been working at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek for fifteen years, and I loved my job, above all the students and the lectures. People asked why I would expose myself with a book about happiness and start something new when everything was already settled. To me it was the logical next step. I wasn't missing anything; I had noticed what made an ordinary day good, the feeling that I had helped someone, and I wanted more of it.

The book didn't replace my work at the university. It grew alongside it. In 2023, after more than sixteen years at the faculty, where I became an associate professor, I went my own way as an educator, author and speaker. So this is what I want you to hear first: a big change rarely starts with a big leap. It starts with something small, next to the life you already have.

In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, one of the twelve challenges is called Do What You Love. Here is what that challenge and research can teach you about changing direction without gambling with your security.

Is 40 too late to change careers?

No. Working lives are far less linear than we were taught. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has followed Americans born between 1957 and 1964 for decades: on average they held 12.9 jobs between the ages of 18 and 58, and still almost three between 35 and 44¹. A new employer isn't always a new career, but changing course in midlife is ordinary, not exceptional.

And you don't start from zero. You bring experience, people who trust you and a far clearer sense of what you don't want. In my book I ask: when did we start believing that we had stopped growing?

Signs you're ready for a career change

You might recognise yourself in a few of these:

• you are good at your job, but no longer curious about it
• Sunday evenings feel heavier than they used to
• you envy people who do what you secretly want to do
• you read about courses and new paths late at night, then close the tab
• the moments that make your day meaningful are the ones your job barely includes

None of these means you should resign tomorrow. They mean the question deserves your attention.

Why does changing careers at 40 feel so scary?

In my book I write about a woman who works as an accountant in a school, although she has always felt that her calling is making special cakes. Life simply led her down a safe path. Another acquaintance, a professor, dreams of her own organic apple orchard. Few people dare to turn their calling into work, not because it's impossible, but because the fears are loud: what if I fail, what if people laugh at me, what if I lose my livelihood? Sometimes it is even the fear of success.

Economics explains part of it. Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler described loss aversion: giving something up hurts more than gaining the same thing pleases us, which keeps us attached to the status quo². Your salary and title are already yours; the new life is only a possibility. Knowing this helps you keep fear from deciding for you.

One honest note: if the wish to leave comes with exhaustion that doesn't lift after rest, or you have felt low for weeks, please talk to a doctor or a mental health professional too. A new job alone may not change that.

A job, a career or a calling?

In the challenge Do What You Love, I separate three ways of relating to work. A job pays your bills. A career is about advancement and the next step up. A calling is what your soul strives for, something you would do regardless of the financial reward. You don't need a grand calling at all. What matters is that your work lets you be at peace with yourself.

You don't want money for its own sake, but what it makes possible: security, freedom, experiences. That is why I see it as a resource, not a goal (more in Is happiness a choice?). Then the question changes from “How do I keep my salary?” to “How much security do I need to try something that matters?” And beneath it sits the oldest question: what do you want to be when you grow up?

No matter how old you are, it’s never too late to ask yourself that question.

What happiness research says about changing careers in midlife

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I was glad to see research draw the same line. Psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski and her colleagues found that most people see their work as a job, a career or a calling, and even 24 college administrative assistants, doing similar work, were split evenly between the three³. Before you change everything, ask which of the three you are missing.

Herminia Ibarra, who studied professionals and managers in career transitions, found that first working out exactly what you want and only then making the move often keeps people stuck. What works better is test and learn: small experiments with new roles while you keep your job, new people who show you who you are becoming, and time to make sense of it. Reinventing your working identity, she warns, takes several years⁴.

Economist Steven Levitt let people stuck on a decision toss a coin. Of some 22,500 usable tosses, “Should I quit my job?” was the most common important question, and for big decisions like this, people who made a change reported being substantially happier two and six months later. The volunteers were far from typical, so Levitt calls the results suggestive, but he concludes that people may be excessively cautious about life-changing choices⁵.

Across 145 countries, David Blanchflower found that well-being tends to dip in midlife, with the low point on average between the late forties and about 50, and then rise again⁶. If you feel restless in your forties, you are in very large company, and nothing is wrong with you.

How to change careers at 40: seven small steps before the big leap

You don't have to choose between staying stuck and jumping without a net. These are the steps I would suggest to a friend.

1. Name what you want more of, not only what you want to escape. Note the moments in an ordinary week when you feel most like yourself. Your answer is a compass, not yet a job title.
2. Know your security number. Work out what you really need each month and how many months of savings would let you sleep calmly. Fear shrinks when it has a number. If your situation is complicated, a qualified financial adviser can help.
3. Run one small experiment. A weekend course, a side project, volunteering, a first paying client, while your job still pays the bills. If other people's requests leave no room, start with how to stop people pleasing.
4. Talk to people who already do it. Ask three of them what an ordinary Tuesday looks like. One conversation can teach you more than months of thinking.
5. Count what you already bring. Leading people, solving problems, staying calm, explaining complicated things simply. Twenty years of work leave skills that travel.
6. Choose your first audience carefully. Share your plan first with a few people who believe in you, not with the loudest critic.
7. Decide in advance what would make you leap. A savings target, a number of clients, six months of experiments that still excite you. Then the big step isn't a jump into the dark, but the next logical move.

Career change for women over 40

Many women already carry two jobs, the paid one and the one at home, so a change has to fit a real life. In my book I wrote that it is wise not to follow trends, but to arrange life so it serves both your growth and your commitments. Find your own way, even if it is slower.

The ways can look very different. A friend from my student days, with a master's in economics and years in several companies, realised that dogs had always been her passion. Becoming a dog trainer in a small town like Osijek wasn't easy, but she was incredibly persistent, and today her business is very successful. Another woman left Zagreb with her husband, and now they produce olives and jams. A third, with an impressive CV, teaches yoga while slowly stepping back from the company she works for. I also wrote honestly that at the beginning you may earn less. Small steps make that bearable.

A career change at 40 isn't a crisis. Often it is the first honest question in years, asked with enough experience to answer it well. It is easier with people walking the same path, and that is the heart of my programme Permission for Life: permission to live, and work, by your own choices, one step at a time.