Not every career crisis comes with a dramatic breaking point. Sometimes it’s quieter than that. Something that used to light you up just… fizzles. That’s the territory Vicki Landers works in. She’s a speaker, coach, and founder of In Progress Coaching, and she helps professionals figure out what’s next when the old version of themselves starts to feel stale. This conversation is a good one for anyone who’s ever suspected something is off but couldn’t quite name it.
The Slow Burn Nobody Talks About
Vicki’s own pivot out of corporate healthcare wasn’t a crisis. It was a slow recognition. Her role was shifting toward software analysis — debugging systems, fixing code. But what she actually wanted was to work with the people frustrated by the software. Not the bugs. The humans. She saw where things were heading before they got there. She chose to leave before she had to.
She makes a point worth sitting with: a lot of healthcare professionals hit a version of this at midcareer. They’ve done everything they set out to do. The training, the certifications, the level of education. And then they look up at 45 and realize they’ve got twenty more years in the workforce with no clear next direction. The goals are gone. The roadmap ended. Nobody told them there was supposed to be more map.
Choose Your Hard
Vicki’s friend has a line she returns to often: everything can be hard — so choose your hard. Staying in a job that doesn’t challenge you anymore is hard. Leaving to build something new is also hard. The question is which hard you’re willing to carry. What Vicki adds to that is the distinction between change that happens to you and change you choose. We respond to those very differently. Chosen change feels different in the body. It creates a different relationship to the risk.
Angie brings in the flip side of that — the people who never choose anything. Not choosing is still a choice. It keeps you in the vicious cycle of sameness. Vicki’s late friend used to say: time is going to pass. December 31st is coming whether you do something with it or not. The question is what you want to be different by then.
Perspective Is the Highest ROI Change You Can Make
This is where the conversation gets practical in a way that doesn’t require selling your house or moving into a bus. Vicki talks about lenses — the idea that any given situation can be seen through multiple frames. The compassion lens. The curiosity lens. The victim lens. The key isn’t which one is right. It’s whether you’re choosing it on purpose.
She works with healthcare professionals specifically, a field that’s genuinely hard right now. Regulatory pressure, administration demands, productivity metrics, difficult patients. All of it is real. And yet, she says, there’s still a difference between “I have to show up” and “I get to show up.” That’s not toxic positivity. It’s the smallest possible shift with a surprisingly large return. Angie captures it cleanly: perspective is the easiest, smallest, highest-ROI change you can make.
The practice is key. You don’t wait for a high-stakes moment to try on a different lens. You do it in low-stakes situations first. Software update changed your workflow? Practice there. Then when the health insurance bill quadruples — the one Angie and Vicki were definitely not going to rant about on air — you’ve already built the muscle.
Identity Is What You Do, Not Who You Are
The conversation takes a turn into identity that’s worth slowing down for. Vicki points out that labels — “I’m a physical therapist,” “I’m a manager,” “I’m a mom” — feel grounding, but they’re also quietly limiting. They put us in boxes. And when we move into a new chapter, we often drag the old identity with us, even when the strengths from that chapter don’t serve the new one.
She shares her own version of this: navigating her role as the daughter of an 87-year-old mother while also being a healthcare professional who knows too much about what aging looks like. Is she the clinical expert? The admin? The advocate? Or just the daughter? She’s actively working out how to hold all of those at once without letting one take over.
Angie extends that to the wider sandwich generation experience — the caregiver identity is one that tends to arrive unannounced. Parenting shifts are expected; the descent of aging parents often feels like it came out of nowhere, even when it logically shouldn’t have. The lens reframe matters here too. “I have to take care of mom” lands differently than “I get to do this for her.”
One Word to Watch
Vicki closes with something simple and immediately useful. The word should is a trigger. Every time she hears herself use it, she stops and examines what story she’s actually telling. What’s true versus what’s inherited. What’s chosen versus what’s just assumed. She stopped trying to live by a script written by other people’s expectations — and that shift changed everything.
The next time you catch yourself saying “I should” or “I have to,” Vicki invites you to pause. That’s the lens right there.
You can find Vicki at vickilanders.com (speaking) and inprogresscoaching.com (coaching), or just reach out directly at vicki@vickilanders.com. She’s also active on LinkedIn — search Vicki Landers. All links in the show notes.
