I changed my career twice in my twenties and early thirties. Looking back, I have learned a lot from this experience. In a nutshell, attainment and loss always go hand in hand.

I often say creating a new self is a die-and-rebirth process. Whether it’s a career change, starting a new business, or losing some weight. It’s a process of letting go of your old identity and slowly growing into a new one.

People with years of working experience in one particular field and want to transition into a new one would best understand what I mean. I have met several - some were frustrated with their current role, others were dreaming about a new beginning. But they were somehow stuck in their current role.

What held them back was not the hard skills. Hard skills are the easiest part. As long as you have the passion and effort, you can obtain these skills over time. The real challenge lies in the identity part.

After investing years of effort into one particular field/role, your personal identity is hard-wired in your mind and the eyes of the world. Even though you put the effort into making the change, something internally held you back. You are yearning while denying the new identity in your mental space. That’s how imposter syndrome kicks in.

When reading Atomic Habit, I had an “aha” moment. A key to unlocking the challenge of an identity shift. It’s still not easy, but it’s practical and tangible on a mental level.

“Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.” — Atomic Habits

When you realize that there’s no one outside of yourself you need to prove yourself to, things get a bit easier. If you look deep within, the only one we are consistently trying to prove ourselves to is ourselves. So, focus on yourself.

Suppose you want to become a product designer. In that case, there are many things you can do to “prove to yourself that you are a product designer.” — Learning design skills every day, joining a design community, and reading design books and articles are small wins.

The bigger wins come with real project experience. Offer your design learnings to support others. In the process, you will start to realize what makes you click.

What does that mean?

Be conscious of your standard

When I was transitioning, I started with some small freelance projects. I just took on any projects that I could get my hands on.

After two or three small design projects, I still felt like an imposter. “Am I really a product designer now?” I was not quite sure. Since I was unsure, I tried to learn as much as possible. Looking back, deep down, I was just not approving myself as a product designer.

Then, the pandemic came, and I was eager to help. I participated in an open-source project that helped people to get PPEs. Looking back, the design system I designed at the time was a bit immature, but I was using my design skills to save lives. That was the first time I felt all my design learnings had a purpose, and I started to feel like a product designer.

Later on, I was working on another product, which didn’t require a lot of visual skills but more on the UX part. There were a lot of constraints, but within the constraints, with some deep thinking and minimal changes, the experience was much better. When the end user thanked me in person, I felt like a product designer.

I’m being conscious of my reactions to these experiences. I began to understand my standard of approving myself as a “product designer” was in making others’ lives a bit better.

Please don’t get me wrong. There are all kinds of designers in the world, and each performs their role. There’s nothing wrong with chasing creativity and beauty in design; for many designers, that brings them great joy. In comparison, my sense of fulfillment doesn’t come from beauty only. For me, design is more about serving others than self-expression. That’s what makes me click.

It’s quite subtle, but it’s like a north star.

The internet is full of information telling you what kind of person or what kind of designer you should be. But the truth lies within. Once you realize that each person has their own role, you will stop imitating others or following the outside noise.

Focus on the actions, not the results

Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all. — Atomic Habits

Building a new career or anything new is quite similar to building a new habit. Keeping up with the momentum was a bit hard when you first started. Our minds will quickly jump into the future and focus on the desired results we want to achieve.

The desired result is what keeps us motivated, but it’s the enjoyment in the process that sustains us. Designers enjoy the design process, writers like the writing process, and the creative process is what ultimately draws us into it in the first place.

When we attach a result or a goal at the end of the process, it gets a bit tricky. That’s how the current world operates. As designers, it’s our responsibility to take the business results into our design thinking process. But the end result would have its own destiny. A lot of seen and unseen factors would come into play.

According to the world’s standards, some of our designed products will be successful, and some will fail, but still, when designing, we can enjoy the action of design, and no one can take that joy from us. As long as we gave our best, true best, we had learned and grown from that experience.

All creative people have ups and downs. When you are not attached to the end result, your actions become freer, and the creation becomes freer.

Final thoughts

We are all learning and looking at the world through our filters. “Filters” here mean the foundational knowledge you have accumulated in the mind that has formed as a filter for you when interacting with the world. You act behind the filter no matter what you do or think. Thus, the learnings you get from the same resources will differ from mine.

I recommend reading the original book if you are intrigued by my writing. You might resonate with it in a different way.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

It is the anticipation of a reward—not the fulfillment of it—that gets us to take action.

Sometimes motion is useful, but it will never produce an outcome by itself. But more often than not, we do it because motion allows us to feel like we’re making progress without running the risk of failure. Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism.

When you dream about making a change, excitement inevitably takes over and you end up trying to do too much too soon. The most effective way I know to counteract this tendency is to use the Two-Minute Rule, which states, “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.

It takes time for the evidence to accumulate and a new identity to emerge. Immediate reinforcement helps maintain motivation in the short term while you’re waiting for the long-term rewards to arrive.

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Measurement is only useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you. Each number is simply one piece of feedback in the overall system.

His goal is simply to “never break the chain” of writing jokes every day. In other words, he is not focused on how good or bad a particular joke is or how inspired he feels. He is simply focused on showing up and adding to his streak.

Don’t break the chain of creating every day and you will end up with an impressive portfolio.