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Before you decide what to do next in your career, it helps to understand why you’re doing it at all.

Career strategy gets a lot of attention. Especially from me. I love vision boards. Five year plans. Action steps. And all of that has its place. But strategy on its own is not going to hold up for the long run. When things get hard, fuzzy, or take longer than you expected, your strategic plan is not going to hold you up unless you have clarity on the meaning underneath it.

The way I think about career momentum is pretty simple. There are three layers that need to work together: a spiritual foundation, a strategic plan, and clear tactics. When the foundation is missing, even the most thorough approach can start to crumble.

It reminds me of the time I said yes to going to Disneyland. I’d never been. I was mildly curious, but I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted from the experience. Once we got there, the parking was wildly expensive, the lines were endless, and none of the food appealed to me. I wanted to bolt. Not because Disneyland was bad, but because I hadn’t chosen it for myself. I’d said yes out of people pleasing, not purpose.

Careers work the same way.

In your career, the foundation comes first. That’s where your values and purpose live. Strategy comes next. It’s the roadmap. And tactics come last. The small, concrete steps that move you forward once the direction is clear.

Let’s break it down.

Your Spiritual Foundation

You can have a clear vision for your career and still feel wobbly if that vision isn’t rooted in your own values and purpose. When the foundation is borrowed or assumed rather than examined, it’s hard to stay committed once the path gets complicated. Which it always does.

That’s what happened with Molly.

Molly grew up in a family of journalists. Her parents and grandparents worked in newsrooms, and family dinners often revolved around media, politics, and what was happening in the world. Continuing the legacy felt natural … and expected.

So she built a strategic plan: earn a journalism degree from a prestigious university. Land a regional reporting job with the intention of working her way up. Take the best promotion regardless of where it was geographically. On paper, everything made sense.

But after graduation, she struggled to find her footing. Not because she wasn’t talented, but because her career direction was built on parents’ values, not her own. She had never really paused to ask what mattered to her or what kind of work gave her energy. When she hit the inevitable bumps along the way, she had nothing to anchor her.

Without a spiritual foundation, there was no reason to push through discomfort. No internal compass. Just the pressure to meet family expectations.

This is why the spiritual foundation matters. It gives you a why that belongs to you. Not one you inherited.

When you understand your values and purpose, you’re better equipped to weather uncertainty, make cleaner decisions, and course correct without spiraling. Your spiritual foundation won’t prevent setbacks, but it will help you stay rooted in what’s most important to you when they show up.

Once Molly slowed down enough to look honestly at her values, something became clear. She didn’t dislike writing. She disliked the version of writing she had inherited. What actually lit her up was storytelling. Imagination. Building worlds. Working independently and on her own terms.

Her purpose wasn’t about preserving a family legacy. It was about creating a body of work that created a community of like minded people who loved fantasy storytelling.

That clarity changed everything. Not overnight, but pretty quickly. Instead of forcing herself to fit into a career that looked good on paper, she began shaping one that aligned with how she wanted to live and work.

That’s when it became time to re-conceive her strategy plan.

Your Strategic Plan

Strategy is what you build once your foundation is clear. It’s the bridge between what matters to you and how you move forward in the real world. Without the foundation, strategy feels rigid or depleting. With it, strategy becomes supportive and energizing.

For Molly, that meant designing a plan around writing fiction. Not someday. Now. So her strategy focused on finding steady work that paid the bills without draining her creative energy. She didn’t need her day job to be the dream. She needed it to support the dream.

But the plan didn’t stop there.

Strategically, Molly decided that her primary job outside of paid work was to write. Consistently. She set out to finish a full draft and once she had something complete, she would share it with a small, trusted group of readers and revise based on their feedback.

From there, the strategy expanded. If the manuscript felt strong, she would begin researching publishing agents. If that route didn’t open up, she would explore self publishing as a viable next step. The point wasn’t to force one outcome. It was to keep moving forward in a way that aligned with her values and long term vision.

This is what strategy does at its best. It helps you use your resources wisely. Your time. Your energy. Your money. Your relationships. It clarifies what deserves your focus and what doesn’t. It also gives you permission to make choices that might not impress anyone else, but make sense for you.

Once Molly had that roadmap, the next step was obvious.

Tactics.

Tactical Steps

Tactics are where things get concrete. This is where you break the bigger plan into small, manageable actions.

One of the most common mistakes I see is people jumping straight into tactics without understanding the bigger picture. When there’s no foundation, tactics turn into busywork. You move, but you don’t feel grounded. It’s why so many people bounce from role to role without ever feeling settled. There’s no anchor.

Once Molly course corrected, she could finally get specific. She knew her best writing time was in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. So she looked for jobs close to home to avoid long commutes. She wanted work that started in the early to mid afternoon and wrapped by early evening so she could protect her creative time.

She also got clear on the numbers. She figured out what she needed to earn each month and set a minimum hourly rate for a manageable work week. That clarity shaped every decision she made.

Her next steps were simple and focused. She reached out to people she knew. She set up alerts on job boards. She asked around locally. Within a few weeks, she found a job that met her criteria.

Not because she hustled harder, but because her choices were aligned.

Bottom Line

The question isn’t what your next move should be. It’s why that move matters to you. When you start there, strategy stops feeling like pressure and tactics stop feeling like busywork. You’re no longer saying yes out of habit or people pleasing. You’re choosing a direction you can actually stay with, even when the path gets hard or unclear.

That’s what gives a career plan staying power.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this—please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have.

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