From Dentist to Coach: A New Season of Clarity for Midlife Professionals in Transition | #561

Have you ever looked at your successful, stable career and thought, "I can't do this for another 15 years", even though everything looks great on paper?

If you're a midlife professional in your 40s or 50s feeling a growing misalignment between the life you've built and the one you now want, this episode speaks directly to you. Whether you're in medicine, engineering, senior leadership, or another high-demand field, you're not alone in questioning what's next.

• Discover the inner conflict many high-achievers face when their career success no longer feels fulfilling.
• Learn how to navigate the fears, doubts, and identity shifts that come with midlife transitions.
• Hear Agi’s personal story of leaving dentistry and how it shaped the new, focused direction of the podcast to serve people just like you.

Tune in now to start finding clarity, confidence, and direction for your next chapter - especially if you’re ready for change but don’t know where to start.

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

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Free copy of my book and weekly newsletter: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/88

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Transcript

If you're in your 40s or 50s and you have spent over a decade in a demanding career, you might have hit that point where you think, I can't keep doing this for another 10 or 15 years. Maybe you are in medicine, dentistry, engineering or a senior corporate role. The details are different, but the feeling is the same.

On paper, your life works. Solid career, good income, people who depend on you. Yet, it doesn't quite feel right anymore.

You're not just having the odd, bad day. You are seriously questioning what your next chapter should be and how to change things without blowing up the life you've built. If you recognize yourself in that, this episode is for you.

Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Agi Keramidas, a mentor, coach and former dentist. Today's episode is a special one because I'm opening a new chapter for this podcast.

One that is shaped around you and the transition you're navigating. Keep listening and I will explain what that means, what is changing, what's not changing and how this new focus will serve you. You might have noticed a small but important addition to the podcast title, Personal Development Mastery, Clarity for Midlife Professionals in Transition.

So for this next season, I'm focusing on career and life transitions for midlife professionals because also that's the transition I went through as a dentist and it's now at the heart of my coaching work. To explain the shift and this new season, I need to start with my own story. For many years, over 20, I was a dentist.

That was my career, my professional identity and my day-to-day reality for decades. It was stable, respectable and it became a central part of who I was or at least who I thought I was. On paper, everything looked good.

I had a career, the recognition, the nice car. People around me would probably have said I had made it. But inside, something else was happening.

There was a growing sense of discontent and an inner pull towards something different. The work I was doing was no longer fulfilling. And for a long time, I tried to manage that tension by pushing it aside, telling myself I should be grateful.

After all, many people would love to have what I had. But the friction between success on paper and what I really felt inside kept getting louder. It became a long period of uncertainty and pressure, full of questions without easy answers.

What will people think if I step away from this? What will it mean for my income and for my identity? Am I finally being true to myself or am I being irresponsible? It was not a clean overnight leap. It was a long stretch of questioning, experimenting, doubting and slowly making more committed decisions. Today, I'm on the other side of that big transition.

I no longer practice dentistry. I mentor and coach midlife professionals who are questioning the careers that once defined them, just like I did. So when I talk about midlife transition, it's not an abstract concept for me.

It's very much my lived experience. If you are in your 40s or 50s and you feel you have outgrown the professional life you built over decades, I know firsthand how uncomfortable and disorienting this can be. The loss of certainty, the mixed feelings of guilt and relief, and the fear of what happens if you actually follow that inner voice.

These are all very familiar to me. I have walked through that space myself and now is where I spend my time helping others. And so for this season, the podcast reflects that.

This is not a marketing rebranding strategy. This is an honest alignment with where I am, what I have lived and where I can be most useful to you. Let me be clear about who this season is for.

You are in midlife, probably your 40s or 50s, and you have invested a big part of your life, 10, 15, even 20 years, in one main career that's become a big part of your identity. Maybe you're a doctor, a dentist, a pharmacist, an engineer, a lawyer, or in another demanding professional field. You might be a business owner or in a senior corporate role where people look to you as the reliable one.

On the outside, your life works, but internally you are considering something significant. Perhaps it's pivoting or maybe it's starting something new. Either way, you are stepping away from a profession that has defined you for a long time.

And the experience inside is not simple. You might feel torn between your responsibilities to your family, your finances, et cetera, and a real desire for something that feels more aligned with who you are now. You may find yourself circling in indecision and overthinking, going through the same questions without moving forward.

You're not just changing jobs. You are asking deeper questions about who you are and how you want to live the second half of your life. You want practical solutions, but you also care about meaning and about living in a way that feels true.

If you recognize yourself in any of this, this season of the podcast is designed with you in mind. The format of the podcast will remain as it is. So every Monday, a conversation with a guest, and each Thursday, a shorter episode, either a wisdom snippet or my own personal reflection on midlife transitions, where I break down specific challenges, things like fear of judgment, financial worries, talking to your loved ones about change.

And I will also share my own stories and the tools I use with my clients. The aim is simple. To help you as a midlife professional move from years of indecision into clear direction and from silent pressure into confident next steps in your next chapter.

Now, with all this talk about change, I also want to be clear about what isn't changing. Personal development mastery is not disappearing. The heart of this podcast remains exactly the same.

Inner growth, self-mastery, creating a meaningful and purposeful life. Think of it as a season within the same show. The overarching theme is still personal development mastery.

The lens for this period is midlife transition. Particularly for those of you in long term identity defining careers. And if you're listening and you're not in a big transition right now, I still want you to know you're welcome here.

You might feel a quieter pull that something needs to shift, even if you can't name it yet. Or you might know someone who is right in the middle of a big change and these conversations will help you understand and support them better. Either way, my intention is that this season serves you with clarity, courage and real next steps wherever you are in your journey.

If you've been listening and thinking this is me, this is where I am, I want to speak directly to you for a moment. If you're in the middle of this transition, I work one to one with a small number of listeners and together we get clear on what you actually want after this chapter. We design a grounded plan that fits your reality and focus on helping you take confident steps forward instead of staying stuck in your head, circling around the same doubts.

If that's the kind of support you want, you can book a free clarity call with me at personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash mentor. The link is in the show notes and on the website as well. And if someone in your life is in a midlife transition, a friend, a partner, a colleague, please share this episode with them.

It may give them language and support they don't currently have and help them feel a bit less alone in what they're going through. As we close, I want to leave you with this. I am dedicating this season of Personal Development Mastery to midlife professionals, especially those in identity defining careers who are ready for the next chapter.

Even if they don't know yet what that chapter looks like, my intention is that you feel less alone, clearer and more empowered to act. So welcome to this new chapter of Personal Development Mastery. Clarity for Midlife Professionals in Transition.

Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.