When the dream job isn’t the right job: what I learned about mistakes, vulnerability and the power of your network
- lmahrra
- Dec 5, 2025
- 4 min read
There are moments in life when the horizon feels wide open, when you believe you are stepping into the chapter you have been waiting for. The invitation arrives wrapped in possibility and promise, and you convince yourself that this is the moment everything changes. You feel the tide pulling you forward and you follow it, trusting that the waters will carry you somewhere beautiful.
That is how it felt when Cisco came for me. A new role. A bigger platform. Admiration, opportunity and potential handed to me like a beautifully lit stage. I thought I was boarding a luxury cruise ship, guided by people who saw my value and wanted me to thrive.
Six weeks in, the truth revealed itself with painful clarity. The ship was an illusion. I was overboard in the middle of a vast ocean, treading water without a life raft and searching for land that did not exist.
Realising you have taken the wrong job is a particular kind of heartbreak. It shakes your confidence and forces you to confront the gap between what you were told and what is real. But the most important realisation came shortly after:
I had not failed. I had simply made a choice that no longer aligned with who I am.
Choosing honesty over silence
There comes a moment where you have to stop holding your breath and speak the truth. You have to acknowledge what you already know deep down:
This is not right for you. And that moment is where strength begins.
People often see walking away as failure. What I discovered is that walking away is often the most courageous decision a person can make. It is an act of strength, not weakness. It is an acknowledgement that your wellbeing, your values and your sense of purpose matter more than the prestige of a brand name or the shine of a salary. Leaving is not giving up. Leaving is choosing yourself.
To reach that conclusion, I had to admit three things to myself:
I made a mistake.
Not because I lacked the ability, but because the story I trusted was not the truth I stepped into.
I was deeply unhappy.
Pretending otherwise would have been a quiet betrayal of myself.
I needed to take action.
No amount of patience or perseverance would change what this role fundamentally was.
Once the truth found its voice, everything began to move.
The power of your network when you allow yourself to be seen
This part of the journey changed me the most. I knew I needed to get out, but I also knew I could not navigate this quietly or alone. I had to reach out to the people who believed in me long before this chapter existed.
I chose my network with intention. I went to the allies, mentors and advocates who had earned my trust, the people who understood my character and the way I work in the world.
Opening up to them felt exposing. I had to articulate the uncomfortable truth: that I was unhappy, that the role was wrong, and that I needed help to find the way forward.
What happened next grounded me.
My network welcomed my vulnerability.
They treated my honesty as strength, not weakness.
They helped me reframe the situation.
They reminded me that misalignment is not failure.
They activated around me.
Opportunities surfaced, doors opened and conversations began that would not have happened had I stayed silent.
Their support was powerful, but it did not remove my responsibility. It illuminated the path I needed to walk.
Stepping into the discomfort and choosing yourself
With clarity came the hardest part: taking decisive action.
I had to make difficult phone calls and have uncomfortable conversations. I had to place myself in situations that challenged me emotionally and professionally. I had to trust that choosing myself, even without certainty of what came next, was the right and necessary step.
I realised that the only person who could truly get me out was me. And once I accepted that, I rediscovered a strength I had not needed to call on for a long time.
An end to a difficult chapter
Leaving was not an ending. It was a reclamation.
This experience reminded me of some essential truths:
Your intuition whispers long before your mind catches up.
Your network becomes a lifeline when you allow yourself to be seen.
Your strength is revealed not in calm waters, but in the waves that test you.
We celebrate new beginnings often, but we rarely celebrate the bravery it takes to walk away. Sometimes the most powerful, human thing you can do is recognise that you are no longer on the right ship. And sometimes the most transformative act is choosing to swim back toward yourself.
The lesson beneath the lesson
As I look back, there is one final truth that ties everything together. If I had paused long enough to ask the people who know me best, the ones who have guided me through other crossroads, they might have helped me see what I could not. My mentors, allies and advocates understand my values so deeply that their perspective might have changed my decision entirely.
Perhaps I could have avoided this detour. Perhaps their honesty would have shown me the cracks in the opportunity before I stepped onto the ship.
But wisdom rarely arrives before the fall. Sometimes we need the wrong door to recognise the right one. Sometimes we need the misstep to understand what truly matters. And sometimes we must take the job that isn’t meant for us in order to rediscover the place where we belong.
I had to take the Cisco job to know, with absolute clarity, that it was not right for me. And in doing so, I learned to value the company and the people I belong with in a way I never had before.
In the end, this chapter is not defined by the mistake. It is defined by what the mistake taught me: that choosing yourself is the bravest path, that vulnerability is a form of power and that even the wrong decisions can lead you home.
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