Reflections

By Ben White

2025

Dear Ben

I know you are seriously considering doing something else professionally, but are a bit unsure as to the what, when and how! I know you have considered the ‘why’. The why is that you are mid-40s and you can’t really see yourself climbing the corporate ladder anymore, attending endless meetings and trying to stay ahead of the competition. You want something else from your professional life, something that has more of a purpose than strategic priorities or maximising profits. Something where you can give space to others and help them overcome challenges they have in life.

I know you have already changed careers once in your life, transitioning from the financial services to Learning and organisational development. You identified that your strengths and interests lie more in the behavioural aspects of work rather than the process. This led you to study as a mature student in your late 20s, first for a degree in Psychology and then a master’s in occupational psychology. You know what it takes to study alongside work and how to juggle the two, challenging as it is! Lifelong learning has always been part of your DNA, but why would you choose to pursue a third career in your lifetime? Surely, now is the time to enjoy being the sage in what you do currently and mentoring and coaching others? Have you really got the energy to go back to studying and being the ‘new student’ again, thirsty for knowledge, skills and experience?

Well, yes! The world of work is changing. It is no longer the world you grew up in and developed in. Client behaviours are changing, and technology has firmly taken hold. The rise of AI is focusing the business world on faster and more efficient outcomes. Humans are almost becoming an afterthought now, and this is a challenge for you. Developing human behaviour to improve performance was always your passion, and you became a ferocious reader and practitioner in the subject, and to see this become secondary in the landscape has driven you to this point. What to focus on now professionally in your 50s? The decade where life changes dramatically for some. Kids leave home and find their own path, redundancy looms, finding work becomes increasingly more difficult, and, more poignant of all, your mindset changes.

So, what can you do for the next decade? What are your strengths and passions now? Well, you are still interested in human dynamics, in seeing and helping people grow. You have always been an avid reader of fiction and a film buff who enjoys getting lost in fantasy and adventure. You are a great listener, and you need to be when coaching leaders as part of your current role. You are good in meetings with clients, often spotting nonverbal cues and signals when others cannot. As a psychologist, you are interested in the human mind and what drives certain behaviours.

Yet with regards to psychology, you have recently been feeling the restrictive nature of focusing on behaviours in an organisational setting and trying to bring some objectivity for clients who want to see better performance and prove return on investment. What about what people are really thinking and how they are processing the world around them as individuals? What about their subjective experience and their inner worlds? This is an area where I have never really visited with clients since you didn’t have the right training and experience. Haven’t you always found that what really holds us back is what is happening inside our minds, in or out of our professional lives? You have always had a curiosity about the clinical setting, yet have always felt that you don’t belong, and in some way, it is not your lane.

Psychoanalysis is definitely an untapped world for you, but one that will give you the focus, the passion and the insights for the next phase of your professional life. The learner journey is indeed challenging; you need to attend seminars, write essays, observe infants, visit psychiatric wards, not to mention have multiple training patients and supervision. Where will you fit it all in? Well, the answer to that is that you have done this before. You are a continuous student who knows how to carve out time to focus on the training as well as keep working and private life ticking along! You are naturally curious, so you ask questions, and you are not afraid to look stupid. You like a challenge, so throwing yourself into the unknown is exciting with the right amount of dread mixed in to feel alive!

After a lot of research, attending open days, inquiring over email, coffees and phone chats, you found AGIP. Contained within a house in Archway in North London, not a sterile training centre. You will train with all sorts of people with rich lived experiences, from artists to teachers, with the same goal as you. You can be flexible with your training and not have to cram everything in at once. You can feel like you belong and are supported at every step. You can attend seminars one weekend a month and immerse yourself in Freud, Bion, Winnicott, Klein, Jung and all the greats. You can listen to clinical material and feel what it’s like for this to come alive in the consulting room.

Above all else, Ben, just enjoy it. Don’t think of just getting the certificate at the end and putting the qualification on LinkedIn like before. Enjoy the journey!

Regards
Yourself!