Shapeshifting

Shapeshifting in folklore is the ability to physically transform oneself through unnatural means. Shapeshifting in real life goes beyond naturally adapting to our contexts and is the ability to reinvent oneself mentally through reflection. This chapter, written as an apocryphal, autobiographical memoir, aims to explore our reasons for becoming many changed versions of ourselves and proposes how we rationalise reinvention of self through our career choices. How often do critical incidents in life cause a shift in our perceptions of ourselves? In planning a career, how often do the concepts of choice, chance and planned happenstance feature in our thinking and actions? The author’s career journey has been scattered with randomness, irrational decision-making, vague reasoning, and radical casualness. As a career coach who never had a career plan, she now has the experience, and self-agency to reinvent her choices as intuitive and perhaps, even rational. Reframing her unconventional choices for career change as “proleptic reasons,” (Agnes Callard, 2018 ) and “planned happenstance”, ( Krumboltz, 1975 ) has given her a framework to encourage people she coaches to recognise the agency of self-determination, to embrace randomness, and to achieve radical reinvention.