"It's just that I should know what I want to do by now. I'm not a sophomore in college anymore."

I hear versions of this almost every week.

Sometimes it's, "I wish I had a passion." Or, "I wish I were clearer." But underneath, it's almost always the same thing: the belief that by a certain age, successful people are supposed to know exactly what they want.

And, if they don't, something must be wrong with them.

The people saying this aren’t early in their careers, either. They are executives, consultants, finance professionals, entrepreuners—people who have spent years making good decisions and building impressive lives. They aren't aimless; they're just at a fork in the road. And somehow, that, in and of itself, feels like failure.

My dad taught me to approach work with intention. One of his favorite sayings is, "Hope is not a strategy." I still believe that. But over time, I think I confused intention with certainty. I assumed that if you were thoughtful enough, prepared enough, strategic enough, you should always know exactly what you wanted. And because I believed it, I taught it. I coached it. I said it.

Recently, and by recently, I mean like 72 hours ago, I found myself in my own period of professional uncertainty. There are some new paths in front of me, and for the first time in a couple of years, I honestly don't know which one I want to pursue. This has unsettled me more than I expected. But if I'm being completely honest, and I suppose that's one of the perks of turning 41, it's also made me feel more alive than I have in a while.

And yet, and yet…the old script didn’t disappear:

How can I possibly be a compelling candidate if I can't tell people exactly what I want? If I don't come across as polished, completely intentional, and able to explain how everything in my past has led me to this exact moment...they'll assume I lack direction.

I brought this to my coach. He listened for a while and then said: "You're making yourself wrong for not knowing." I had never thought about it that way. Not knowing wasn't actually the problem. The problem was that I believed I should know.

Those are two very different things.

There are certainly industries that reward ruthless specificity. Confidence can start to look like certainty, and certainty can begin to resemble arrogance. It's easy to believe that the only acceptable answer to "What are you looking for?" is one that sounds perfectly rehearsed.

But what if there is another kind of confidence? What if confidence isn't pretending you've figured it all out? What if confidence is being able to say, calmly and honestly:

"I don't know exactly what's next yet. What I do know is that I'm looking for work where I can make the greatest contribution. I'm talking to people, paying attention to what energizes me, and resisting the temptation to settle on an answer simply because I think I should have one."

Notice how different that feels. You can almost feel your shoulders drop. You're not apologizing. You're not asking someone else to solve your career for you. You're not pretending you have it all figured out. You're simply telling the truth.

The trouble isn't uncertainty. The trouble is spending all your energy trying to conceal it. We over-explain and over-justify, clinging to stories that no longer fit because they sound more impressive than, "I'm exploring."

Ironically, all of that effort is often what gives us away.

When I was growing up, my mom had a bumper sticker on her car that read: I am not lost. I am exploring. I loved it then because it made me laugh. And also, because I have a terrible sense of direction.

I love it even more now because I think it captures something we've forgotten. Or, at least, something I have forgotten.

Somewhere along the way, We started confusing exploration with indecision. That adulthood meant having a seven-year plan, a polished elevator pitch, and a clear answer whenever someone asked, "So, what's next?"

But exploration doesn't have an expiration date (like a Twinkie!)

You can be forty and exploring. You can be sixty and exploring. You can have a remarkable career behind you and still be genuinely curious about what comes next. There is a kind of clarity that comes from having the answer. But there is another kind of clarity that comes from knowing exactly where you are: "I'm exploring."

Turns out, that's a pretty clear answer, too.