This week, I connected with a new client who has spent the last nine years experiencing the highs and lows of self-employment. On paper, she is a success story, yet during our consultation, doubt emerged. She found herself looking back at a version of herself from nearly a decade ago, when she was a permanent staff member with a stable, guaranteed monthly high-figure salary and progressively senior corporate titles, and then saying the hard question out loud:
“What does my future actually hold?”
As a CV writer, hearing questions like this so early in the process signals the need to pause, be honest, and reset expectations. It is simply impossible to write an impactful, high-converting CV when there is no goal to write towards.
A CV is a strategic bridge from your situation now to where you are going. When the destination is “I’m not sure,” the bridge leads nowhere. The document will not be structured or authored in a way that builds market confidence or highlights the value proposition a prospective employer, or indeed the client, needs to see.
I shared with her that what she’s experiencing is a phenomenon I see quite often among mid- to senior-level professionals, it’s what I call the 7-Year Itch of the career world.
The Anatomy of the Career Itch
You may have heard the phrase 7-Year-Itch in the context of marriage. It’s a period of restlessness and uncertainty after the initial commitment feels so normal, and we start to wonder about the grass being greener on the other side. In professional life, this cycle is consistent, particularly for the UK’s 4.1 million self-employed workers. The three stages might sound uncomfortably familiar to many:
The Honeymoon & Build (Years 1-3)
Driven by the novelty of autonomy and the adrenaline of creating your own success.
The Integration (Years 4-6)
You have found your feet. The business is stable, and your identity as a consultant or founder has solidified.
The Itch (Years 7-9)
The plateau. This is where the existential comparison kicks in. You start comparing your current freedom against a ghost identity. This is the former identity of the secure, permanent employee you once were. Where holidays were guaranteed, and the money hit your account every month, regardless of effort.
Recent data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that flexibility and autonomy remain the top reasons for the UK’s sustained self-employment levels. While in the UK’s corporate world, we are conditioned to value titles, status, predictability and pay rises as the primary markers of progress.
When those signals are absent in self-employment, the itch can make us feel as though we have lost our autonomy and alignment with our current professional identity. That’s why, for my client, the distress at this point stemmed from a need for identity validation.
Why the Hardest Question Matters
To break the deadlock, I moved away from the keyboard and put her through a renegotiation exercise to help her recalibrate her purpose, values, and sense of optionality. After she reviewed the questionnaire, we had a brief check-in. It was telling that she shared with me that she found the final question the most difficult to answer:
“If you could write your 2026 professional story in one sentence, how would it read?”
This is exactly where the CV writing takes a back step, and the coaching work begins. You need a dictionary that reflects who you are today to write a compelling story about your future. Most professionals try to fix the itch by updating their skills list, reformatting their layout, or worse, madly applying to any role that pops up on LinkedIn. But real progress lies in renegotiating their relationship with their work.
Recalibrating Your Drivers for 2026
If you are feeling a similar sense of restlessness and confusion, it’s important to recognise that values are dynamic and that solutions can be hybrid. What mattered to you at 30 tends to evolve as you move into a different life stage. As the Accumulation phase shifts to the Regulation Phase, it can raise questions similar to those my client shared, effectively asking,
“How do I want to live the life I’ve built?”
Again, this emphasises why a CV can only be impactful once you decide which version of success you are actually chasing. If you are at that 7-to-9-year mark and feeling the urge to look back, view it as a recalibration point.
Self-employment, like a long marriage, needs to be redefined and realigned as you grow. Are you trying to write a CV for a person you no longer want to be, simply because that person felt safe? If you’re feeling the itch and want to move from a place of comparison to a clear 2026 vision, let’s start with an honest conversation before we touch the CV.
About the Author:
Amelia Brooke is a certified career transition coach, interview coach and CV writer who works with some of the world’s top professionals. Drawing on her background in recruitment and ability to uncover potential, she helps clients gain clarity, confidence, and direction, whether they’re changing industries, re-entering the workforce, or preparing for their next big move. Amelia specialises in helping individuals articulate their unique value through powerful career storytelling, enabling them to show up with authority and confidence.
