There's a very specific moment that happens for many professional women at this time of year, and it has nothing to do with spring motivation or fresh starts. It arrives when they're doing their tax return, and what begins as a financial exercise often becomes something far more revealing.

Dr Claire Kaye, a former award-winning NHS GP turned career and confidence coach, sees it repeatedly in her practice: women who sit down to work through their figures and, in the process of calculating what they've earned and spent, end up confronting how they've actually lived and worked over the past year.

"For women running their own businesses or working in smaller, more hands-on roles, this can feel particularly exposing," says Claire, who works with professional women aged 35-55 through midlife transitions. "There's no distance between you and the figures. You can see exactly where your time has gone, what's paid off financially, what hasn't, and which parts of your work have taken far more than they've given back."

That's often the point where the question changes, Claire observes. From How has the business done? to Is this working for me? It's a subtle but important difference.

"What many women realise at this stage is not that everything is failing, but that something is off," says Claire. "The numbers might be broadly fine. The work might even look successful from the outside. But when they look closely at how the year has unfolded, there's a growing sense that they wouldn't consciously choose to do it in exactly the same way again."

That's where the crossroads begins. It's the moment where you know what you don't want anymore, but you can't yet see clearly what you do want, or how to get there.

What makes this even more complicated, Claire argues, is how many careers have evolved in the first place. Very few women she works with have deliberately designed every stage of what they're doing. Far more often, their career has been shaped by what happens to have come their way – an opportunity that made sense at the time, that perhaps landed in their inbox at the right moment.

"Looking back, it's easy to see a series of sensible decisions that, taken together, have led somewhere that no longer feels quite right," says Claire. "Yet most women have never stepped back and taken the space to ask themselves, Is this still what I want? But the end of the financial year has a way of forcing that question."

For many, there's a subtle but significant realisation: I cannot do another year exactly like this.

The difficulty, of course, is what to do next.

This is the point where people tend to get stuck, Claire observes. They assume that before they make any change, they need to have worked everything out - a clear plan, a defined direction, a sense of certainty about what comes next. So what happens next? Nothing.

"Having coached hundreds of women, what I see again and again is women waiting, just carrying on and telling themselves they'll deal with it when they have more clarity or the time is right," says Claire. "But in reality, that clarity rarely arrives on its own and the time is never 'right'. The shift comes from starting to prioritise this feeling and making small, deliberate changes. From paying attention to what feels more aligned and what doesn't, and peppering tweaks and changes into their work and life."

What Claire often says to clients at this stage is that you don't need to have the whole answer, but you do need to stop ignoring the question. April, in that sense, is not about reinvention. It's about honesty.

"It's a chance to step back and recognise where your work is supporting you, where it's draining you, and where something needs to change, even if you're not yet sure what that change looks like," says Claire. "For some women, that will mean tweaking what they're already doing and doing it more intentionally. For others, it will be the beginning of something more significant."

But it often starts with a tax return, a set of numbers, and the slightly uncomfortable realisation that your career, as it currently stands, may not be something you would choose again.

"The good news is that coaching helps you navigate this fork in the road," says Claire. "It gives you focus, direction and clarity, as you create your own blueprint for what you want and how to get it."

Dr Claire Kaye Photo: K L Photography

Dr Claire Kaye is a career and confidence coach and former award-winning GP who empowers women, particularly in midlife, to cut through the noise and reclaim their power. Drawing on her medical background and unique RISE®️ Approach, she supports women to create deep, lasting, transformational change from the inside out. Her work spans self-coaching tools, online courses, one-to-one coaching, group programmes, and corporate workshops. Claire is also creator of the #CareerInspiration Instagram live series, a sought-after speaker, and author of a forthcoming self-coaching book.

For more information, visit www.drclairekaye.com or follow @drclairekayecoaching on Instagram.