Clarity About Your Next Chapter Doesn’t Always Come First. Ask Vera Wang.
Passed over for Vogue’s top job at 40, Vera Wang left security behind to open a tiny bridal boutique. The clarity came later. Here's what that means for the rest of us.
We like to imagine midlife changes as a carefully mapped pivot. A spreadsheet. A five-year plan. A neat explanation for friends who raise their eyebrows when we say we’re starting over at 45.
We tell ourselves that when it’s “right,” we’ll feel sure. We wait for the lightning bolt.
But it rarely comes. Clarity tends to arrive late — after the resignation letter is sent, after the first draft is written, after the lease is signed.
First, we get a nudge. Maybe it’s a personal disappointment. A door that quietly closes in your career. A persistent feeling there’s something else out there for you.
That’s where Vera Wang’s story begins.
Right On Time is our weekly series of lessons in courage, clarity, and change for those rewriting their story — in two minutes or less.
Before she became synonymous with bridal gowns and red-carpet elegance, Vera was a competitive figure skater. Then she spent more than 15 years as a fashion editor at Vogue. It was stable. Prestigious. By any external measure, she had “made it.”
At 40, she was passed over for the editor-in-chief role.
That had to sting.
Around the same time, she designed her own wedding dress and decided there was something missing in the bridal world — modernity, simplicity, edge. So she left her secure job and opened a small bridal boutique.
She had no guarantees. There was no empire in sight. Vera took her leap in midlife based on a hunch, an opportunity she spotted, and a willingness to try.
ICYMI:
It’s easy now to call it visionary, but I doubt it felt clear at the time. It probably felt exposed. Vulnerable. Risky.
The clarity — the unmet demand, the global brand, the icon status — came later, alongside her success.
This morning, I want you to ask yourself this, and sit with it for a few: What if you don’t actually need perfect clarity to guide your next move?
What if you just need enough courage to test the idea, to open the boutique, to write the first page, to take the scouting trip, to register the business name?
Those of us building more sovereign, location-independent lives rarely get certainty upfront. We get the data after we make the move, and adjust on the fly.
If your next steps haven’t taken a perfectly defined shape yet, it doesn’t mean you’re behind anyone else. Maybe you’re just at the part of the story where it’s all still a little blurry around the edges.
The story sharpens and takes shape as you step into it. Don’t miss out by being afraid to take the first steps.
✌🏻 Miranda
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