Thirty-something women are turning their backs on successful working lives and risking everything to start again, going back to school in pursuit of personal fulfilment, finds Heather Faulkner This article describes how more and more 30-something women are refusing to be grateful just for having a successful career. After a decade of graft and sacrifice, they want personal fulfilment too - whatever the cost. In the article Kate Lidbetter, a director of SKAI Associates refers to the case of a very successful but unhappy City lawyer who decided to ditch her career and retrain, calling this the fur-lined mousetrap - "Good salary, big bonus, great prospects, yet utterly miserable." Kate describes how women's careers tend to be shaped by the expectations of others - parents, peers, society - at the expense of their personal values and motivations. But Kate is concerned that those suffering from stress are not best placed to make major decisions about their careers. SKAI uses a variety of techniques to elicit people's real motivations. She said: "We often find women are embarrassed or even unable to articulate their real values because they are so used to ignoring them. So we spend time looking at internal drivers, events in their life where they have been really happy. What sometimes happens is they end up realising the environment they are in is not so unfulfilling but that they need to change their path within it".

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