Do what you love

I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. I just knew that I wasn’t getting what I wanted in my contract business analyst career.

I would get annoyed (inside) when people would ask ‘what is it you want to do?’. I can remember the feeling of frustration but I would keep my feelings to myself because I didn’t know what to do about it.

I joined a business mastermind and it kept coming back to this question or, also, ‘who is your customer?’. This question was equally annoying, but I did have an answer and convinced myself that my Business Analyst Mentor business was what I really wanted when really it was just my escape route. But what would I do when I had escaped?

As I look back I realise that I was never asked questions about me such as ‘what do you love to do?’. I may even have been asked this question on occasion but wasn’t able to answer it fully.

During many years of exploration and also spending time on another programme for contract business analysts I did the StrengthsFinder assessment. This did go some way to helping me understand I had skills that were not being used in my work. It explained the sense of unease that I was feeling. It also made me feel more uneasy because now I could describe exactly why I was unfulfilled.

Fast forwarding to today and I feel very confident that I understand myself and my motivations very clearly. I use the word adventurer as a shorthand to explain what motivates me. Challenge, navigating uncertainty and freedom to explore and be creative…