Next steps

  I've got a job as a PA. It’s for a small family art business. It’s brilliant. I am flabbergasted. I never expected to get such a job. Ok, the novelty will wear off at some point, but for now, it’s all good.

 The transformation in my mental health (yes, I do mean that) is astonishing. I am so happy. My old job, on paper, looks fabulous: the money, the suit, the posh office. But I felt trapped, and as though I had to be someone else. I couldn’t be me because my instincts seemed wrong. Perhaps some of it was in my head, but something, something was wrong. Once I had a little confidence that it wasn’t me just being lazy and hating work for being work, I began to think there could be another way to be. You may be reading this and thinking to yourself: ‘how could you delude yourself that this was the only way?’ But I truly did, I thought that every future job would be dire; that even if I changed jobs, I would still feel the same. I believed that I would never enjoy work again. Responsibility – more than I had had before - was clearly just too much. I had started thinking this despite previously having jobs which I have enjoyed enormously. The mind plays its tricks.

During the last few months at my old job I spent my time off reading books – by Barbara Sher, by Tama Kieves, and others. I spent hours doing their exercises, analysing, thinking and doodling. I am analytical and I loved this.

I also did lots of personality tests. I scoured the web for free online tests and considered that I gained a good overview of what I was like. It’s quite tricky to ask yourself how you truly respond to circumstances and events, and my responses were occasionally coloured by negative reactions, triggered by comparable situations in my old job. I recommend taking a proper test, and pay as much as you can afford. I took a careers test at school against which I used to measure some of the free test results, but if you can’t afford it, there are free ones out there. There are some tests costing not much more than a tenner. I would treat the results with some care (even ones you pay for) but the results can be quite eye-opening. A reassuring moment occurred for me when I did a test based on Myers-Briggs, and using the results, googled the best careers for my type. It came up with the top ten worst careers and number one was the very industry I was in. It felt like someone had said to me – ‘It’s not you!’

I want to explore my passions in little steps. One exercise is to write down all the careers you ever thought you would like to be in. This is one of Barbara Sher’s exercises I believe, and it’s the first step to discovering whether you are a scanner (I would love to explain about scanners here but Barbara’s book Refuse to Choose is brilliant and I would just be repeating her excellent writing). It made me feel better just doing that; writing it down makes it real and valid. It is surprising how you find things out about yourself when you really get rid of the thoughts about what you ‘should’ do (Sarah is good at helping with this – see her ebook) and let yourself really allow yourself to be ‘you’. I had quite a list of ‘people’ I wanted to be. Really, it is a chance to express your passions, the desire to do things which you love, to contribute to something, even in a small way.

So how am I working this out practically? A small example of the way I’m approaching things is below:

I fancied doing a watercolour painting. I haven’t done watercolour painting since I was about 10 years old. I don’t consider myself to be a watercolour artist! However, I wanted to give it a go. So I went to the supermarket and bought myself a children’s painting set. I wanted to indulge myself but didn’t want to spend a lot of money, just to satisfy this little desire. I won’t show anyone, but I’ve done a few paintings; the sole reason being I want to.

It takes small steps (I did the big one first!) but I’ve kept in mind the way I used to feel in my old job, to remind me of where I’m going.

You only live once.