Are You Cinderella or The Ugly Step Sister When It Comes To Your Career?

All sorts of hopeful candidates, including Cinderella's evil ugly stepsisters, try to force their feet into the Prince's glass slipper. But it just doesn't fit - even, in some versions of the tale, after the stepsisters have chopped off bits of their feet (ugh) in a desperate attempt to win the Prince.

I'm ashamed to say that in the early days of my working life I was a lot like the ugly step sisters. I tried to make something that wasn't meant for me fit.

Instead of looking inward, and understanding myself better - what I truly enjoyed and why - I looked outward. I focused on professions I'd heard of, that my family and peers respected, and spoke to the limited range of organisations that attended my university's recruitment days. So in my first career, as a solicitor, I ended up shoe-horning myself (forgive the pun!) into a slipper that not only didn't fit it gave me blisters.

It's easy to do. At some point, we've probably all tried to squeeze ourselves into a mould - to be someone we're not - whether to get a job or to hold on to a flagging relationship. We humans have such a power of denial, we often don't realise at the time what we're doing. So here are a few clues:

1. You find yourself led by what others want, rather than yourself
When I was applying for my law training contract, I had 4 or 5 template cover letters. One explaining why I really wanted to work for a big firm, one extolling the virtues of small, niche firms, one detailing my (non existent) passion for EU law... you get the idea. The sad thing is, I thought I was being really clever.

Are you forcing any of your responses to job applications? Or designing your business too conservatively, around what you think the market wants - as opposed to experimenting with what you'd love to bring to it? (I'm all for listening to potential customers, but haven't we all been seduced by an innovative product or service we didn't even know we wanted? Tamagotchis, anyone?! )

2. All your enjoyment comes from your personal life
Your Friday nights out, gorgeous new boy/girlfriend, surfing addiction or kids are all that keep you going.

(You realise this when every Sunday evening you get that "oh no it's Monday" tomorrow seasick feeling in the pit of your stomach).

3. You lack confidence in your skills
In fact, you can't understand why you haven't been fired, but expect it's coming.

1. You ask yourself the question "at the end of my professional life, what would I feel proud of having accomplished?"- and you realise you are on the path to achieving those things.

2. If you magically overnight became as rich as Bill Gates, you'd still be doing what you're doing.

3. You suspect that occasionally, you bore your long-suffering friends with excited accounts of what you're up to, though they're usually too polite to tell you.

Which were you? If you're the Ugly Sister, don't despair. Remember the words of George Eliot "It's never too late to be who you might have been."