What key skills are needed for self-employment?

What key skills are needed for self-employment? I have spent a good deal of time weighing up my options recently. I have conducted a lot of self-analysis, to honestly evaluate my motivation, and to assess whether I truly have the skills and personality traits required for success.

I love the idea of the lifestyle that self-employment can offer me. I crave the flexibility, variety, and opportunity to constantly learn that it offers.

Motivation

My main reasons for wanted to become self-employed are autonomy and creativity. I simply do not want to work for anyone else anymore. I value my freedom more highly than the money and security I would receive from continuing in a paid position. I want to work on my own terms, towards my own goals.

My main aim is to be creative, and to allow myself to express myself through my writing. I need to write. It is a burning passion of mine, and now that I have allowed myself to taste this way of life, I don’t think I could ever give it up.

I love to help other people. One of the most satisfying parts of my previous roles was the opportunity that I had to help other people to develop. I love learning, and self-development has always been very important to me, even in employment. I always had to be learning something new, and I made sure that I shared my learning with my colleagues.

I loved training and coaching roles. If I had more patience, I think I would have loved to be a teacher. Maybe that is why I am now drawn to a coaching element in my business.  My blog is just for fun at the moment, but eventually I want to be able to use it to coach others to use the skills that I am developing for myself. Maybe that will be in the form of a course, or a book. Time will tell.

Resources

I am very fortunate to have an amazing support network. My partner is supportive of my plans. He knows that the stress of my previous role was making me ill, and that something had to change. He knows how determined I am to make my new career path work, and understands that I need to explore these options in order to carve out a more satisfying lifestyle for myself.

I have two amazing best friends, who I can rely on completely. They help me to assess my plans, and have always been there for me, through good times and bad. They tell me honestly if they see any flaws in my thinking. I trust them both implicitly. My family are also fully supportive of my plans, which is a great comfort to me.

I have always been a saver, so thankfully I don’t have mountains of debt to worry about. Although we have a mortgage, I have done the calculations and am certain that my savings and redundancy payment will allow me to pay my share of the bills. I won’t be rich, but I have decided that my freedom is worth the reduction in standard of living. I’m not one for luxuries anyway.

I can handle having to go on cheaper holidays while I build my business. It’s not as if we are likely to be travelling in the near future anyway, what with the global pandemic. If anything, it seems like an ideal time to launch a new business. Lockdown means that we aren’t allowed to leave the house, so I have all my free time to dedicate to my fledgeling enterprise.

Strengths

My greatest strengths are my communication skills. I can relate to people very easily. I love meeting new people, getting to know them and understanding their needs. Apparently, I come across as very genuine, and authentic. People seem to love my honesty and openness. I have always had the ability to gain the trust of my customers. I think it comes from being natural, and willing to share my life story and experiences.

I have never tried to put on a professional image. I’ve always just been myself, and people seem to respond very positively to that. I think they can see through the falseness of a professional image, and they instinctively prefer the authenticity and integrity that I offer.

I love to talk to people, and for that reason, I have found networking easier than I originally anticipated. I have managed to build a network of very supportive peers, and I look forward to being able to share our skills to help each other going forward.

I am also very determined. When I want something, I am prepared to put all my energy and focus into it to make it happen. The idea of setting up a business from scratch is very appealing to me, with all the challenges and opportunities it will bring. I am passionate about my current mission, and relish the chance it gives me to be able to create my own destiny. I trust my gut instincts, and they tell me I am definitely on the right track.

Character flaws

A weakness of mine is over-sensitivity. I struggle with criticism. That partly comes down to my upbringing, but I don’t want to make excuses and blame my past for my current behaviour. I am working hard on self-analysis, to try to work out how I can be more resilient, and less dependent on the approval of others. It is something I think I will always need to keep working on, as it does not come naturally to me. I can get very emotional and am easily thrown off track by unexpected events. My stress response gets triggered by the tiniest little thing. The distress I feel is totally out of all proportion to the trivial cause. I am working to rebalance this with mindfulness.

I am definitely a work in progress, and I try to be kinder to myself these days. I look at all the progress I have made, rather than constantly fixating on my flaws and berating myself for them. I now try to use the feelings of rejection that I feel to drive me forward, rather than allowing them to derail me.

I have learned to accept my character for what it is, flaws and all. I’ll keep working on myself, to become a better person. I don’t need to be perfect. I just need to do my best.

This is one of the main reasons that I have chosen Simplify My Life as my motto, and my overall personal aim. A simpler life will trigger my stress reaction less, and this should increase my happiness levels.

Project 365

I set up this website after deciding that I want to build a more creative life for myself, so I can give up my job and be in control of my own destiny.

I have set myself a goal of publishing an article on my website every day this year, to document my journey from employment to self-employment.

The name I chose was Project 365 because I see this as a year that I have dedicated to learning and self-development, as I countdown to freedom. It started on 1st January 2021, so I have 353 days to go!

Why not check in on a regular basis to see how I am progressing, and what I have discovered?