I'm having a bit of a rough week this week.I won't go into all the reasons why, but safe to say they have made me feel like I'm failing on a few fronts.

On the whole, I love what I do. I'm passionate about the things I'm involved in. I love the people I collaborate with. BUT - I'm not good at the details. Like many of us who are self employed, I realise that most of the bad situations I find myself in are of my own creation. Seemingly small things like being lazy with invoicing, forgetting something, sending an email to the wrong person happen far to often to me. And as I'm on my own, these things seems much worse as there's no one there to trade stories with or to pick up the slack. There's no safety net.

Instead of getting caught up in the negative, one of my lovely friends, Dani, suggested I have a look at this strengths survey to reassess and remind myself of what I'm good at.

The things that were highlighted as key attributes are:

Love of learning You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Curiosity You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.
Creativity Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Leadership You excel at the tasks of leadership: encouraging a group to get things done and preserving harmony within the group by making everyone feel included. You do a good job organizing activities and seeing that they happen.

Perspective Although you may not think of yourself as wise, your friends hold this view of you. They value your perspective on matters and turn to you for advice. You have a way of looking at the world that makes sense to others and to yourself.

The following are particularly NOT TRUE of me:

Prudence You are a careful person, and your choices are consistently prudent ones. You do not say or do things that you might later regret.

Perseverance You work hard to finish what you start. No matter the project, you "get it out the door" in timely fashion. You do not get distracted when you work, and you take satisfaction in completing tasks.

Self-Regulation You self-consciously regulate what you feel and what you do. You are a disciplined person. You are in control of your appetites and your emotions, not vice versa.

None of this is particularly new to me. In fact, anyone who knows me will agree that this is dead on accurate.

I'm a big picture person, I love new ideas, challenging the status-quo, getting inside something big and finding out how it all works, and bringing people along for the ride. But I thrive on floods of inspiration, I'm impulsive and sometimes I lack discipline.

But what can I do with this information? Should I be changing how I structure my work? Should I be changing what I do? Should I change who I work with?

What careers are these attributes suited to? What styles of work or work environments should I be looking at? What kind of people would complement me?

Over to you.