I'd do anything

One of my abiding memories of secondary school is being regularly told, usually in assembly, that I was capable of doing anything I wanted. Sometimes the message was clear and unambiguous, sometimes it was implicit, but I left school with a clear understanding that the world was my oyster and all I had to do was decide what world-changing endeavour I would undertake.

Actually, I don't think that message is really true. In fact, I'd go as far as to suggest that buying into that message can lead to analysis paralysis and crippling disappointment.

Incidentally, those same assemblies also made it clear that 'us girls' could do anything a man could do, and usually better. I suspect that message isn't really true either, at least not in that simplistic a form.

In the last year or so I've learnt a number of important lessons, possibly the most valuable of which is that there's something incredibly liberating about recognising the things I'm not very good at. I don't mean that self-depreciating thing I do where I suggest there's something I struggle with in the hope that someone will turn round and tell me I'm actually brilliant at it; I mean the things I genuinely can't do, that others are far better at than me, that I make a complete hash of and someone else can do in their sleep.

When it comes to looking at jobs I'm starting to realise that understanding I can't do everything is actually far more useful than thinking I can do anything. It means I'm much more realistic about the kind of jobs I'm willing to invest time and energy in exploring, and much quicker to write off things that look good on paper but I know I would either never get (again, I'm being realistic, not self-depreciating!) or I could get but which would cause both me and others a whole world of pain.