Step 2: Take a careful inventory of your experience, your talents and your skills

Also your opportunities, qualifications and training as well as what you don't want to do.

Taking stock of yourself is sometimes a hard process, but it is rewarding. Do a pencil and paper exercise where you write down the following five column headings each on a separate page: Abilities and Skills; Interests and Preferences; Personality and Temperament; Values and Beliefs; Needs and Requirements. Then set about a rigorous process of self assessment.

Under the heading of Abilities and Skills, write down the qualifications you have and the way in which you have used them. If you are an accountant, how has your career developed? Are you an auditor, or have you developed into, for example, corporate finance, or financial management, or asset management or whatever. If you are an engineer, or a doctor, or an advertising executive, or a politician or whatever career in which you have established yourself, try to define your work history and isolate the abilities you have developed. And then include the level at which you have performed these skills and abilities such as a Manager, a Researcher, a Director or Thought Leader.

Then consider your Interests and Preferences. Most people are interested in the areas where they have abilities and skills. But this is not always the case. If you are a lawyer you most probably have interests in subjects relating to your legal specialization. If you are a pilot the aviation and flying interest you. But you may also have undeveloped interests in nature conservation or music or social investment, or a range of other interests which you have never had the opportunity to express as part of your working life. Write them down and define them as part of your planning for a portfolio life. These are often the hidden longings which cause the frustration when people are forced by their qualifications and career history to work in a particular limited field.

Personality and Temperament are key indicators. Here you have to look at attributes which may define you as an extravert, wanting to have regular close contact with people, or as an introvert where you are happier with your own company for much of the time. How strong is your need for independence and how self reliant are you? Are you one of the fortunate people with a sunny optimistic personality which does well in sales and marketing, or are you reserved and introspective like many who choose research or writing or working as an analyst of some kind.

When considering Values and Beliefs look at issues such as the importance to you of the environment, or the need to make money and have a high profile lifestyle, or the genuine desire to make a difference in the lives of under-privileged people. Do you want to live in a city with all its amenities and challenges, or do you have a longing for the simpler life in the country or by the sea? What kind of people do you want to interact with?

Working full-time at your profession or chosen career, might have served you well up to a point. But now you might prefer to seek more balance and variety by doing what you do part-time, and then investing yourself in one or more completely different areas. Many employers these days are prepared to consider a part-time contract to retain the services of valuable people. Work stress is often associated with a lack of balance. People are sometimes prepared to take a cut in income to spend more time with their families

Most importantly we are influenced by our Needs and Requirements. These often have to do with money and the wish to ensure security. But often these days, there are fortunate people who have retired comfortably, or who are still young but have made enough money to meet most of their needs, and can now focus on other things. There may also be a need or requirement to involve family members in a business enterprise. Parents frequently wish to build a business for the benefit of their children. Or they feel they must make plans to live in another country for reasons of safety or security. Sometimes families must make arrangements for the special education of their children, or to be close to aging parents.

Some people have retired and assumed that the provision they made for retirement was adequate. Now, in times of economic turmoil, many have lost part of their savings and are forced back into employment or other means of providing for themselves.

The critical issue facing people who are self employed for the first time is to compensate for the benefits previously provided by their employers. But most people, these days realize that once they have embarked on the process of negotiating for their own medical care, or life insurance or whatever, from a company car to the cost of cell phones they are happier and more in charge of their own lives. They are not forced to contribute to a fund designated by the company and they can make their own arrangements.

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