At this point, I’ve been the fixer, the planner, the person putting out fires, making last-minute presentations, being the unofficial team therapist, and handling whatever quick favor people need. I’ve said yes so many times I can’t tell if I ever actually chose a direction or if I’m just running on autopilot. It’s not that I hate my job. I just don’t know what it is anymore. Everyone says play to your strengths, but what if your strength is just being whatever the team needs? What if you got so good at filling gaps that you never figured out what you actually wanted to build?
My resume looks like someone else wrote it… all over the place, kind of impressive but going nowhere. I’m decent at a bunch of stuff but I have no idea what I want to be known for. I can’t tell what’s actually me versus what’s just me being too flexible for too long. If you’ve been stuck like this, how did you figure it out? How do you separate what’s yours from what everyone else needed you to be?
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I was in a similar situation… always jumping in, covering for people, being useful in every direction. Got to the point where I had no clue what was actually me anymore. The shift started when I stopped asking “what am I good at?” and started asking “what do I absolutely not want to do anymore?” Sounds weird, but it cut through all the noise. Being adaptable is a skill, but when you’re always adapting, you never get to stand on solid ground. You don’t build an identity, you just build reflexes. I had to figure out that saying yes to everything wasn’t the same as being valuable. It was just being needed, and being needed can feel like having purpose until it completely wrecks you.
I ended up using the pigment self discovery assessment around that time. It made me slow down and actually notice patterns in how I work and think. Helped me see that I kept landing in the same types of roles not because I wanted them, but because I was good at fixing broken stuff. That’s not a career … that’s just a habit. The analysis helped me understand what I was trying to change instead of just feeling stuck and not knowing why.
You’re already asking the right questions. that’s honestly the hardest part. Just start paying attention to what feels like you, not what makes you useful to other people. The rest starts coming together after that.