You’ve been on the Mothership for 10, 20 years, maybe more.

Your Mothership might be a large corporate, or a series of them, all different but very similar.

Or it could be the Central or Local Government, or a public service organisation like the NHS,

Or it could be a big charity or the third sector,

Or the armed forces, the police,

Or a combination of these.

They all have their own atmosphere, their own culture, their own ways of working – and you’ve become accustomed to that.

You know the ropes, you understand the games you have to play. You know who you are and where you stand in that environment.

That’s not to say that you’ve been happy, it’s just what you’ve got used to. You know how to get by and even how to get things done. It’s second nature to you, it fits you like an old coat. Even if it’s one you’ve never really liked.

And now you have left, you’ve escaped.

Whether it was your choice or not, resignation or redundancy, you are now out of it and you aren’t going back. That chapter of your life is over and it’s time to write the next one.

You know you want to do something else with your life, now you have escaped the corporate grind and the musts, shoulds and oughts of your Mothership. Now you can make your own choices.

Only you are unsure what exactly you want to do.

Or what you could do.

Or how you would actually make it happen.

And you don’t know who to ask, or who you can confide in, because you don’t know anyone else who’s in your situation.

Doing your ‘own thing’

You were often frustrated by the demands of the Mothership. Having to behave in the right way, tick boxes and jump through hoops, just to do what you could see was the right thing for the business.

You’ve always felt you had a lot more to offer and could have done a lot if you were just allowed to do things your way, bring all of you to the party. But that was never asked for, so you buckled down and made yourself fit into the system, made yourself as ‘cog-like’ as you could. Although your cog was always a little different to everyone elses.

You got fed up with people telling you what to do, with others setting your priorities and deciding your rewards. Now you want to step up and show what you can really do, find out what your limits really are.

Doing your own thing could take a number of paths:

• do some contract work
• become a freelancer
• take interim management roles
• become a consultant
• start your own business (i.e. more than just working for yourself)
• buy a franchise
• do a ‘start-up’
• retrain in a new profession

You might do a number of these, as you transition from your area of expertise to a new one. Perhaps starting with some contracting or consultancy to keep the money coming in whilst you develop one or two of the others.

You could do a combination of several of these at the same time, create a portfolio career that fits your needs, wants and interests.

Or you could create some wholly new options, ones you can’t even imagine right now. I mean, who would have predicted that you could create a business selling grooming products for male genitalia, or get a job as an Augmented Reality Designer?

The real opportunity, though, is to create a lifestyle that fits you.

After all those years of squidging yourself into cog-shaped space, all those years bending yourself out of shape to fit into ‘the machine’, now you can make the space that is designed to fit you. Perfectly.

Of course, you have to figure out what shape you REALLY are after all those years of making yourself be something else.

Which is the first challenge you have to address.

But you don’t want a 10 step programme to success, a paint-by-numbers approach to your future. You don’t want someone spoon-feeding you ‘the answers’, you don’t want someone else telling you who you should be (I mean, you’ve had plenty of that already, haven’t you?). You want to find your own answers, you want to find out who you really are for yourself.

That’s where I can help.

I’ve been where you are and I’ve been down my own path to finding my answers. I know what the challenges are, where the elephant traps lie, and I can help you work your way through them to your own destiny.

It’s not an easy thing to do. It can be painful, frustrating and trying but I’ll be there to help and support you, to encourage and cajole you on every step. Asking you the questions that will lead you to your answers, working with you to work out what ‘doing your own thing’ really means for you. Helping you to move through this phase of your life with grace and style, rather than crashing around like a drunken teenager at a wedding like I did.

That’s my mission, that’s why I started After the Mothership. To help people like you and me.

If you’d like to work with me 1-2-1, look at my Coaching page