Now I’m a Business Analyst!
April 21st, 2008 - Posted by Alan Howard
Just a quick update. At the time of writing about my new job, I didn’t actually say what it was called. This is because I didn’t know. I thought it might be something like ‘Service Level Manager’, or something like that, but it turned out I was wrong.
Back in December, in the last week before xmas, I was thinking to myself - self, are you happy with your current career path?
No, not really, my self replied to me.
So I asked, what do you really want, self?
I want a lot of money, self replied. With money comes the freedom to pursue fulfilling opportunities, and with fulfillment comes happiness.
I couldn’t help but agree. So I spent a few minutes thinking about it, and me, my self and I, we came to the conclusion that what we wanted was to be on $250,000 a year within 5 years. We’ve got some goals, and we’re not getting any younger. These goals include traveling, seeing the world, enjoying a whole lot of experiences along the way, and setting myself up for retirement.
I knew I couldn’t achieve these goals doing what I was currently doing, so I looked into what I COULD do that would lead me to making a lot more money than what I was.
After some research I discovered that Business Analysts do the kind of things that I’ve done in the past, and that I enjoy doing. I’ve worked with process improvement and policy analysis, and I figured that it’s the kind of thing I really like, and really do well at.
So I made the goal - become a Business Analyst.
And now, 4 months later, I’m a Business Analyst. I’ve already gained a 20% increase over what I was earning last year, and I’m looking forward to where this is leading me.
With the investments I’ll be able to make with the increased income, added onto even more increases over the next 5 years, I feel confident I can achieve my goal. Gaining experience as a Business Analyst / Consultant can lead me to starting my own consultancy business, and providing consultants to help improve business results.
So that’s my goal, and it’s nice to be successfully moving forward with my goals.
Entry Filed under: My Life
3 Responses to “Now I’m a Business Analyst!”
Posted: Apr 21st, 2008 at
“Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing, but absolutely nothing, can make you happy. The moment you see that you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend to another, one place, one spiritual technique, one guru to another. None of these things, can give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary thrill, a pleasure that initially grows in intensity then turns into pain if you lose them and into boredom if you keep them.”
Anthony de Mello
Posted: Apr 21st, 2008 at
A good quote, and one which I’ve often seen lately.
However, I think that happiness is an emotion as valid as any other, brought upon by experiences resulting in fulfillment. The more fulfilled we are, the happier we are. The trick is to find those experiences that fulfill us, and it’s easier to find them with the resources that money brings.
Posted: Apr 21st, 2008 at
The danger, I believe, in thinking like this is that you are at once becoming dependent on the outside world for reassurance and gratification, and you are reinforcing social conditioning.
What I mean is that determined, capable people, you being an excellent example of this, will decide to make things a certain way. You will choose an internal emotional state and you will seek to enforce it on the world. Now I’m not either promoting this or attacking it, but isn’t it strange that such actions, which are socially promoted, free us from being a victim to our environment and yet when we think about happiness we think it depends on our environment.
Being the annoyingly pragmatic mystic that I am, I recommend balance in all things. There are many things in the world that can bring joy, or can bring suffering. But you are not a victim of these things. How inspiring were the tales of those prisoners who decided that *they* were not in prison, only their bodies were? You can be however you choose to be. You can be in the worst situation in the world and still choose to be happy. Finding the balance is finding where this ceases to be authentic, and that is the challenge.
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