(This article represents Step 6 in planning your Best Year Yet
Step 1: Who Else Is Ready for 2011?
Step 2: Get Rid of Your Baggage Once and For All
Step 3: The Lazy Man’s Way to the Best Year Yet
Step 4: Get Out of Jail NOW!
Step 5: What Everybody Ought to Know About True North)
Looking at your life from the perspective of the roles you play provides a sensible way of integrating the various areas of your life while placing yourself and your values at the center, directing the show.
—Jinny S. Ditzler, Best Year Yet
Reasons to Examine Your Life Roles
Why is it so important to pause and examine the different roles we play in life? Ms. Ditzler provides a few:
Direction
By taking time out to look at each role, you are creating awareness of where you have been, and where you want to go. Think of yourself as sitting at the center of a wheel. The different spokes on the wheel represent each of your roles. The mere act of identifying your roles gives you a vantage point of being at the center, evaluating and directing where you want to go in each of those roles.
Integrated Living
Be sure, as you are thinking about the different roles that you play, to connect with the list of top values you put together, if you completed the exercise from last week’s post. It’s helpful for me, for example, to see that every single one of my roles is highly impacted by my top value of integrity. When I can be aware of each of my roles, as well as how they fit together with my most cherished values, I feel centered and fulfilled as I go through life.
Balance
About two years ago, I was very focused on generating some extra income and building assets for my family. I spent the year very focused on a couple of business ventures. I had some modest success, but it came at the expense of family relationships. I realized that the many hours and the extra energy I was pouring into my business ventures was coming at a cost to the relationships of those closest to me. Needless to say, I had some hard lessons to learn.
Ballasts are heavy material carried in a vessel to provide the ship with stability. In the same way, focused attention to each of our roles serves as a ballast to keep our lives steady as we move forward in 2011 and beyond.
The beauty of being aware of your different roles is that you can ensure you are setting goals that include each of those roles. Additionally, you can look over your roles and goals when getting ready each upcoming week in 2011. By keeping your roles and goals in front of you, you will ensure that you are living in harmony with your different roles and responsibilities.
What Are My Roles?
It can be kind of challenging to think about what our roles are. Here are some questions to get you thinking:
- What are your current responsibilities?
- What are you accountable for in your life?
- What do you do during the day? The weekends?
- What would you call the role you are playing as you are doing each of those activities?
You may want to consider roles that are underdeveloped. For example, as a son or daughter, would you like your relationship with your parents to be stronger? Think also in terms of what roles you may want to add to your life in the next year. Is there a service position at your church or in your community you would like to take on?
Here are some examples of roles others have written down:
Parent; Son/Daughter; Family member; Homeowner; Manager; Receptionist; Fund-raiser; Director; Salesperson; My own coach; Lover; Husband/Wife; Cook; Deacon; Homemaker; Friend; Poet; Designer; Adventurer.
Take some time to write down all your roles. Then count them. If there are more than 7 roles, you may want to combine a couple roles, or even cut out certain roles. This is because your brain can get overwhelmed with more than 7.
Here are some of my own roles for 2011:
- Steve’s Coach (self-care)
- Husband
- Father
- Friend
- Clinical Specialist
- Therapist
- Blogger
Think About How You Will Play Each Role in 2011:
Again, look at your list of values, and think through how you want to play each role in the year ahead. As you think of each role, think about how it will look, how it will feel, and how you would ideally like to play each role. I can tell you without even thinking about it: as I write, I know that my biggest challenge is how to be a better husband and father. But I’m also glad I have my professional roles written down as well, because it could be easy to discount those as I focus on being a better husband and father! And I’m glad for my “Steve’s Coach” role, because it will force me to focus on prayer, meditation, physical exercise, nutrition, and Scripture reading in order to maintain my personal reserves during the course of the upcoming year.
photo credit: Tightrope by JP Puerta on Flickr Creative Commons
What roles are you going to be playing this next year?
Have you struggled with unbalanced success this year or in past years?
I hope you will share your comments!
Hi Steve-
This is a great post and this is also the first time I have been to your website and I can already tell that I am missing out. Now that you have me hooked with this post, I have to go back and start at step 1! I wrote down all my roles and I definitely have more than 7 and I am not sure which ones to cut out yet, but I will work on it! Thanks for getting me to think about this and reevaluate.
Cori
Cori Hughes recently posted…Can A Social Media Virtual Assistant Give You Back Hours to Your Day
Cori, thank you very much for your kind words. I’m in the process of transitioning my prior 189 posts from my previous Blogger blog, so it will be a while before I get them all for you, but I’m encouraged by your feedback 🙂 I hope you continue to benefit from my writing, because that’s my goal–to help as many as possible 🙂
Life has to be in balance or it’s out of balance. I struggled with combining family with the opportunity to work at home. Took me almost 6 months to get to the stage that from 5 – 8 is kids time and nothing is going to interfere with that. Otherwise, I’d turn around, have a ton of money but would have lost my kids in the meantime. Wasn’t going to happen to me !
This is a very important message and I’m glad you took the time to compose it.
Joyce
Joyce Penner recently posted…Is it OK to cry now
Joyce, it seems to me that women often have a much better handle on this subject than men. I could be wrong, but I think I’m right about that 🙂 I’m glad that you were willing to put your family first, and I’m sure your family is glad as well 🙂
Hi Stephen
This is a great post , it is also my first time hear so i need to go back and read the other steps 🙂
I am single so i need to be the husband and wife in the house GRRRR!!!! yes love making food
but to all the things is not nice , but i agree with you you need to sit down and decide what you
task is and not to do to many or focus on the wrong thing life just making money from your home
business and left the rest of the family behind, or they must be with you or they will turn against you.
make it a great day.
Regards
Theuns
Theuns recently posted…Easy Cake recipe – for Network marketing
Theuns, thanks for your remarks 🙂 You said it well: “They must be with you, or they will turn against you.” I’ve found that if I am focused on devoting the appropriate amount of time to the significant roles in my life, I then have the support to pursue my business/internet role. However, if I become too focused on that, my other roles start to protest 🙂
This post is pretty timely for me, Stephen. I’ve been balancing several roles lately, especially a full-time caretaking role that I never anticipated and was certainly not prepared for. But I firmly believe that God puts us where we belong, when the time is right. I don’t understand it, but there’s a lot of divine masterminding that I don’t understand. After reading your post, it occurs to me that the most important thing is not how many roles we play, but that we dedicate ourselves fully to them.
David Merrill recently posted…Watching Dad Die
David, I love your attitude about your care taking role: “I firmly believe that God puts us where we belong, when the time is right.” My biggest challenge is not to put all my focus on my internet role, because it’s actually one of the more subservient roles in terms of importance. I write these articles for myself as well as my readers, because I am just as prone to over-emphasize one role over another.
Just want to add a goal setting resource to compliment your post here. It’s a goal setting app called GoalsOnTrack and it has worked very well for me. It saves me a lot of time in keeping track of my goals and most importantly it helps me better organize my daily todos towards achieving my goals.
Hi, Jasmin! Looks like a very nice app! I see that it’s web based: is there also an app for iPhones or SmartPhones. And is there an affiliate program for them? Thanks for sharing the resource.
Great post, Stephen! You are so right about the dangers of being stretched too thin. I’m just curious about something, though: I know that you said in your post that we should limit ourselves to seven roles, but what is the reason that seven is the magic number?
Steve, thanks for the question. To be honest, I don’t think seven is a definitive number. Most likely it’s best to choose the number of roles that you think you can realistically commit to. That could be more for some people, less for others, depending on their time and resources.