What is your role?

Maybe that sounds like a deep question for this time of the morning! In all areas of life we perform many roles. These roles are not intrinsic to who we are, rather they are functions that we perform in everyday life.

These roles are not always easy to identify – for example, what are the roles that you play as a family member, a father say? Well there can be many – playmate, disciplinarian, bread winner, teacher, mentor, coach, confident, friend etc.

In thinking about roles it is worth looking at different aspects of your life. Typically these include: Health, Career, family, Significant other, Personal growth, wellness, Money etc. It can be anything that is important to you. This compartmentalization of life is artificial of course because all aspects inter-relate but it is useful to finding priorities and identifying where we can make the most impact.

Within each of these “life sections” think about how satisfied you are in each area – scoring your satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10 can be useful here. Thinking about the roles you play can help to identify where you can REALLY impact your life satisfaction, either by doing more of it, less of it, or doing something new.

For example: In the father example above it may be that a lack of satisfaction can be tagged to lack of play time with your kid(s) – in other words the playmate role is not being satisfied. Now we are in a position to identify how we can find more time to address that and, by the way, the time required is normally relatively short.

So, thinking about the roles that you play in all aspects of your life can help identify the areas that can make the most impact in your life when addressed.

I know that

It is always a surprise to me how life presents us with so many learning opportunities. Often I find they are buried in familiar situations. I was working with my business partner in one of our seminars when he came up with the quote about the most dangerous three words in the English language: “I know that”.

Thanks for that Kevin! I have been thinking about that for a few days now. Whenever we think that we know something, it really gives us an excuse not to pay too much attention and means we don’t have to try to learn. It can also be dismissive of someone else’s efforts to help us – “Oh, I know all that”.

Herein lies the problem. Even if we think we know something really well, there is always and I mean always, something new to learn. Some new angle, someone else’s perspective that we hadn’t thought of etc.

Worse, saying we know something implies that we don’t even need to get better and/or there is no growth to be had in this area. Now, all things change. Even if we do know something today, who is to say it won’t change in some way tomorrow? If we assume that we already know we are actually wrong.

I guess the point of this post is that is about raising awareness. Every time you hear yourself saying that you already know something, how about re-framing that thought in terms like: “Knowing a lot abotu this already, I wonder what new perspective this information brings and what will I do with that?”

 

Family time

Well, it has been a hectic couple of weeks. I just returned from a week in Florida with my immediate family that included my parents, over from the UK. It was a really nice week and we were discussing it afterwards – what was the best part?

Often times the answer to this question involves a particular activity that we dis – a day out, a visit to a theme park, day at the beach and so on. This time however it was something quite different for me. Probably the best thing was simply hanging out with my parents and family generally. It is so rare that we simply do that without having the day planned. Specifically one of the most memorable times was the simplest thing – playing golf on the Nintendo Wii with my Dad – I think that was the first time we have played golf of any kind together for 15 years. How cool is that?

So, the point of this story is: What are the little things for you that are actually the most important? I realized again that simply sepnding time with my parents in pricelessly important to me – it doesn’t need to be some vague notion of “quality time” nor does it have to be doing something specific. What is it for you? These times don’t come back and we don’t get enough of them.

Again, what are the little things that are truly important to you and how are you going to get some time to do that? Making it a priority can really help your balance, even if the time you spend is short.