Two weeks ago in my weekly post I introduced the following five questions that I feel are key to self reflection. Last week we began looking at these questions individually, as we examined the roles we currently play or might reasonably expect to play in the future. This week we move to the second question of who depends upon me, and for what?
5 Critical Questions for Self Reflection
What are the roles I currently play or expect to play in the future?
This is the most basic part of the assessment
Who depends upon me, and for what?
This question begins to determine the magnitude of each role
How am I succeeding in each role?
This gives us the opportunity to feel some positive mojo
How am I underperforming in each role?
This allows us to highlight areas that need a tune-up
What do I need to do to capitalize upon the things I am doing well,
while acquiring the knowledge or skills to improve those I am not?
This is where we put the assessment to work
The question of who depends upon us in our various roles, and for what, starts to show us the relative importance of each role. As we begin to consider this it speaks to each relationship in our lives and begins to paint the picture of our values system. For the younger person who is not married and may never plan to be, a vastly different picture may emerge than for a middle-aged husband and father such as myself, and that actually is okay.
In last week's examination of your roles you should have considered each of the potential roles you play which in turn lays out a framework for the relationships you have within your life. Moving forward with that it only makes sense, to a sensible guy like me, that we think about those relationships and how others are affected by what I am doing. Lets take a look at a few of my dependents by role below:
Husband
In the role of husband it is pretty obvious that I have a
wife that depends upon me for love and support.
Dad
Again this one is pretty obvious that my daughter similarly would
depend upon me for love, support and guidance.
Church Deacon/Treasurer/Teacher
In the congregation that we are a part of there are a number
of people who depend upon me to provide leadership,
maintain financial stability, present the Word of God
accurately and understandably.
Employee
The organization I work for depends upon me
to again provide leadership, set an example,
learn lessons from the data that passes before me,
and use that to help cast the vision for our future
and improve our processes.
Some of these may on the surface look pretty simple, but in reality we cannot look at them completely in isolation. Although we would like to put each role into a box and be able to live within one box at a time, that is NOT possible. The world we live in is complex and so are the relationships we experience. This is where I tend to jump off the bus of work-life balance that seems to be in vogue, in favor of work-life integration. In my little mind work-life balance has the implication that we can live a life of one box at a time, which I believe to be impossible. It seems to me that we must live in multiple boxes all the time with each role being connected in some way to the other. Several of the writers, bloggers, podcasters that I have come in contact with recently bring out the point that in order for us to say yes to one thing it means saying no to another. In an economic model this might be referred as tradeoffs. So I ask you, what are you saying yes to, and by implication what then are you saying no to? How we answer this question should follow with the values we hold dearest in our lives, and if we take a look over the course of time we will begin to see the patterns emerge and the results that were borne out in the various relationships. Will we learn?
My model for approaching this work-life integration model goes back to know who we are and what we value. By looking at the primary roles that we play in our lives and understanding how they are interrelated we can begin to put together a much clearer roadmap to success across all our roles. As a Christian I would suggest we look to the words of Jesus as recorded below:
"But seek first
the Kingdom of God
and His righteousness,
and all these things
shall be added unto you."
Matthew 6:33
When we put things into the proper perspective and strive for Christ's glory and not our own, then we have a much better opportunity to succeed at life. No it won't always be easy, but it will be rewarding if we will stay the course. MAKE TODAY GREAT!
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