Add life to your roles & goals

Here’s a fun exercise I just learned that’s worth the time and intention you put into it. It’s designed to help you achieve extraordinary results in your various roles so that you can go to bed at night feeling fulfilled.

It’s also a great left-brain follow-up to last week’s right-brain Divine Life Planning meditation.

The 5 Choices

We’re only a few weeks into 2019 and I’m already feeling the positive impact of the work I’ve been doing with the book “The 5 Choices: the Path to Extraordinary Productivity” by Kory Kogon, Adam Merrill and Leena Rinne.

I purchased the audio version when I bought my 2109 Franklin Covey planner (yes, I’m still using paper!).

The authors explain that our modern society is challenged because

of more decisions to make
our attention is under constant attack
we have a personal energy crisis

Basically, it’s both easier and more difficult to achieve productivity and feel accomplished.

So we have 5 choices to make to live & work at our best, tap into our gifts, feel great about our work and bring our whole self to our life.

Energize your Roles

As part of Choice 2, “Go for Extraordinary, Don’t Settle for Ordinary”, the authors offer this simple yet exciting exercise.

List the 5-7 roles in your life.
Change their title into something that captures their essence / the difference you’d like to make in that role. For example, if “mother” feels heavy, full of responsibility, guilt, daunting, etc., would “mentor”, “nurturer”, “guiding light” inspire you more?
Use this formula to write down role statements for each: As …. (role title), I will … (extraordinary outcomes) through… (activities). I use the present tense instead of will, but do as you like.
Review them as you plan your week and start your day.

Have fun with these. They’ve got to make you smile and feel excited about them.

My examples:

Here are a few of my before & after titles in case it inspires you.

“Me” became “SUPERSOUL”: As Supersoul (said with the musical tone of Superman) I let my Higher Self guide all my decisions through healthy choices for my body, mind & spirit.
“Housemate” became “HOUSESISTER”(which warms my heart): As housesister, I am present with and uplift Orinda through actions & moments that reflect my attentive, authentic, spirit-driven self.
“Friend” became “DE-LIGHT” (a name given me in the past): As De-Light, I add love & light to my friends’ and social circles’ lives through moments, connection, and actions that nourish my relationships.
“Daughter” became “MISS D” (what my Dad affectionately calls me): As Miss D, I love my family through my service and communication.

An interesting thing happened when I looked at the next 3 roles.

In my head, they used to be jumbled as one – “Professional Artist”, which caused some inner conflicts at time.

Separating them into 3 has brought clarity, especially when it comes to effort out and money in.

For example, I went through a whole period of “why bother?” back in 2017. I was putting so much effort, time and energy creating inspiring content for all my social media platforms but wasn’t getting much income in return.

I asked my Team of Divine Helpers whether I should quit. That day, I got a message from a Facebook fan that I had helped save her life. She was feeling suicidal and had gone to my newsfeed for inspiration. I still get teary when I recall that.

Just this week, a man in my community told me I was one of his muses in terms of his art/poetry. I can’t equate that to income! But I can equate it to one of the roles I was born with and feel such joy fulfilling.

LIGHTWORKER: As a lightworker, I shine my light and love through sharing my art, stories, life lessons in person and online.
ARTIST-CREATOR: As an artist-creator, I explore and express my love of beatuy and the beauty of love through connection with my Team of Divine Helpers to create powerful energy-infused artwork.
SOULPRENEUR: As a soulpreneur, I thrive by nourishing people’s transformational journeys through my art, keynotes, workshops and intuitive services.

My role as a Soulpreneur is the one that focuses on marketing and income as I’ve got to pay the bills. It’s still about my service to others, but different than Lightworker, for which I have no idea the amplitude of the return in the big picture of things. I don’t need to know. I just need to do what I naturally do, praying that I remain an instrument of Love.

The Artist-Creator is the part of me that creates because I need to for my own journey. It follows those inner calls to create projects like my 2015 Universal Law Mandalas (a year’s work with little financial return so far but so much learning, growth, fulfillment and new opportunities opening) or my current Re-Connecting art project (which I’ll introduce soon).

Separating them like this is helping me stay on track and more at peace within myself. That in itself was worth the exercise. One day, they may all be lumped together again. But for now, this helps.

I have a plastic sleeve with my roles/statements that I use as my bookmark in my weekly planner. Seeing them daily has helped keep balance and priorities in my life.

P.S. Can you guess which role I was fulfilling taking a few hours to write & share this post?

What would your roles be?

Now for your goals.

Once you’ve got your roles, you can look at the year ahead and set a few extraordinary goals and steps to get there.

The authors recommend using the formula: From X to Y by When. I’ve found that Y by When works too.

For my Artist-Creator Role, my only extraordinary goal so far is: From 3 to 11 Re-Connecting paintings (24″ x 48″) by September 30th.

Now that I have my end in mind, I need to work from there to schedule painting blocks and financing efforts to make sure I reach those extraordinary goals.

Working from the end in mind to outline the steps necessary and then plugging those into your monthly / weekly / daily schedules will help you achieve these goals.

For example , as Supersoul, one of my steps to achieving optimal physical/ mental energy is: “From 10+ Netflix movies / week to 3 by February”. I’m still working on that. My habit of intensive work bursts followed by Netflix binges aren’t optimal, especially if they take me past my ideal 9pm bedtime. I enjoy successive movies. They can bring me joy. But when I just keep watching past that, or watching movies that aren’t nourishing, then it’s not appropriate Supersoul behaviour.

It works…

I first learned about this when I took some Franklin Covey training in the late 80s, when I worked for the government. It was so in line with my left-brained, Type A, hyper-organizer self.

In recent years, I’ve wanted to live more intuitively, allowing for more space for Guidance. My Franklin Covey agendas got smaller and smaller.

Now my focus is to optimize and harmonize how the right and left brain work together. It’s not about rejecting one side for the other. They’re a team!

As your intuitive right-brain leads, your left brain can help make things happen.

It’s not about forcing life. It’s about helping Guidance manifest into your daily life so you can go to bed feeling happy in all 8 areas of your life.