Redefining Your Roles

You have many roles to play in life, such as various job to perform, being someone’s relationship partner, and being a a personal growth explorer. That there may be gaps, however, in the roles you identify, and you may want to devise a new role to cover a gap. Look especially for areas where you’ve been procrastinating or getting weaker results than you’d like. Do you have an appropriate role for that area? Have you chosen a suitable label for the role that you like? Identity Encourages Behavior Note that identity supports and reinforces behavior, as noted in the recent Be a Voter post. You’re more likely to succeed in making a behavior change if you seek to adopt an identity change to align with your new behavior. If you’re not exercising regularly, for instance, could it be because you lack a proper role to support this behavior? One role could be runner. Another could be yogini. A runner runs, and a yogini does yoga. If you want to call yourself a runner, you’ve got to run; otherwise you can’t honestly claim the label. I like using the athlete label. It’s good role that encourages me to exercise in a more balanced way than runner. Athlete works as a good long-term label. It encourages me to keep growing, exploring, and challenging myself in this area of life. Sometimes labels have interesting side effects. By thinking of myself as an athlete instead of as just a guy who exercises, I buy better running ...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Lifestyle Productivity Source Type: blogs