Changing Roles in Your Head

When you think of a great character actor, who comes to mind? For me it’s Johnny Depp.

Just think about the differences in his roles as Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands, Mort Rainey  (Secret Window), Spencer Armacost (The Astronaut’s Wife) … and of course - Willy Wonka! Now, compare him with someone like Bruce Willis.

Willis almost exclusively plays the “burnout cop/criminal/taxi-driver/soldier on the verge of losing everything who finds his inner nobility and saves the day.” That’s basically his role in every movie he’s starred in.

Human beings are more like Depp than Willis in that we often change roles depending on the situation we’re in and the needs we have at the time. What roles do you play? And which serve you well? Which don’t? It’s helpful to become both aware of them and intentional about which are most responsible and helpful for certain contexts.

Personally, I know that when I play the “He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed” role with my older son, he automatically puts on his “Lawyer” (“let-me-show-you-the-error-in-your-reasoning-and-or-syntax”) role! There follows an escalating argument in which no one wins.

However when I change roles in my head to “Mentor” or “Coach”, the lad can’t play the Lawyer role – it doesn’t make sense. The two “scripts” don’t match. So he inevitably reverts to a more open-minded and co-operative role.

Which role do you play in job interviews? “Charity case” or “Worthy Prospect”?

Which role do you play in family dynamics? “Victim”, “Cheer Squad”, “Rescue Ranger”, “Self-Defined Adult”, “Spoiled Child”?

Which role do you play professionally? …..

You get the drift.

Try some different roles in problemic situations and see how it changes the “script”, the dynamic, the response of others, your own feelings and perspective.

 Oh, and you might like to try this link for fun to find out which Depp role most suits you: depp-quiz.

Apparently, i most resemble Willy Wonka!!??!  Hmmm…..

 

To Scold or Not to Scold (my staff)!

When supervising others (be they paid staff or the unpaid volunteers who help in the school office), there comes a time for confronting and challenging their behaviour. I found a terrific article online which gets inside the situation and gives some nice short sharp “how-to’s”, such as specific behaviours (and missing behaviours) to focus on.

It starts: “Project managers are caught in a seeming paradox: They need to create and maintain good working relationships so that they can get work done through others. At the same time, they need to constantly perform course corrections on others’ performance. In other words, they need to criticize…”

Want more? Go to criticism .

 

Thought for the Day

In fighting fire with fire, be careful you don’t become an arsonist.

 

Out of Your Head and into Your Hands…

Your head feels like a small town in America’s Tornado Belt. Twisters keep coming and going. Thoughts whirls at hundreds of miles an hour, damaging some of the structures that kept reality nice and tidy for you. You are at that place again where it has become impossible to control the energy of the demands, the expectations, the dreams and the disappointments.

You are both exhausted and jazzed up – head spinning from the voices competing for your attention, the clamour of the To Do lists, the deadlines rushing at you, the priorities fighting their way to the forefront of your attention.

Sound familiar? Life can get like this pretty easily these days.

One of the best things you can do for your self is to get some of the chaos out of your head and into your hands. In other words, remove it from the realm of THINKING - where it just adds to the morass - and bring it out into the world of DOING, where it can be worked on, changed - maybe even completed or deleted.

Ever looked at a thoroughly messy house and not known where to start? But you told yourself to pick a corner and start cleaning. Pretty soon you could see floor again, dust was giving way to reveal that lovely sheen the furniture used to have and it was possible to move from room to room without tripping over stuff. You found that (strangely) you could breathe easier and more deeply, your stress levels were decreasing, and so on.

Your mind can be like that. Just picking a corner to start in can be a simple step toward taking some of the spin off the tornado. Choose a priority to focus on for a time, a non-essential demand to discard, a day to flee from the chaos in order to get some perspective on it, unfinished business to gain completion on.

 

Killin’ time?

Eight months of my life were spent living with the extreme restrictions of an acute and chronic back problem. There wasn't much I could do: couldn't sit in a coffee shop, couldn't sit at my own table for more than 2 minutes, couldn't play active games with the kids, couldn't stand for too long in one position, couldn't lie down in one position for long either. Early on, when people asked me what I'd been doing, I often found myself answering the question by saying "Just killing time until my back gets better". Eventually I realised the problem was not my back, but my choices…

You know that term - "Killin' time"? How often do you use it? You got to the coffee shop early, you have time to kill. You're waiting for a significant event to occur, so you kill time until then. Everyone's too busy to see you, so you kill time until they're not. It's raining today so you'll just have to kill time until it stops.

Wait a second! Let's think about this – time is the ultimate non-renewable resource! Life consists of many things but it is measured in time! If life = time, then killling time = killing life!

When this occured to me, that's when I began to use my time to start laying the foundation for Great Circle, as well as deepening some significant relationships and my own personal foundations.

Riddle me this: What difference would it make to your life, if you thought of killing time as killing life??