Soul Food Episode 16 – Many Hats

In life, we all wear many different hats. In fact, it helps to think about our life as a portfolio of different roles? 

• As a family member you might be a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, a husband or a wife, a partner, a parent or a grandparent. 
• In your work, you might be an employee, a team member, a manager, or a CEO. 
• You could also have roles as a friend, a neighbour, and a volunteer … just to mention a few examples. 

Your roles or your hats will change as you move through the different seasons of your life. For example, right now you may be a student, a daughter, a sister, a team member, and a part time employee. In a few years time you may be an employer, a wife, and a social club member. Later on you may be a wife, a mother, and a volunteer community leader. 

In this season of my life, I have 5 primary hats or roles:

1. A person (that’s a role that helps me think through my own health and well-being)
2. A family member (I am a husband, father, brother, and grandparent),
3. A communicator (this includes my speaking, training, and writing)
4. A leader (including being a coach)
5. A business owner.

Identify all the roles that you have right now. Try to limit them to about 6 or 7 at the most … you can do that by grouping similar ones together. 

Then think about the kind of person you want to be in each of your roles. 

One of the helpful principles when thinking about your life to “begin with the end in mind”. 

Imagine your own funeral, if you will. It’s the end of your life and someone who knew you well in each of your roles (family member, work associate, team member, neighbour, and friend) is going to give a tribute for you. 

What would you want them to say? 

If you can capture that picture vividly in your mind then you can more easily start today to become the person you really want to be. 

You might even want to write out a description of the ideal person you want to be in each role – so you can refer to it regularly. 

Obviously, our aim should be to do well in each of our roles at any given moment in time. You don’t want to succeed in only one or two areas of life to the detriment of other areas. For instance, what good is it to succeed in business and lose your family or your health?

Taking time to regular reflect on each role in our life, or the hats that we wear, helps ensure we keep a holistic perspective and maintain balance in our overall life. 

Let’s recap our main points:

1. Life can be seen as a portfolio of different roles we play … or hats that we wear. 
2. Take the time to think about the kind of person you want to be in each of your roles. 
3. True success is doing our best at each of our roles at any given moment in time.

That’s all for today. 

See you next week!

You can watch a video of this episode on the Soul Food YouTube channel.