Role Retrospective

To experience moving forward toward the life you were meant to live is to use your lived experiences to continually triangulate on who you are and why you are here. Your past is riddled with clues as to your design and the roles you are meant to play to leave a positive impact on the world around you. The Role Retrospective is a tool to help you sift through your history in order to point yourself toward your true north.

Use the Role Retrospective to help reflect back on the varying roles you’ve played in life. To uncover the roles that filled you with energy, passion, and fulfillment versus the ones that, if you’re honest, left you drained, stole your joy, and if you never had to play them again, you would be happy. Start by listing out every role you have ever played. At home, at work, at church, at the community garage sale, at school… you get the idea. Be detailed and descriptive enough that you almost relive your experiences in it. 

Next, grade each role in terms of how much joy it brought you, and how skilled you were at doing it. Go for extra points by identifying the values the role allowed you to live out, and the talent (superpower) it required from you. Rank those roles that have values and talents associated with them higher. The point of this exercise is to remind you of the roles you love to play, the roles you can play, and the roles you dread to play.

Learning about yourself requires you to be curious about yourself. Today, get the list started by brainstorming for 15 minutes. Then revisit the list every day this week for 15 minutes breaking roles into their various parts and adding to the list as memories surface. When you’ve detailed a role out to your satisfaction, identify any values or talents it aligns with you. 

If you need a spreadsheet to get you started, there’s one here. Generating clarity for yourself requires work. Be more curious about yourself. Don’t skimp out on putting words to your experiences and continually learning who you are designed to be.