Recognizing our Roles with Colleen Stanevich

When we are in transition, we may think that we are merely changing jobs, or changing responsibilities, but we may not always stop to really consider how the roles we play shape how we see ourselves. We also might not examine how a change in one role may impact another role in our lives. In this podcast, I recap the strategies we have learned from interviews in the first part of Season 2, and then look ahead to examining the roles we play as part of our transition. I give examples of how leaving my job led me to ask hard questions about my role as wife, mother, daughter, and even about my responsibility in my role as an individual. In this podcast I discuss:

• How do we define success in the roles we play? 
• What causes stress in the roles that we play?
• What are the connections between our definitions of success, our stress, and our roles?

If we pause to consider our roles and how the choices we make in  those roles impact us, we can either reframe our definitions of success to be more sustainable and more fulfilling, or we can identify what is working or not working in those roles to redefine our roles and how we fill them.

If you want to do your own roles analysis, download a reflection guide here

Transcript

On today’s show, I’m recapping these first interviews of Season 2, which have been all about how we get in touch with our selves and our sense of identity as an early step in the transition process. I interviewed folks about how we can find the courage to be vulnerable, how we create safe spaces to do some hard inquiry, and how we can unpack some of the stories we tell ourselves and use our somatic responses to listen to ourselves to find the answers we seek. Join me in looking back on our Identity work and then looking ahead to how we can use our roles to ask more questions about ourselves, our needs, and the changes in our lives.

The beginning of Season 2  was all about strategies to help us get regrounded in our identity—first, I spoke with Kate Greer, from Contagious Vulnerabilty, about her work as a vulnerability doula. She talked about the importance of vulnerability and learning to appreciate the “multiverse” within each of us. Letting go of the narrative around what are our strengths and our shadow sides, but instead embracing all that we are and realizing that if we share our true and vulnerable selves with others, it leads to greater connection between us.  KATE SNIPPET HERE. 

The next interview was with Cheryl Benedict sharing insights from her book, The Wisdom of Transition. Cheryl shared 8 types of transition in our professional lives, and strategies to navigate those transitions. No matter the type of transition we face, Cheryl advocated that to really get in touch with ourselves and what we need, we need to create a safe space to listen to ourselves, go inward, and reflect. She talked about how to create both a physical and a mental space that could help us really take the time to dig into the in-between zone as we navigate transition. CHERYL SNIPPET HERE

Finally, I had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Felicia Lee about her work with executive coaching and helping people be in the moment as they navigate transitions. Felicia talked about the importance of breath work and helping people identify their somatic cues to really get in touch with what they are feeling and what their needs are. She also talked about how important it is to experience every emotion and appreciate the “gorgeousness” of who we are and who we have been. Again, that important reminder that we are always developing but every experience we have had has helped shape who we are today and how we step into our lives as we make transitions. FELICIA SNIPPET HERE

Many guests I’ve had on the show have offered strategies for this beginning stage of stepping into transformation and there are some common threads-- really taking time and creating space for deep self-awareness, getting in tune with our somatic responses, and appreciate the entirety of who we are and where we have been. But then what—and what is the transition process like for different types of changes. 

For the next series in Season 2, I want to feature people who have faced unique changes in the roles in their life—professional and personal.  Why focus on analyzing the roles we play? When I was going through My Innermission and experienced professional change—at one point I thought, “All I’m doing to switching jobs, no big deal.” But what I didn’t realize is there was a ton of value I had associated with my job, the role I played in an organization, and how that translated to other roles in my life like the role of mom, wife, and independent woman. 

One of my favorite exercises that I undertook was to reflect on the roles that I played, how I defined success in those roles, and what brought me stress in those roles. I started with my professional role—this time not in my job, but how I saw myself professionally, and I unpacked what defined success for me as a professional. For me, there was some success that I felt about being needed by others. I also felt success for my title and position in a large organization. I realized that those things had become part of how I saw myself and how I saw value in myself as a professional. I also named what brought me stress in my role as a professional and how I knew when that stress was building. For me, there were some interesting connections between what brought me success and what brought me stress. For example, I felt success because others needed me and saw me as a resource. What brought me stress, though, was when I didn’t feel like my support was being leveraged enough and that people were feeling frustrated because they couldn’t get enough support from me. By doing this, it helped me understand that one of the stories I tell myself is that my work has to matter to others in order to be important and that I have to be able to meet everyone’s needs. Those two messages were partially responsible for my sense of burnout. After realizing that, I reframed what I wanted out of my future professional role—Instead of feeling like my work had to matter to others, my reframe was that I had to feel like my work had impact in the world (not relying on how others saw it). I also reframed that I had to meet everyone’s needs to say that I wanted my support to be accessible and strategic, so I could support more people sustainably. 

I did this exercise with my role as a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and the hardest role to unpack was my role as an individual. I hadn’t thought about just being Colleen as being a role that I played—and that was actually evident by how little time I claimed for developing and attending to myself. When I had to answer the question, “How do I define my success as an individual?” I had to address that I didn’t really know what made me feel success as an individual person outside of my other roles. That led me to reclaim some of my time just to explore what made me feel successful as an individual and what emerged after noticing who I was and how I felt when I wasn’t in my role as mom, wife, daughter, professional, etc. was that I felt success when I nourished my body, when I engaged my body in movement, when I took time to be creative, and when I could explore new ideas that weren’t tied to any of my other roles, but were just things that I wanted to learn about. Conversely, when I had to ask the question when do I feel stress in my role as an individual—that was actually an easier response—it was just when I wasn’t taking enough time for myself. 

Asking ourselves about our preconceived notions about how we would define success in the roles we play can help us all name the stories that we are telling ourselves and the “shoulds” that we give ourselves, that may actually be causing stress. Once we understand the measures of success in our roles that feel authentic, sustainable, and in line with our true selves, we can begin to think about how our actions line up to those measures of success. 

Again, from my example, when I unpacked what made me feel success as a mom, I named that one of the ways I measure success is how independent my kids can be and how ready they are to take responsibility for themselves and their lives. When I had clarity around that, I looked at something that caused me stress—hustling to make their lunches in the morning before school. I realized that if I really wanted to live into being what I felt like was the mom I wanted to be, having the kids make their own lunches would reduce my stress and would support them in becoming more independent. It was a small thing, but made a big difference once we started it.  It made me feel like my daily actions had greater intention and alignment with who I wanted to be. 

So, over the next couple of weeks, we’ll explore stories from people who have faced transition in their roles or help people in transitions in their roles—from professional role transitions to role transitions during divorce, to the transitioning roles between aging parents and their children. 

If you want to know more about how to do your own analysis of your roles and think about your success criteria and your stressors, there is a free download of a reflection graphic in the show notes and at myinnermission.com under the latest blog post. 

I look forward to the upcoming conversations about role transitions. Thank you for joining me this week and if you know someone facing some role transitions be sure to share the link to this podcast to support them on their journey. 

Until next week, thanks for joining me on MyInnermission.