Have You Inventoried Your Responsibilities?

Something that has been beneficial for me is to occasionally reframe how I look at my life. The first time I recall doing this was after first reading Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. From that book I learned how to look at my life in terms of Roles that I played.

Another way of looking at my life that has been helpful is by the Status of my Life Accounts. In the link I reference Michael Hyatt’s way of looking at his life as a group of accounts, and identifying which of those accounts are overdrawn and which have surplus balances. For example, one would look at life as consisting of Accounts with one’s spouse, employer, God, and so on. As you look at these accounts, you ask yourself whether you believe you have overdrawn the accounts or whether they an excessive balance, and so on.

While life accounts are not a lot different than Covey’s Roles approach, it is different enough to cause you to think of things you would not have thought of if you had stuck with the Roles approach.

So, while I was on sabbatical last week, I decided to try another approach: I asked myself what my responsibilities are. I asked what are my responsibilities to God, to my family, to myself, to my friends, to my community, and so on. This got me to think about doing some things I might not have otherwise thought about.

Another post that is somewhat related to this is my Recasting Your Thinking article back in April.

Have you inventoried your responsibilities, and were you surprised when you did? Do you have other suggestions for reframing that we could benefit from? Let us hear your thoughts.