Are you playing Hide-and-Seek with your personal truths, dreams, aspirations and quality of life?

If you answer yes to any of the following questions, chances are you are playing Hide-and-Seek with your personal truth, dreams, aspirations, and quality of life.

• Are you ready to experience more out of life but don't know what to do next or where to start?
• Do you suffer when making a choice or after you have made one?
• Are you currently suffering in a particular area of life?
• Do the people or situations in your life suddenly feel more demanding, unreasonable, overwhelming, confusing or chaotic?
• Are you in transition or headed for a change and feel unequipped to move forward with clarity and peace?

You are not alone. Most people can answer yes to at least one of those questions. I invite you to read this message with an intention to move forward, broaden your perspective and gain clarity for your personal truth. It might be time to quit hiding from what is really important and start using relevant information to seek what direction you are choosing for the quality of your life.

To do that, I would like to call attention the concept of SORTING by Roles of Importance or ROI when making choices. Many of you might be familiar with ROI being your return on investment from a financial perspective. In the overall game of life, I suggest you frame your ROI as your return on the investment of your time, energy and relevance in your thoughts, actions, behaviors and choices. What results are you likely to produce with your current thoughts, words or actions?

Your results are the return of your investment in choices. Therefore, it could be said if you don't like your returns, it will require you to adjust your allocations of time, energy, relevance and importance in your thoughts, words and actions. Spending time, energy or importance on thoughts, words and actions that are not in alignment with the results you want to produce are empty and not effective. No wonder, you may be feeling unequipped for your current reality.

How do you shift from feeling unequipped to feeling confident and clear that you have all you need moment by moment? I suggest you adopt a process called sorting. Sorting is a process by which one arranges information into classes, categories, groups, kind or size.

I like to use the process of identifying my ROLES OF IMPORTANCE and creating a numerical order by which I will make choices. That doesn't mean it won't change as time goes by or situations change but that process will become easier to adjust the order once you understand and practice the concept and notice how sorting from the perspective of roles of importance is effective.

For instance, when I was married and raising my daughter, my roles of importance were in this order, mother, wife, business partner, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, social butterfly, student, etc.  Knowing this information allowed me to sort based on what role or responsibility within a role was relevant in each situation. With the simple clarity of my scale of importance or relevance to the information flooding my senses, I did not suffer when making choices. I am not saying that all of the roles I chose weren't important or that I didn't experience conflict from time to time. I am saying keeping perspective of the impact choices have on the order of what I say is important can diminish or eliminate self-sabotage or regret in the long run.

Chances are if I were clear of the order of my roles of importance, I would not make choices that would compromise my values or desires for long-term fulfillment in those roles.

Roles within our roles as far as the responsibilities that go along with them are ever changing. My role of mother today is quite different than my role of mother when my daughter was a small child.

However, we must not forget the promises we have made to ourselves and others. In this world of sorting, it might be necessary to update the spoken and implied promises to the people associated with the changes in your roles of importance. You may find yourself at odds with your shifting identity and your current roles of importance. Staying consistent with your personal truth will have it all work out. You must be willing to let go of who you once were for who you are becoming.

My primary area of life and the roles I consider most important fall in the category of family. Family is first, always has been, always will be. Today, my role as daughter is primary in caring for my aging mother. My roles of significant other, mother, grandmother, entrepreneur, sister, friend, aunt, student of life, social butterfly, etc. fall in line after that. While the order may have changed due to time and circumstance, the area of life that determines the quality of my life is family. For others, it may be career or money or social friendships, etc. None of it is right or wrong. I suggest you find your own areas and roles of importance that work for you.

Whether or not I am totally choosing it or have adopted my programming to make it so is still unfolding. I know the consistent theme in my life is family. When I am consistent with the roles and responsibilities in the area of family, I am fulfilled, peaceful and calm. All other areas of life fall into place once my commitments to family are fulfilled.

You can also further eliminate suffering by releasing the need to do what everyone else is doing or what others need or expect you to do for them to be okay. It might be time to interrupt the agenda of other people when making choices.

It is also quite possible that the expiration date on some of the roles you are playing is way past any relevance or importance in the quality of your life or in regards to your long-term fulfillment.

The order of questions you could ask yourself when making choices are:

• Have I identified the order and my Roles of Importance?
• How does this situation or decision impact the order of my  roles of importance?
• Am I violating or compromising what is really important to me by choosing yes or no?
• What relevant information do I need to make this decision?
• Will this choice impact a prior promise?
• What do I need to know, say or do to stay in alignment with what I have declared important?
• Am I honoring my personal truth?

Then you can go about gathering and sorting the information to ease the process of making choices in alignment with your personal truth, dreams, aspirations and desired quality of life.

To expand on this conversation or other similar conversations, contact me at denise@empoweringpotential.com.