The problems start at work when we forget we’re playing a role.

Playing a role isn’t the problem. We all play roles every day. I play a different role when I’m doing dinosaur voices with Baby Grundy than I do when I’m sipping a cup of tea with Lauren. I play a different role when I’m nodding along with my boss than I do when I’m sitting opposite a coaching client. None of this means I’m being fake or inauthentic. It just means a different me shows up in a different context. 

In fact, playing a role is what helps us meet the moment.

The more I play the “Dad Role” with Baby Grundy or the “Banker Role” at my desk, the better life seems to go. Funnily enough, “Dad Tom” doesn’t go that well when I’m in a high stakes meeting at work. Nor does “Dad Tom” go as well when I’m half-arsing the role rather than stepping into it fully.

The Corporate System wants you to play a role. 

It wants you to play a role so badly that it will reward you for doing so. It might even promote you into a new role if you play your current role well enough.

But it doesn’t care who’s playing the role. 

Knowing this is liberating. It means you get to be one of the few people who sees the difference between the performance and the person performing. 

Your colleagues might not know this and your boss almost certainly doesn't.

But you can.

And that knowledge (that you’re the actor and not the character) changes everything without anything changing. 

It’s the same desk, the same meetings and the same targets. 

But you know you’re playing a role. 

It's no different to the old poker adage that if you can't spot the fish at the table, you ARE the fish. Only in this case, if you can't see you're playing a role, your role is playing you.

That's when making a mistake becomes an existential crisis. That's when getting a promotion becomes proof you’re worthy of respect. The role has stopped being something you do and has become something you are.

What’s more, when you see you’re playing a role, there’s nothing to prove. You know that your role at work isn’t actually YOU. So you relax. And when you relax, your natural creativity, judgment and wisdom show up. 

So you get better at your role too.

Which means when you really see you're not your job (not as a nice idea but as something you know to be true in your bones), work loses its grip. There’s no system to master or skills to learn. There’s just a natural dropping away from something that was never even you in the first place.

If you'd like to explore this for yourself 1-1, you can find all the info here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

To fulfilment

Tom