This guest post was written by my friend Catherine Bruns of www.YourWiseVoice.com

Who are you? As you begin to think about answering that question, you may come up with things like: I’m a mom, I’m a sister, I’m a wife, I’m a business owner, I’m a coach, I’m a runner, I’m a good friend…

You think about the roles you inhabit, but that’s not really WHO you are. Our roles are most definitely important, but we as women often make the error of mistaking our identity with the roles we occupy, the labels we wear.

You are way more than the roles you occupy during your waking hours. And it’s important to know who you are past your roles for several reasons.

1.  Your role may/will go away. Children leave the nest, layoffs happen, businesses close. If you are identifying yourself too heavily in the role of Mom or your job position, then what’s left when that role is no longer there in the same way?

2.  You may not have chosen this role. Sometimes women look around at life and say, ‘How did I get here?’ You may find that you drifted into a role, or perhaps you got thrust into in by a life situation, but it’s not really what you had dreamed for yourself.

3.  You struggle to make choices outside your role. It may be easy to determine what you as Mom or Business Owner would want or choose, but it is likely harder for you to determine what YOU want.

4.  You try to change yourself to fit your environment. When something doesn’t go right, or doesn’t feel right, or isn’t working well, you judge yourself and consider that something is wrong with you, rather than considering that the situation might not be right for you.

And, truthfully, the biggest reason of all is that when you are living only from your role(s), life doesn’t work quite as well. Business doesn’t flow seamlessly, relationships get stuck, and you feel irritated and cranky at the world.

THE SOLUTION

I don’t want you to get rid of your roles. They are necessary and helpful. But I do want you to become ALL of you. I want you to choose to put on and take off your role like it is a sweater. And, I want you to embrace the real you – the one without the role.

And, to do that I’ve created Escape Your Role week.

This week is an opportunity for you to gather a stunning abundance of free resources from expert women who have some great ideas about how to break out of the box of your role and live Life Just Right™.

I want you to be happy. I want you to experience confidence in yourself. I want you to stop living according to others’ expectations and create a life that is just right for you.

Go on over to www.EscapeYourRole.com. I’m excited for you to discover or reconnect with the YOU that is underneath your roles! I hope you are too!

Copyright 2011 Catherine BrunsUsing her education and experience as a psychotherapist and coach, Catherine guides frazzled, frustrated women who want to move from funk to fabulous and enjoy Life Just Right™. You can find Catherine at www.YourWiseVoice.com