What is YOUR Role?
Level 5: Master Player
Future Guardian,
"Can I give you a piece of unsolicited advice?"
"Of course"
"I say this with all the love. Stop trying to be the savior."
I think I was silent for a whole minute after that.
So few words rippled through the fabric of my memories pinpointing the frame and perspective I had in every relationship both personal and work.
I had to be the savior.
I had to come in like the white knight and make everything better again. To take broken people and systems and turn them into goodness and greatness.
Why?
Maybe I was afraid my presence in working systems, and with working people would break them so working with already broken things meant no risk. Maybe I feared the opposite. And going into something broken gave me the opportunity to show that I was good and right and just, and if it didn't work ... I wouldn't know.
Maybe I was broken. And because we're all mirrors1, trying to fix someone else or something else felt easier than trying to fix myself. If I could see the good I did for them, I must be good also.
That lack of self awareness ... not knowing who I really am and how I best play my own game DID have an impact.
But there was something else I was missing.
One of the greatest mistakes we make in life is likely something most people never fully see.
In order to see this, you must have clarity of yourself. You must be able to look into the mirror and see both yourself fully, as well as the person you are looking at.
To explain this mistake and, instead of experiencing the downside of it, turn it into a strength ...
I must get nerdy.
Real nerdy.
We're going to talk about Magic The Gathering for a moment.
For the uninitiated, Magic the Gathering (or MtG), is a collectible card game which is considered by many to be in the top 10 most complicated games ever created. Considering it was invented by a computer programmer that is not terribly surprising. But the complexity reaches far beyond the intricate nature of the rules themselves.
In many ways the game is similar to chess, but there are layers to MtG which connect far more to the experience of being human (at least in my observation).
In the game of MtG, you square off against an opponent, you each with a 60 card deck of your choice (from a pool of something like 30 thousand unique cards), and you each try to take your starting life total from 20 down to 0. You have resources you use to cast spells, create creatures and armies, and battle against your opponent on the field.
Yes there's far more nuance to it than that, but for this explanation that will suffice.
In this game,
As you square off against your opponent,
There is ALWAYS an Aggressor, and ALWAYS a Defender.
Colloquially in the game this is often talked about as "The Agro" and "The Control."
This is not a dynamic designed by the game, but one which emerges from the nature of the conflict and the complexity therein.
Someone is always the faster, more direct aggressor, and because of this, the other must take on the role of controlling their opponent rather than trying to race them to the finish line of destruction (the slower of the two players will almost always lose the direct race).
This dynamic is unavoidable.
And it just so happens to be that one of the GREATEST mistakes you make in The Game of Magic is to fail to recognize which role you are in.
Those who should more properly take the role of controller but try to be the aggressor will fail, and visa versa. Even when both players fail to recognize their role, the dynamic still produces disastrous results and games are lost which could have easily been won otherwise.
You don't learn this by looking at the rules.
You learn this by experiencing the game over and over and over again (and getting sage advice from those who have come before).
When you misjudge your role in this game, you put yourself at a significant disadvantage.
This example is relatively easy to understand. If the context of the card game Magic The Gathering is a little confusing, just imagine two chess players. One is more aggressive, going for The King as fast as possible, the other chooses instead of also going for The King as fast as possible, instead decides to foil their opponent slowing down their game while positioning themself to win later.
When you assess your role well, you put yourself in a better position to win.
And that makes perfect sense ... in a Finite Game. A game where there is a winner and a loser.
But Life is not Finite.
Life is an Infinite Game2.
Yet throughout your life you will be confronted with similar dynamics and similar situations. You may not even notice. I think it's safe to say, most people are unaware.
This is why I called this the greatest mistake you most likely will never see ...
Because just as in the game of Magic, life is also about Roles.
And more than picking a role, it's about recognizing the role you have ended up in.
One of the nuances of the game of Magic is that the deck of cards you have built for yourself to play may be designed for one role (The Aggressor), but you may be forced to play the other (The Controller) because your opponent fits the aggression role better.
I find in life often people look at the cards they have and think "this is the role I am or should be in"
BUT they fail to recognize that so often in life our roles are determined BY OTHER PEOPLE. Or rather, the other people we interact with reveal the role in which we would be better suited to acknowledge and embrace.
Remember, we're all mirrors.
The Role We're All Familiar With
Let's talk about an OBVIOUS Role. Being a parent.
If you read my article about Mirrors, you'll see I talk about a concept I call "Scrutiny of Emulation."3 This is the dynamic (or one of) which I think exemplifies how that role is not necessarily completely chosen by you but by those around you.
As a parent, I am presented with this role, and this situation where my kids look to me and emulate me. Yes in my situation I deliberately willingly chose to enter the role (but do any of us really know this particular role we are taking on before we are deep into it?).
If I am to live my best self and life with my family, I need to accept and honor that role consciously, recognizing all the different dynamics that role entails.
This may sound obvious ...
But there are certainly plenty of people in the world who call themselves "parent" who don't really fully embrace or honor that role.
Perhaps without fully realizing the dynamics in play which determine how that role is fully defined.
Nevertheless, "Parents" who do not fully embrace and honor "The Role" of "Parent" can end up doing significant harm to themselves and their children.
Certainly those "Parents" who outright reject the role, or fail to acknowledge it altogether cause a lot of damage.
"Parent" is an easy "Role" to understand because we see it and talk about it as such. It's a role/position/dynamic in your life where other people look to you for defining elements of their own life. As a parent have a significant impact on others whether you like it or not, and by the nature of being A Role, how you embrace and interact with being "A Parent" significantly impacts your own life.
That's the nature of A Role.
And as long as you have children who look to you in that position - you cannot escape it. You can ignore it, you can try to run away from it, you can be oblivious to it, but your life and theirs will be impacted one way or another.
Karpman's Obvious Roles
There are some other obvious roles which, being in The Guardian Academy, you may recognize. I'm talking about Karpman's Triangle.
Karpman's dictates that in social relationships people often fall into one of 3 Roles.
The Victim. The Savior. The Prosecutor.
You can read a little more about Karpman's here4.
The Victim role is as it sounds. People play into this by acting like everything else is at fault and responsible for their situation. They actively look for someone else to solve their problem. They say “I’m helpless.”
And that leads into The Savior. This is someone who looks for people who identify as Victims in order to "save" them, often using The Victim for their own gain (whether that's conscious or not).
The Prosecutor is the thing the Victim and The Savior are pitted against. Usually it’s The Savior who will "define" The Prosecutor for The Victim so that The Savior can appear to be saving them from that Prosecutor.
Hopefully you can see,
In the related referential defining of those Roles how each of the Roles in Karpman's depends up the other Roles in order to exist.
The Victim needs The Savior to save them from The Prosecutor, who The Savior defines in order to keep The Victim as someone they can continue to save. The Prosecutor is often only imaginary, but when real, they need The Victim to exploit and The Savior to help them define The Victim.
You can use Karpman's Triangle as a filter for possibly figuring out whether you are stuck in that triad. Do you always blame others and search for solutions to your problems externally? Well, you might be embracing The Role of Victim.
Do you find yourself constantly seeking out others to save? Do you find yourself thinking through solving problems from a perspective of "this person has a problem I'm going to save them from it?" I think The Savior is a common trap for entrepreneurs because we often get into our work in the "problem solving" business, where we see people struggling and want to help. But, that is taking on The Role of Savior.
As far as Prosecutor, I think those who willingly embrace this role are not reading this. However, I think it's possible to be chosen as Prosecutor by other people. When A Victim starts blaming you for all of their problems (likely because The Savior pointed to you as the cause of their problems), how do you respond?
Here's why I'm going through all this with Karpmans ...
Because this particular triad of Roles are an excellent example of roles you don't want to be in, AND roles you can remove yourself from once you are conscious of them.
That's the beauty of Life being an Infinite Game.
Though there are Roles which are inescapable, there are also Roles you can and perhaps should escape from in order to break their negative dynamics. The impact of The Role is ongoing in The Infinite Game (in the case of the Karpman's Triangle, you can't escape other people choosing you as The Villain, but you can avoid playing into it or interacting with it at all).
Hidden Opportunities
Let's talk about Roles which may not be obvious to you, but which can, when revealed, be a choice that you may want to make if it gets you closer to what you want in life5. They may also be a choice you DON'T want to make if The Role takes you further away from what you want in life.
The real power comes in recognizing the role dynamic with which you are being presented. Like in the game of Magic, the state of the cards you have, and the cards around you will present you with opportunities to take on different roles.
I have an opportunity right now. Over the past 2 years, I've been slowly "next best step"ping6 my way closer to my solvable problem. At the beginning of 2023, I adopted a simple mantra. "Be Useful."
This has, in many ways, been a culmination of detaching myself from The Role of Savior, which my mentor Lukas Resheske so kindly shined the light on (as you saw in the beginning of this article). I focused on myself, building self awareness and presence in the moment, figuring out how to play my own game.
I still make a conscious effort to hold awareness of The Savior because I don't want to fall back into that.
But I like to help. There is, I believe, a natural good force in many of us which drives us to help others. And I think I found the purest form of that in "being useful." (Which also came out of the two opposing forces, Valid v Useful)7
Being Useful led to opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise.
And by the end of 2023, I found myself in a position where A New Role presented itself. I didn't plan to take on This Role. It wasn't explicitly part of my Solvable Problem. Perhaps the biggest reason for it is I didn't see that Role as a possibility when I started down this path.
But The Role being presented to me revealed a new dynamic about how we take on Roles authentically.
In this case, The Role I'm talking about is as a Guide/Mentor.
In The Guardian Academy we're wary of Charlatans. Of Gurus who would tell us the way things “should” be and who leverage the dynamics of Karpman's to their greatest advantage (whether consciously or not). Those who intentionally seek out The Role of Guide can easily become Charlatans because in order to intentionally create that dynamic and role, you have to manufacture the defining characteristics of being a Guide ...
That is other people seeing you as such.
And, at least for me, if I approached all this with the intention of putting myself in the position of being a Guide, I'd almost certainly end up dancing with Karpman's Triangle. I'd find Victims who need Saving and leverage their Prosecutor in order to get them to see me as their guide.
Remember, The Role is often defined by others.
But,
I did not seek this out. I sought out being useful. And in this path I discovered others starting to turn to me to learn, to receive guidance on how to improve themselves as copywriter, to live life closer to that which they desire.
And now, I have a choice.
If I ignore this role being presented to me, or walk away from it, that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if embracing the role doesn't get me closer to my Solvable Problem, I would say walking away could be a good thing.
It's possible that ignoring it could be damaging. At least, with respect to the people who have started to look at me in that role. Remember The Two Tyrants of Leadership, Scrutiny and Expectation8. (And my subset of that, Scrutiny of Emulation) Ignoring the role can negatively impact those relationships. BUT, if it's not the right role for me it's perhaps better to walk away and leave that all behind.
However,
The Role presents an opportunity. If it may take me closer to my solvable problem, then NOT embracing The Role can be a mistake. A missed chance to move closer. The more that Role fits how I play my game best9, the more it makes sense for me to take the opportunity of embracing that role as it is presented.
I could sit here, hem and haw at the deck of life I've built for myself around certain expectations, thinking "well I'm supposed to just be a copywriter and do these things."
But life is often a situation where the cards you have made for yourself and the role you are presented don't match up.
You must make a choice.
And it's important, I believe, to either embrace roles like this willingly or reject them willingly. Because especially with this kind of role (being a Guide/Mentor), the risk of lacking intention and self awareness in the present moment is the risk of slipping into the Karpman's roles.
I think often people end up in The Savior because they don't recognize the role of being seen as guide.
Being a guide and a mentor WITHOUT being The Savior is, for lack of a better phrase, the healthiest most useful option for all involved. There are few who do this well. It requires awareness of The Role you inhabit and are presented with. It requires awareness of self. It requires awareness of The Mirrors around you and how people interact with YOU as well.
I think it's quite possible that the only thing which changes within us as we grow, are The Roles we inhabit and which are presented to us.
Life is Changing Roles
I always assumed that when I 'made it', or when I 'figured it all out', I would feel differently.
I assumed at 30 that when I was 40 I would feel older. Aside from the memories and experiences of the past decade (and obvious physical changes), on the inside I feel like I see the world, my experiences, and myself in much the same way.
I assumed when I started focusing on The Path of Mastery that is Copywriting, that at some point when I was doing all the right things and making all the impact, I'd feel and think differently.
But I see the impact I make, and I hear the words of people who say that I am very good at what I do, and I don't feel different about who I am or how it all looks to me.
Objectively, I can see that my knowledge, understanding, and especially experience has evolved. I can see that I make decisions better, and know how to create impact with far more certainty. But I still feel like the same person who looked at copywriting 5 years ago and only just started thinking "well, maybe that's a skill worth focusing on."
I think this is a fundamental human condition, because we all live and experience the world from inside our own selves.
But just as in the Finite Game of Magic The Gathering, I think it's a mistake to only pay attention to what's inside our own selves. We are, after all, creatures built on relationships. Relationships with other people and relationships with the natural and unnatural world around us.
We are also NOT in a Finite Game. Which makes the long term impact of how we are aware of our Roles all the more potent.
We're walking around in a world of funhouse mirrors. When we attain a high level of self awareness we can see who we are, and who others are. The next step is to recognize how we fit in the funhouse, and that comes down to The Roles you embrace, ignore, don't see, or reject.
What is YOUR Role?
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO The Guardian Academy
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I don't want to go too deeply into my personal history, but this article really summed the tough lessons I have learned (well, "attempted" to learn) over the past few years. Excellent.