Say It and Live It, the wonderful little book I mentioned in my last post, is sitting on my desk right now next to an empty coffee cup, a dozen library books, a roll of paper towels, some mail I've been meaning to open and wires and wires connecting everything to everything else. I've come to two important realizations over this.
1) I really need to clean my desk.
2) I need to write a personal mission statement.
The last time most of us wrote personal mission statements was when we were trying to get into college, when you're young and idealistic and don't understand much of anything at all. I wrote one. It helped me get into The Ohio State University (not to be confused with Harvard, which I believe refers to itself as the Ohio State of the Northeast).
Patricia Jones and Larry Kahaner lay out six foundations that a company must incorporate for a mission statement to work: simplicity, the involvement of many members of the company, an outside perspective, wording that reflects personality, the creative and frequent sharing of it and the willingness to look to the mission statement for guidance.
I want to take this one step further and ask people to apply that to their personal lives.
So many young professionals between 25 and 40 seem to be struggling with the same question - "What do I want to be?" and I think that's the wrong question. What if we changed the conversation from what to whom, and started thinking through the character issues instead of the action steps?
"I want to be an accountant" (or a dentist or a roofer or a magician) is a much more pat answer than "I want to be centered, calm in the storm, functioning within my purpose and making the world more complete." The second answer doesn't fit. The second answer is someone who doesn't want to grow up, or is too young or naive or idealistic.
For someone like me, who values most spreadsheets far more than most people (if for no other reason than because they fit a set of rules), the answer is simply trial and error. Does the whole world annoy you? Try living with unlimited patience. Don't like the fact that you don't have much control over your circumstances? Try starting something new... a book club, a sports team, a chapter of Toastmasters.
I'm constantly encouraged by the fact that my biggest problem is unlimited choice. My mailbox is stuffed with advertisements from local colleges and community centers encouraging me to try something new. The Internet is the gateway to the world, and if navigating it isn't yielding any interesting results, there's always the traditional (gasp) way of talking to friends and asking them about their interests. Try going to high school musicals or a church far from your denomination or whichever appeals to you least between art museums and football games.
My answers have been coming in a variety of sources. I love creativity but also calm. I don't like frenzied much of anything. I love connecting with other people... but also highly value my space. I like nature only in small doses, and have to remind myself to take advantages of the resources offered to me. I also have to draw hard limits against people who want an unlimited amount of anything from me.
My mission is to empower other people to realize their dreams and teach them how to turn them into action plans, working together to eliminate obstacles and distractions.
Learning to think differently will give you a stronger sense of where you feel most at home and what you want your life to be all about.
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