A few days ago I got to be apart of an amazing training afternoon where I heard some great advice that was imparted that has really stuck with me. I mean it’s days later and I’m still thinking about it so I wanted to share it with you. So what ever you do, don’t let the title throw you off and stay with me till the end. 🙂

When we talk about values, beliefs and mission statements what is it that you think of? For me it’s all business focused. I mean sure as individuals we have our own personal beliefs and values that are generally things we’ve been bought up with or taught at school. And then as adults different scenarios in life cause us to change or add to those values. But when it comes to a mission statement, well that’s always been for big companies and businesses or organisations and other groups. You know, places that had a goal and a corporate mission statement that aligned the people in that group to achieve the goal.

However, in this particular training/workshop an amazing member of our team spoke about discovering and developing your own personal mission statement. It was something that sort of blew my mind a little bit. I mean, why shouldn’t we have our own mission statement in life? If you want to get deep here, the reasons why you do anything in your life whether it’s a job, a hobby, spending time with people, it’s based on the things that you value. In order to discover what your personal mission statement is, you need to think about what your core values are.

Value (noun)
the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.

I feel like this is where things can get a bit complex because working out what you actually value or believe verses what society or people in your life are telling you don’t always synch up. This is where perhaps you need to take an opportunity to do exercises that will help you decipher it for yourself. And there are many different activities and scenarios that you can participate in to achieve this goal. I only had to google ‘write your own mission statement’ and half a dozen varying exercises popped up that aim to achieve this. But for the purpose of this post, I’m just going to talk about the experience I had at this particular training.

Getting nitty and gritty with your values

Our exercise began with a three step process, so bear with me as I attempt to convey my experience with you. To begin, we were to imagine that some where in the future we were at our own funeral. It’s a sad day and a variety of people who have be involved in your life have come to celebrate your life. Come time for your eulogy three people get up to speak on your behalf; a family member, a friend and some who might know you from a club, group or oganisation, etc. Three different people who know you at different levels of intimacy and we were asked ‘what would you want these people to say about you’? Let me say that again; what would you WANT these people to say about you?

Okay, so if it were me I would imagine that the family member is my husband who knows me better then any person on earth; the good, the bad and the ugly. What are the words I would want him to describe my life? The second person is a friend. Well I have a few friends who have known me a long time and have experienced some of my biggest moments in life, what would I want them to say? Finally, let’s go with a coworker, someone who has spent a decent chunk of time working along side me, how would I want them to talk about me?

So I think about it and I consider those relationships and those aspects of my life and for each person I write five to ten words. I actually found it rather challenging! Okay, now that I’m done I circle any words or phrases that have come up multiple time and rank maybe the top 5; these are my core values. A pretty powerful exercise hey! I’ll be honest we didn’t have a lot of time to go through this so I definitely found as I moved through the list different things were popping up that I would have wanted to add to different people and as a result I know I definitely need to spend more then five minutes thinking about it. Something which is evident as it’s days later and here I am writing to you about this experience and still mulling over the entire workshop section. 

Moving along through the workshop, we were then asked (the group) who had put down themself as a value. In a room full of maybe 60 people, one person raised their hand. Who had put down ‘me’ as a value? That’s an odd question! Well, no not really. If you don’t value yourself how is that going to impact all the other aspects of your life? How can you love and have relationships with people if you don’t value you? Why would you want to be happy or achieve success if “you” don’t matter?

As someone with the type of personality that always serves others and personally being really bad at saying ‘no’ to people I care about even when I don’t have the capacity in that moment to do what someone has asked of me, it was a slap in the face. Looking after other people at the cost of not taking care of myself, helps no one.  So if you’re like me and didn’t have yourself as a value, go back and try again.

Alright. Finally you come to the end, you’ve considered and thoughtfully cultivated and developed that group of words, your values. Let’s write a mission statement! Using those group of words develop one to two really powerful sentences that incorporate those values. To help you write it remember to be clear. Be concise and make it easy for you to remember. This statement should be broad enough that you can apply it to a number of areas and scenarios in your life but specific enough that you’re clear about it. A great mission statement, even when you look at corportate ones should inspire and uplift you, it should motivate you to do and achieve better.

Mission statement

You might still be wondering why am I talking about this, why do I care? I guess it’s because I believe as a society we are constantly battling with the concept of making the “right decision”. It’s the underlying tone in our books and movies, we talk about it all the time in the media and I think you’ll find that most times when you have a conversation with someone, at some point in that person’s life everyone has struggled with this concept. But the thing is the “right decision” is different for each individual. And I’m not talking about what’s good and bad like obviously doing something that causes harm to another person is not the decision that’s in play here. I’m talking about how do we decide whether or not a job offer is appropriate for us, maybe you need to look at your relationships. Is a friendship with someone compromising your values and negatively effecting my life? These are the type of things we often struggle with.

The amazing lady who was coaching us through this exercise encouraged us that our mission statement should answer three questions; (1) what is my life about? (2) what do I stand for? (3) what action am I taking to live the life I truly deserve? For me, these are pretty powerful questions and as a person who is about to enter a new and different phase of life, being able to answer these questions and being able to have some kind of measuring tool for decision making is definitely going to make working out what my next move is a lot easier. It’s worth pointing out that the context of this workshop was in relation to personal development through business but I honestly believe that it’s personal development to help you through life itself.

So I hope that this has impacted on you in some way and maybe you’ll be encouraged to think about this in relation to your own life. Also a huge thank you to Annette, the amazing coach that put together this session. I definitely feel impacted for the better from it.

xo

 

Originally posted on https://themimoocollective.wordpress.com