Stay on Mission
SUMMARY
If you look at your entire life and your reason for doing things — getting up in the morning and being who you need to be — that's what you want to put together as your mission.
Based on my experience, I have noticed that most people are a part of everyone else's mission, and they're subservient to what it is that others want to achieve. The reason why they don't have clarity around their mission is that there is all that noise that disrupts their identity and makes them say:
“I'm not sure what I'm here for because I'm not sure whether I'm good enough to achieve that anyway.”
This week, I want to ignite that fire back within you so you can ask yourself the question “What am I on the planet for?” and have a clear answer or at least be able to ask yourself that question and not have a clear answer, and then do the work to go deeper and work out what's missing that's stopping you from being able to put that mission statement together.
TRANSCRIPT
What are you on the planet for — what is your mission in life?
Wow, that's a pretty full-on question, isn’t it?
And it's one that I’ve definitely had a challenge being able to answer in the past.
So, if you have trouble answering that question, stick with me, because this week I want to help you get your thoughts around it and articulate it with ease.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around intention by helping you to stay on mission.
Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about things like values — what’s most important to you — and being able to use them as a filter to set up your priorities. We've talked about having a vision for the future and clearly being able to see where it is that you are going, which keeps you inspired and motivated so it sustains you when times are tough.
These things all need to be utilised in a mission. I remember when I was in the defence force years ago, whenever we went out to do something, we had a briefing. In that briefing, there was a clear element that said what our mission was. Knowing what our mission was allowed us to know what we had to achieve.
If you look at your entire life and your reason for doing things — getting up in the morning and being who you need to be — that's what you want to put together as your mission.
Based on my experience, I have noticed that most people are a part of everyone else's mission, and they're subservient to what it is that others want to achieve. The reason why they don't have clarity around their mission is that there is all that noise that disrupts their identity and makes them say:
“I'm not sure what I'm here for because I'm not sure whether I'm good enough to achieve that anyway.”
Then, over the years, it gets to the point where those bigger picture purpose statements — the visions and missions they had — tend to fall by the wayside because circumstances have eroded away their passion.
This week, as we finish off this talk around intention, I want to ignite that fire back within you so you can ask yourself the question “What am I on the planet for?” and have a clear answer or at least be able to ask yourself that question and not have a clear answer, and then do the work to go deeper and work out what's missing that's stopping you from being able to put that mission statement together.
Let me be clear thought: This is NOT a mission statement that is written for a company or a marketing statement that says: “We exist to…." and then all these marketing or emotive words are put in there to make you feel good about a certain company. No, it’s not.
What this is about is a plain language statement of reality — of what you feel you are here to do.
In my case, it is: “I’m here to be the best husband and father that I can be so that I can provide leadership in our family. I'm here to support my fellow human beings.”
So, these things are of higher purpose.
Having these, I can look at what I do in my career, and I can have “sub-missions” that lead to my overall life purpose.
I can look at it and go:
“When I'm doing this, am I being a great husband?
“Am I being a great father?”
“Am I supporting my fellow human beings?”
Having this clear picture of why you feel you're on the planet will help you put all these other things together.
Just like what we talked about with our vision statement last week:
Your vision statement needs to be clear and concise. It needs to be in your language palette so that you understand it. You need to be able to read it, and it needs to trigger certain things in you. It needs to sometimes rub you the wrong way and make you go: “I'm not sure if that's in alignment with who I really am.” The reason is so you can tweak and adjust it.
All those things mentioned above are also needed for your mission statement.
Your mission statement needs to be something that can be communicated.
So, when someone asks you what you do, you do not answer them with a statement or an elevator pitch that tells them what you do in your work; it instead tells them who you are.
Your mission statement is a purpose statement that does not necessarily need to be literally spoken out to other people saying: “I am on the planet to...”, but they get a sense of that.
I tell people all the time:
“I’m an ordinary guy with an outstanding wife, five amazing kids, and four exceptional grandkids who's got a passionate urge to help people cut themselves some slack, learn from their experiences, enjoy being who they were created to be in every area of their life.”
When I tell people that, they get a sense of my values.
It tells them that I value family because that's what I talk about first.
That's not what I do; that’s who I am.
These are the things that you need to have in your mission statement.
Although, as I have said, this is not a marketing statement that a company uses, even though a lot of them use “we exist”, too. However, that's really what you want it to articulate. You need to be able to ask yourself: “Why do I exist?”
By doing that and having a higher purpose picture of what you're really there for, you can do these two things:
1. You can use it as a filter to make sure that anything that you are doing is actually contributing to that mission.
2. When you are putting together — things that you want to do and new ideas that you want to put some energy into — you can ask yourself the question: “Is that helping me take a step towards achieving my overall mission and purpose?"
Having this clear mission statement — this understanding of why I'm on the planet — helps me to stop and go back and have a look and see where I'm out of alignment when things are not going so well.
Most of the time, things are not working well and are off track to where it is that my mission says that I'm supposed to be going.
For a lot of people, this is all a little bit ethereal, airy-fairy, or warm and fuzzy, and it’s not something that they're used to doing and, therefore, can be uncomfortable.
Therefore, I want to encourage you to invest some energy in this.
In my case, when I was working on creating my mission statement, I needed some help, and you might need to enlist some help as well so you can have someone to bring it out of you or to talk through the putting together of your mission statement and the idea of why you're here.
The reason is that sometimes that mini-me voice will hold back some of those thoughts so that you don't put them in. Therefore, as you think that your mission might be this, it's pulling you back and going:
“But you aren't good enough to do that."
Whatever you need to do, I want to encourage you to invest some bandwidth in your busy life to get a picture (in your mind's eye) written down so you can read it as many times as you need to in good times and in bad and help you to stay on track.
When you’re working on the mission, there's this sense of achievement, fulfilment and happiness that says:
“I'm getting somewhere; I'm actually achieving on a daily basis what it is that I'm meant to do.”
It helps you to achieve that flow state — a state of Zen that says:
“I'm in alignment.” (Or whatever words you would use to describe that.)
It's a place that I have been out of many times, and it's much more enjoyable to be in alignment with your mission.
Well, that's it for me for another week, join me again next week when we continue the conversation around ourselves, our identity, and our intelligence, by getting back into the second area of Emotional Intelligence, Self- Management. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to walk you through and teach you some strategies to help you manage the response to your emotions, manage your behaviour, and a lot of those wrongly called “soft skills” to help you to lead yourself well.
I'll see you then.
