what's your mission statement?

As some of you know, I was at a leadership conference recently in KY. So much speaking- but really good. One of the speakers, Chuck Goetschel, who I admire a lot, gave one of the most meaningful talks that weekend. He first listed a bunch of words and told us to circle the six that meant the most to us:

integrity
influence
love
justice
success
spirituality
friendship
truth
authenticity
wisdom
legacy
peace
power
wealth
joy
happiness
recognition
family
career
fame
status
(there may have been a couple more words but I missed them)

Next, he told us to cross out three of the six we circled that don't mean as much. Ones that we could do without more than the other three. Then we ordered the three that were left- 1 being the most important one to us. We then set goals by defining what each of those three remaining words meant to us personally.

This is one way of writing down your life's mission statement. What is most important to you? Most people won't write this down, which is why most people don't fulfill their life's purpose. I hope all of you do this at some point.

It doesn't stop there. We then have to set priorities on the things we do and choices we make daily. Every choice should be bridging the gap from the present to our future destination determined by the goals we wrote down. The way Chuck set priorities was with ABCs. A's are things we absolutely have to do today because it is in line with my mission. B's are things that are somewhat important. There are some consequences if I do not accomplish them today. And C's have no consequences if not accomplished today.

Finally, we have to stay the course. Don't stick with doing the things not in line with your mission. Stephen Covey compares the combination of things that are/are not important and urgent:


1) important/not urgent
2) important/urgent
3) not important/not urgent
4) not important/urgent


Most people stay focused on #4, doing not important, urgent things. We should really should be spending more time focused on #1, doing important, non-urgent things. Of course there will be times when urgent things come up, whether they are important or not, and we can do those. But our main focus should be on what's important.

I encourage you to at least start off and find the words that mean the most to you and define what they personally mean to you. Mine were love, justice, and integrity. If any of you do write those down, please let me know. I'd love to have a conversation with you.