What Is Your Personal Mission?

"Outstanding people have one thing in common:  An absolute sense of mission.”

                                                                                                                                   --Zig Ziglar

This is an email that I wrote back in 2017, the year that I was beginning to transition out of my job and into my own business. 2020 was pretty disruptive for many of us. It might be a good time to review our personal mission statements.

In the chapter on mission statements in the book "Five Most Important Questions." Peter Drucker discusses organizational mission statements thoroughly. While writing this book in 2015, Drucker noticed that not much was written on personal mission statements.

His organization did a large study on the relationship between happiness and meaning with both organizational and personal satisfaction in life. They found that both happiness and meaning are important when creating a personal mission. In this study, happiness is defined as personal enjoyment of the work itself, not just the results. At the high end of the scale, loving what you do creates happiness.

By meaning, Drucker refers to the value that you give to your work. At the high end of the scale, you deeply believe that the results of what you do matter and are important. They also found that individuals have different and unique definitions of happiness and meaning. No one can tell you what makes you happy or what is meaningful to you. These answers come from the heart.

Their research also showed that the only way to have high degrees of satisfaction with life and work was to engage in activities that produce happiness and meaning at the same time.

Does what you do make you happy? Do you believe what you do matters?

What is your mission? Here are some steps to create more satisfaction in your life and work:

1. Create a clear personal mission for yourself. Drucker says it should be short, clear and fit on a t-shirt.
2. Look into your heart and do what really matters to you.
3. Make sure the process of achieving your mission is one that you love. Do what makes you happy.
4. Analyze how you spend your time. Spend the majority of your time doing things that simultaneously bring happiness and meaning.

I love coaching, speaking and training and deeply believe that what I do matters. Last year caused me to look deeper into my priorities...I need a personal mission statement rewrite. Such a statement helps prevent personal "mission drift" just like a mission statement does at any organization.

How about you? Does yours need a rewrite? Or do you have one? If you don't, what do you think about establishing one? If you need help fleshing it out, give me a call.

Thinking,

Jan

Jan McDonald
The John Maxwell Team

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