What Are You Doing Now?

Formulating a Mission Statement

What is a Mission Statement?

Your Values Statement looked at your past.

Your Mission Statement addresses your present life.
Your Vision Statement will address what you wish to do/have/be in the future.

The key question here is:

What are you currently doing, and why are you doing what you do?

 The purpose of a classic Mission Statement is to:

·      Define who you are in terms of body, mind, and soul

·      Identify your distinctive competencies

·      Focus on what you are currently doing

·      Define what resources you have and how they are allocated

            In classic strategic planning there is a question in the Mission Statement that asks: Why does the organization exist. This existential question may be offensive when applied to personal strategic planning, so it is presented here as:

“What is your purpose in life?”

Body, Mind, and Soul

     Using a blank sheet of paper you can now take a deeper journey into the three classic avenues to address “Who am I? in preparation for asking “What am I doing?”

    Body. Write down a brief inventory about your body, that is, what you were given genetically and how you have managed that gift so far. Everybody, even glamorous models, movie stars, or Olympic athletes have likes and dislikes about certain aspects of their body. In addition, society’s views of the ideal body has changed over the ages and in different parts of the world. Your goal now is to define your physical self. If you wish, you can also identify things you would like to change or improve. Later, you will create a plan to make the changes you select. The ultimate goal will be the reasonable improvement and, above all, the acceptance of your evolving body.

    Mind. Use the same approach to complete an inventory of your mind—your mentality and your brains. Write a brief inventory of what you know (your formal and informal education) and what skills you have (what you can do with your education and experiences). Also look at how you use your mind, and how you keep it sharp and up-to-date, as well as how you can keep improving it. When asked why he started to study Greek at the age of 82, Ralph Waldo Emerson responded: “To improve my mind.”

    Soul. Next you can address your soul, including your “psyche” (from Latin psýchê, from Greek psukhê, soul). This will be interesting and challenging, for it includes both your psychology and your spirituality. The latter deals with your views of and relationship with a Supreme Being, if you believe in one, or more than one, perhaps.

The Leadership Pyramid

    The next step is to address your distinct competencies—those things you do well. One way of putting your competencies in perspective is by way of the author’s concept of “The Leadership Pyramid.” Copyright 1996 by Bernhoff Allen Dahl, M.D.

    While this concept was created for individuals in the world of business and professional life, it is also appropriate for your personal life—for, after all, you are the Leader of your life.

     The base of this pyramid also starts with you and your values, and even your persona—the idealized image one wishes to present as distinguished from the real self—asking the question:

Who am I?

     The next level addresses your formal and informal education and training, asking the question:                                        

                                                     What do I know?

     One starts with data, transforms it into useful information, reduces it into knowledge,

and adapts and applies it to life, which results in wisdom.Your knowledge, to be of any practical value, must be transformed, along with the input from experience, into applicable skills. It is said that "Wisdom is knowledge tempered by judgment." This level asks:

What can I do/apply?

     The next level is a bit complex and addresses one’s practices in real life, including one's search for an opportunity to act, as well as risk taking, challenges of the situation, and policies regarding risk tolerance and failure. It asks:

What do I really do?

    The apex of the pyramid is left blank here, for it may be labeled Life (to include all of one’s life), Goal (to deal with a single defined Goal in one’s life), Job (to address a specific employment opportunity), or Task (for dealing with a specific component of a larger project or goal).

 
     At the risk of trying to extract too much from this graphic, the apex could be labeled Love, Sex, Money, Power, etc.

    In order for one to gain the apex, each of the levels must contribute all the necessary components for success. Each level has to be in concert; that is, lined up with all the other levels. The efforts must be in a timely fashion, for opportunity may only knock once. Otherwise the result may be frustration and possibly failure.

     Using a blank sheet of paper you can now address four key issues including:

Distinct Competencies

    This exercise addresses the question of your competencies, which is, “What are you good at?” If you stay the course and revisit this issue, you will be surprised how many skills/competencies you have.

Spending Time

    Here you are asked to address: “What are you currently doing?” While you could look at an “average” day, week, or month, it would probably valuable to look a year in your life and how you spend your time.

Emotions, Energy, and Money

    One way of looking at your resources is by way of the simple acronym TEEM—Time, Energy, Emotions, and Money (including the things that money can buy). Since we have already addressed perhaps the most important resource—time—this exercise deals with your other key resources; namely, emotions, energy, and money.

Purposes

    Last you are asked the existential question: What Is My Purpose In Life?

    Here you can write down your main purpose in life, coupled with other lesser purposes.

The Mission Statement

    Finally, you’ll create your personal Mission Statement. You can draw from all your previous work in these exercise in Optimize Your Life! wherein you learned about yourself.  

     Here you can sum up the most important facets of your current life to date.

Author’s Suggestions

    In the process of creating your Mission Statement, look deep inside yourself to your body, mind, and soul, as well as your formal and informal training, skills and competencies development, and your use of your resources (especially your time, energy, emotions, and money).

    These challenges are best addressed by doing the easy stuff first, then revisiting and updating your statement as many times as you wish in the future. Do not get bogged down in too many details or negative issues, especially on your first pass through this material.

concentrate the mind on

 the present moment.”

                —The Buddha

“Mind what you have learned;

save you, it can.”

                   —Yoda, Jedi Master

©2005 American Author, a division of Cevado Technologies. All rights reserved.