Here’s a question posed by Esko Reinikainen that had me doing a lot thoughtful chin stroking this week.
What is *your* mission? If someone asks you that at any given moment, can you answer it? Do you answer the same thing every time? Or does your answer depend on context, mood, situation? How do you articulate that guiding mission that steers your decisions and charts your course through life?
What is MY mission??? Cue mind blown gif.
Whilst I have some broad ideas and areas of interest, I’m not sure it looks anything like a cohesive plan or mission statement. Certainly not something I’m consciously chipping away at every day. On reflection that’s a strange and slightly startling admission. This in stark contrast to my day job where I’m always marching toward clearly defined goals.
That prompted some thoughts about what I want to achieve personally and professionally, and then how much overlap there was between the two, and then how much of that is being fulfilled currently. In short, things got pretty deep, pretty quick.
As a starting point, Sharon Dale suggested using the Personal Values Assessment tool found here : http://www.valuescentre.com/our-products/products-individuals/personal-values-assessment-pva
This process gets you to identify ten values out of a big list that are important to you. Then you whittle these down to just the top three and examine those in finer detail. Finally you consider how you could further develop these (or different) three values in the future.
I’ve attempted a first run through and got some interesting results that resonated. Whilst it’s not provided definitive answers, it has hinted at a direction for further investigation. And I suppose that’s the point — having the awareness of the things that engage and motivate you, so you can go and do more of them.
Do you know what your mission is?
How did you find it? How do you live it? How often do you review it? Let me know — would be great to hear your thoughts on this!