Author: Christopher Battles

My Mission Statement

Mission statement

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What is your mission?

It is our chose to choose the mission. Life will always happen, but how we embrace it will make all the difference. With a mission statement we have a general guidance for our day to day which guides our future. It is something that we can use to focus on all parts of life. If we have a “positive attitude” in our statement, then that applies when we are in traffic and at home and at work and when tragedy strikes and when we are with our loved ones. It filters and focuses what we do so we can have a greater impact.

By having a mission statement we routinely look at it and give ourselves a quick check to see if we are where we want to be. As Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, it may serve as “A checkup from the neck up.” It also allows us set our boundaries. In Boundaries: When to Say YES, When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life, by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, they say, “In short, boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out.” They use boundaries as the analogy of fences and gates on our property. Our statement can often quickly let us when a “yes” or “no” is needed.

If you would like to create your own mission statement you can use this free worksheet from Dan Miller’s 48 Days site. You will find a few examples of mission statements in it. I encourage you to look up your favorite business and read their mission statement and see how they follow it.

My Mission Statement:

My mission is to have a positive attitude in everything I do and to unsparingly sprinkle humor into most dishes. I will continue to grow in knowledge and wisdom. I will strive to love others as I would want to be treated and carry unity and truth into scenes. I will be an ear more than a mouth and lend a helping hand or foot to people whenever possible. My actions and words will be aligned to respect God and my family and friends and strangers and my future family and that of generations to come.

I do not see this as my final mission statement. Extra stuff will be sewn into it and parts cut out and ironed out as time goes by. I wanted to get something down so I could take another step with a firming step. If you want to see how I got to this mission statement you can see the foundation blogs for it here:

Thank you for your stalking me. If you would like to be less of a stalker, you can answer the question below.

I love you.

K, bye

What would be one thing in your mission statement?

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Values and Dreams and Passions and Puppets

Mission statement

 

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In my journey at creating a personal mission statement, the next thing is to look at my values and dreams and passions. In 48 Days to the Work You Love, Dan Miller asks his reader to look at the things that we naturally enjoy. “If money were not important, what would you spend your time doing?” He talks about how it could be something we enjoyed as a child and maybe was told that it was “unrealistic or impractical to focus on as a career.”

When going through the book I wrote:

  • Hanging out
  • Talking with people
  • Reading nonfiction books
  • Discussing topics
  • Having communal goals
  • Working with my mind and body (Non sedentary)

Thinking about the words values and dreams and passions a bit more I saw how vast this list could be and how they show a lot about ourselves.  The food I select to put into my body has to do with how I value the quality of food and how I dream to be in a certain shape*  and how passionate I am about that dream.  As the picture shows, I see them as the control paddles for a marionette.  They guide us and as we find balance in our life the strings become less tangled.  Eventually we become a “real boy” like Pinocchio with those values and dreams and passions still there,  but the string are gone.  

It helped me to look at the meaning of value in a dictionary to better distinguish the three paddles.  I noticed some of the things that appeared in What Are Your Skills and Interests? show up below.  The list is in no order of importance, nor is it a complete list. 

  • Truth setting
  • Promoting common sense
  • Business owner
  • Gun user
  • Boater
  • Writer
  • Artist – modern
  • Home owner
  • Teacher
  • Bible
  • Handy man
  • Husband
  • Cook more
  • Camper/hiker
  • Physically fit
  • Property owner
  • God worshiper
  • Debt free life
  • Family cohesiveness
  • Marketing
  • Father
  • Grandfather
  • Showing people they are blessed
  • Ellipsis

*octagonal

Now to combine my skills and abilities along with my personal tendencies with the things I listed here to create a mission statement to better keep my strings from becoming tangled and more balance to be had.

Thank you for participating with me as I release thoughts in my skull.

I love you.

K, bye

What are some things that you would add to this list for yourself?

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What are your personality traits?

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The next step from to forming a personal mission statement is looking at personality traits.  Prior to this I looked at What Are Your Skills and Interests?

In Dan Miller’s 48 Days To The Work You Love he asks to list our personality traits.  If we are social butterfly and enjoy a predictable environment then a computer programmer might now be the best place for you.  I did say might, we can change or create a new an environment so it better suites are personality tendencies.  This is why many things must be examined.  Dan asks to list five words or phrases that describe us.

The words or phrases I put down in no particular order are:

  • Dedicated
  • Passionate
  • Willing to do extra
  • Logical
  • Variety

Thank you.

K, bye

What are your five personality traits?

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What Are Your Skills and Interests?

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Hello friends,

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Knowing our skills and interests is important in knowing ourselves and getting to where we want to be.  If we are not interested in what we are doing and doing things we have skill in, where are we going?  Will we get to the end and wish we had done something else? As Zig Ziglar puts it, “You cannot make it as a wandering generality. You must become a meaningful specific.” To be specific, we need to know our skills and interests.  Start with what we know and care about.  If we care about it, it will have more meaning to us.  It sounds basic because it is basic.  By having skills and interests in it, we can go farther as our passion will be more genuine.

As I mentioned in my blog Attributes of the workplace I want(need)… I mentioned that a business should have there own mission statement.  If I want a place to have one, I should have my own.  At the end of of Dan Miller’s book 48 Days to the Work You Love, he asks you to write out your own mission statement.  To create one I need to know my skills and interests.  Typically when I am asked what interests me,  I have a vague answer.  I will say something such as, “nothing specific, hanging out and talking with my friends.” To think that I have answered in that form, even as of last Saturday, makes me cringe a bit. I shall stand on the sixth step, from Andy Andrews’ The Travelers Gift “I will great this day with a forgiving spirit. I will forgive myself.”

I never played sports or a musical instrument or had any specific hobbies, so I felt I did not have an answer to give.

As I dug around in my skull I found that I do have skills and interests.

Here are some out of the top of that skull:

  • Leadership
  • Chopsticks
  • Books – specifically nonfiction
  • Internet
  • Music
  • Promotion
  • Marketing
  • Coffee
  • The behind the scenes/extras of films/businesses/writing/etc.
  • God and His Son Jesus
  • Chemically hot additives for food
  • Seeing the opposite to see a middle ground
  • Movies
  • Customer service
  • Honesty
  • News that goes deeper than the mainstream
  • Technology
  • Driving
  • Facial hair
  • Marriage
  • Children
  • Design
  • Organizing
  • Talking to people
  • Establishing common sense
  • Smiles
  • Budgeting
  • Operating on cash
  • Podcasts
  • Private sector versus the public sector
  • Healthy eating
  • Morals
  • Helping others
  • …

Making this got me to thinking and learning more about myself and what matters to me.  The next dig will be at personality traits.

Thank you for joining me in this dig.

 

K, bye

Where do your skills and interests show at your work?

 

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Attributes of the workplace I want(need)…

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You wanted a list? You get it here. Actually, I wanted it and I wanted to share and collaborate with you.

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This is the follow-up to Intro to job search list.  When I looked at the title I realized it sounded like that should be the title for a list of the names of businesses.

Here we go.

Note – Page number where I got the ideas from Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches book. (Affiliate link.)

Attributes of the workplace I want(need)…

  • Leadership focused, with everyone being a “team member” (page 3)
  • Service as the core.  Service to customers and team members
  • Passion for what is being done (page 19)
  • Mission statement for the business (page 26)
  • Goal oriented (page 31)
  • Follow the Golden Rule (page 70)
  • No debt and going “all in” is not an option (page 73)
  • Pay meets my needs/wants (page 144)
  • Honesty/integrity (page 175)
  • Family oriented
  • …

This is a quick list.  It is something that I wanted to get a clearer focus.

Some of these things I had before reading EntreLeadership (Affiliate link), but this excellent book along with others has helped in my learning about business.

Thank you for time.

K, bye

What would you add to this list?

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