Your mission. Choose to accept it.
Your mission. Choose to accept it.
Do you have a personal mission statement? You might have one without even realizing it. What’s your North Star? Right before something big happens in your life, are there words you whisper to yourself?
To get down to business, get personal
If you lead a business, crystallizing your personal mission statement is an amazing exercise. Because it’s personal, it feels easier than a business mission statement that involves other stakeholders. At the same time, once you have yours, you’ll have a better sense of whether the business mission works. Also - your personal mission is entirely relevant to your work. It guides how you conduct yourself everywhere. And work is a big part of a leader’s everywhere.
On a recent business trip with my partner Susanne I was thinking about this blog and I asked her if she had a person mission statement. She didn’t think so. Full disclosure: She said “thinking about this is making my head hurt.” But I didn’t leave it there, obviously. (#partnerlife.)
Add some sea salt
Susanne’s big thing is her calm sameness. No matter what happens, up or down, she answers the phone for our daily check-ins with the same upbeat voice. Unlike me (whose highs are high and lows are low, according to my ex husband) she’s more constant. Before we were partners, I referred to her as salt of the earth. No bullshit. No games. What you see is what you get. And what you get is essential, accountable character.
It’s fitting that Susanne is obsessed with the beach. What could be more (literally) salt of the earth than that? She will have a beach day in any weather, squeezing one in wherever she can. She loves days at her mom’s summer cottage and trips to the Florida coast. She’s forever looking at waterfront properties and thinking about how she can get more of her life to dovetail with the beach. The beach has so much to do with her life philosophy. It hides nothing. It is what it is. You wake up, look outside and it’s there. There’s no point in fighting it. When it challenges you, you can’t do anything but wait it out. And get back out there when it’s ready for you.
Susanne’s personal mission: Get to the beach. Get to the beach literally, for sure, as much as possible. But also get to the beach state of mind. To know and accept that we can only do so much with forces bigger than we are. To respect the ebbs and flows of work and life. And to enjoy it — to keep her eyes open for the beauty of it. Knowing that any storm will pass. To be as sure as the tides, calming for clients, certain as a wave comes back to shore.
To thine own self be true
My personal mission statement is also very simple: the truth can’t lose. As I think is often the case with the founder of a business, it’s very tied to our HCC mission statement as a business because this is a business that I founded with my whole heart and soul. This mission statement guides my decisions and is something I strive for in my relationships too.
The way it’s written (or spoken) matters. It’s not “authenticity wins” though that’s something I believe. That’s actually our business mission statement. Authentic work is disruptive. It connects. And so it wins in the fight for mindshare. But my personal version — the truth can’t lose — is calming. It says no matter what, Rach, as long as you tell the truth, try and get at essential truths in your work, and live your truth (spend time with people who you genuinely enjoy, honor what’s important to you, don’t waste time on what’s not ) everything will work itself out and there’s nothing you can’t handle.
This is something I think about when I’m faced with any decision. The hardest part sometimes is admitting the truth even to myself. It’s an exercise I keep practicing. To be true to my gut when I look at work. To seek out only with people I genuinely like and respect (not people I think I should meet). To admit when I did something wrong in my relationships (possibly the hardest one of all for this only child).
Having this North Star challenges me and clarifies my decisions. On days when I feel I’ve stumbled, my personal mission gets me back up. So tell me — what’s yours?