Creating Your Mission, Vision, and Values

What I want life to feel like much of the time...

Hello, dear friends! In this week's post, I'm giving you homework...but don't be frightened off by that. Because this is the kind of homework that could change your life. No, really. Ready yourself.

Okay, so here's where you're about to see evidence of my former life in the corporate world. If you have ever worked in the land of corporations or business consulting, then you are likely super familiar with the terms Mission, Vision, and Values when it comes to businesses (usually all lumped together like it's one word: missionvisionvalues). Most companies and brands and nonprofits have mission, vision, and values statements. For some organizations, these truly drive the business decisions and the corporate cultures...for others, they're more window-dressing and lip-service. But when they're used properly, they can be an excellent tool for drawing the map and driving the bus, for organizing ideas, and for making decisions...and that's true not only for organizations; it's true for individuals (like you!), too.

So today, I'm going to try to convince you that YOU should have a mission statement, a life vision, and a list of values; and that these missionvisionvalues should drive your life decisions: how you spend your time each day, how you define and go after your goals, what you worry about and what you don't. Whether or not you print it out and hang it on the wall, is up to you; but just going through the process of thinking it through-- all the way through-- can be enough to open your eyes to things in your life that don't line up with what's really important to you.

At least that's what I've found.

It started with a conversation a while back with my therapist about how much I value productivity and accomplishment, how ingrained the desire and need for those things were in my daily life. Then that same topic--productivity and accomplishment-- showed up in a book I was reading, Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist. And I made the realization that those things, that productivity and accomplishment, weren't actually things that I valued. Yet so much of my day was driven by those two things.

And I kind of freaked out, internally, when I realized this. How could so much of my daily life be dictated by something that wasn't even truly important to me? That seemed like an epic failure.

So, after the panic attack faded, I was left with the question: What do I value? What is important to me? What should be driving my daily life? If not productivity and accomplishment, then what? I know that seems like a crazy question to ask. I mean, of course I know what's important to me. But have I ever really spelled it out? No. Have I ever taken the time to measure my day against what's really important to me? No. All I knew, was that things felt out of whack.

Enter: Mission, Vision, Values.

I've thought about going through this process for a while, years actually, but this year was the first time that I actually sat down and, over the course of a couple of weeks, worked out what my mission and vision are for my life, and what the things are that I value most. And now I'm working on making my daily life reflect those things.

Here's what I did...

I think values is a good place to start. Values are the foundation for everything. There are all kinds of values lists online and in books. (Here's one of the lists I used: https://scottjeffrey.com/core-values-list/) So, I searched for some lists and simply wrote down any words that spoke to me. After that, I looked for themes and repetition on that list to really hone in on what was most important. This is what my list looked like:

The values that rose to the top for me, the ones that I made certain to include in my mission statement, were grace, kindness, joy, love, gratitude, and abundance. (You may notice that none of these are even akin to productivity and accomplishment. Yeah, that point wasn't lost on me.)

Once I had that, I went back online and searched for personal mission statements and read other people's to get some ideas. I even read through some company mission statements. And I read a lot on how to go about developing a mission statement.

Here are some of the questions I used to get the ideas flowing:

- What do I value most?
- What makes me happy?
- What do I like to share with others?
- What's the reason I exist?
- What do I hope to achieve in life that would bring me the most satisfaction?
- What am I good at?
- What must I have in my life feel fulfilled?

I took my list of values, combined like ideas, and then pulled out the most important ones. Then I took the 5-10 core values and used my answers to the above questions to link everything together into a statement.

I decided to come up with a sort of "complete, long version mission statement" and then a short version that would be easy to repeat to myself each day-- something I could use as that measuring stick when making decisions. I played around with it a little bit, but I tried not to get too caught up in editing it, as long as the sentiment was right. The long version looks like this:

The essence of it, my daily measuring stick, is this:

I will find joy, give grace, and feel gratitude while living a creative, fun, healthy, and mindful life.

So when I start to worry about getting every little thing on my to-do list done, I stop and think, is this in line with my mission? When I think about skipping my workout, I think, is working out in line with my mission? When I consider avoiding my writing by doing busywork or Facebook, I think, where's my mission? I'm finding that if I'm freaking out about something, if I'm feeling overwhelmed, what I'm doing is likely not in line with my mission. My mission stuff doesn't freak me out, not like that anyway.

A while back I started work on a vision board. I haven't finished it, but this gives you an idea of what it is. This is a fun, rather therapeutic, activity...even something you can do with your kids. You can search old magazines, you can find pictures online and print them, you can create a virtual board. (I'm planning to build another one on Pinterest.) The exercise of building a vision board for your life (or for a specific project or endeavor) has two main gifts to give you: 1) Just the act of doing it-- of looking for and finding pictures and words that capture your vision-- feeds that vision. It switches your brain from looking at what you currently have- or worse, don't have- and focuses it on where you want to be. And it helps clarify the details of what you really want. 2) It gives you something concrete to look at every day as a reminder of where you are headed. It's a reminder of what's really important to you. If your whole vision board is filled with pictures of a beach house, but in order to get that beach house, you need to save $50,000; and you look at those pictures on your vision board everyday; you just might rethink that Amazon order you're about to put through, or that Starbucks you're thinking about stopping for on the way to work. That money could go toward your vision instead.

Hang it on the fridge. Pin it to the board over your desk. Tape it to the wall by the sink in your bathroom so you stare at when you brush your teeth.

Same with your mission statement and your list of values. Hang them up. Look at the every day. These are the things that you want to fill your brain space with. These are the things that you want drawing your map, driving your bus, organizing your ideas, and guiding your decisions.

When I'm in a panic about getting all the daily shit done that comes with life, I can look at my vision board and clearly see that none of it is on there. What's on there is daydreaming, reading, writing, sleeping...love, joy, gratitude....friends, family, mentors...transforming the world. All that random shit I need to get done? It ain't transforming the world. Sure, I need to do it at some point, but it doesn't deserve my stress. I'm too busy giving grace and finding joy to be worried about that stuff.

So, here's what's changed since I did this: everything. I know that sounds like a massive over-statement. And in a way it is, but also, it isn't. Because from the outside I doubt my life looks all that different. But on the inside, it really, really is. I feel like I'm looking at everything differently. I really do measure my days against my mission now. And they're getting closer and closer to alignment.

Until next time, ask yourself...What do I value most? What makes me happy? Why am I here? And let the answers to those questions steer your ship.