In case you missed it in Part III of this series, we fleshed out our identities and roles. We stopped short then of drafting your mission statement. I find it easier to walk backward from our concrete roles and identities into our abstract values and mission. These are easier to understand and articulate if you’ve thought about how you want them to affect the various spheres of your life and the specific actions you need to take.
I was also delaying, as much as possible, giving you examples of others’ mission statements. That is to not tempt you to copy others. This is about writing YOUR script in alignment with YOUR values. We are blindly accepting the scripts given to us by culture. This is about pushing back and analyzing before accepting and creating your own idiosyncratic creed.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
Friedrich Nietzsche
This mission statement should focus your energies and resources, and prevent distraction by giving you a sense of orientation and purpose. If you draft your own you’ll be more self-directed.
If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ’no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.
David Brooks, The Art of Focus
Now, all that said, here are two short ones from persons you may know:
My mission in life is not not to merely survive but to thrive, to do so with some passion, compassion, humor, and style.
Maya Angelou
I shall
Gandhi
not fear anyone on earth.
fear only God.
not bear ill will toward anyone.
not submit to injustice from anyone.
conquer untruth with truth.
and in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.
And an anonymous one I plagiarized from the inter-webs:
I will…
Anonymous
Be kind and proactive in developing and sustaining connections with family and friends, to be regarded as a successful spouse, father, son, brother, uncle, and friend.
Always behave with integrity and never compromise on honesty.
Intend to approach life with a curious mind.
Take care of my health by frequently exercising, eating healthily, and avoiding anything that may damage my body.
Remember when things get rough, there are so many things for which I am grateful. I will give back to the community through donations and volunteering.
Remember, this doesn’t have to be perfect. Just get started. You can refine and modify it over time—in fact, you should review it daily for at least 30 days, and weekly for 120 days. As previously stated, the process is as important as the product.
Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It doesn’t begin and end with the writing of a personal mission statement. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things.
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Your Grand Strategy
Let’s begin by putting the title at the top: “My Ultimate Strategy,” or something like that. Next a subheading: “Ultimate Purpose.” Then your statement of that. For example, “to actualize my potential in service of my wife, family, friends, and sphere of influence.”
Creed
The next subheading is “Personal Creed.” Here’s where you can flesh out the ‘why’ above with some ‘how’ and ‘what’. Here (at least in mine) you may start to see influences from others. This also begins to seem like your own philosophy. Not only is that okay, but it’s actually the point. A ‘creed’ is essentially a statement of philosophy. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a creed is “a set of beliefs that influences the way you live.” According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a creed is “a system of beliefs, principles, or opinions,” and “any summary of principles or opinions professed or adhered to.”
Note, this is not so specific as to say, “In five years I will…” Those are plans or long-term goals. This instead is deep and wide, meant to guide decisions about goals. It’s not about the ‘what’, it’s about the ‘why’ and some guidance as to the ‘how’. We will address the ‘what’ and ‘how’—goals, commitments, and planning—later in the article.
Character Strengths
The next subtitle or heading I like to list is “Character Strengths.” Here you can list your character strengths from the University of Pennsylvania test. I also write out their definitions as provided at Authentic Happiness.
For example: “Love of Learning—I love learning new things, whether in class or on my own. I have always loved travel, school, reading, and museums—anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.”
My other top character strengths are Gratitude and Compassion, Bravery and Valor, Curiosity and Interest in the World, and Awe.
This list can help me make decisions about what to do monthly, weekly, and even daily. Remember, positive psychologists have proved that people who actualize their character strengths daily are happier at work and play. “Should I take this job?” becomes “Does this opportunity lead to eudaemonia and fulfillment by allowing me to use my character strengths?”
The second advantage to knowing and reviewing this list is seeking opportunities to grow in areas of weakness. To take some proactive steps to improve your character. Using this reference, I can set up “training missions” for improvement or ‘exposures’ for incremental growth.
Maxims & Operating Principles
My next two sub-headings are “Maxims” and “Operating Principles.” Maxims are succinct formulations of a fundamental principle, a condensed proposition of important practical truth, a rule of conduct, or an axiom of practical wisdom.
As previously discussed, principles allow you to live a life consistent with your values—they operationalize your values.
Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that get you what you want in your life. They can be applied again and again in similar situations to help you achieve your goals.
Ray Dalio, Principles of Life and Work
Maxims and Principles then are like time-tested heuristics. You can develop your own, or modify, through experience, those of others. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can be seen as his private spiritual practice of copying and then reformatting the thoughts and teachings of the Stoic Philosopher Epictetus.
My Maxims (principles I found important enough to tattoo on my wrists) are: “Always Be Orienting” and “Prepared and Active.”
The first is a quote from John Boyd, of “OODA Loop” fame. The second is a distillation of Seneca’s wisdom:
Let Fate find us prepared and active. Here is the great soul—the one who surrenders to Fate. The opposite is the weak and degenerate one who struggles with and has a poor regard for the order of the world and seeks to correct the faults of the gods rather than their own.
Seneca, Moral Letters, 107.12
I won’t bore you with my full list of Principles. It’s a list that needs some culling and reformatting, anyway. But for examples, here are a few:
- Internal Locus of Focus–I take “Extreme Ownership.” I focus all of my energy within my spheres of control and influence. I do not concern myself or worry about things over which I have no control.
- Stress is information.
- Growth resist entropy.
- What’s Important Now (WIN)?–detach, observe, and [re]orient, then prioritize and execute.
- Always stay a student.
- I move toward the resistance, out of my comfort zone, as it is on the edges that you will learn and grow.
- I train for hardship and pain.
- I seek the narrow path–the middle way.
Domain Strategies
Now, lastly, under the subtitle “Domain Strategies,” I list high-level strategies for each of the identities of “Self” (or “Energy”), “Vocation” (or “Work”), and “Love” (or “Relationships”). Under the “Self” identity I have an over-arching domain strategy and strategies for each valence (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual).
These can all be drafted much in the same way detailed in Part III. Step one is to block out time for undisturbed deep work. Step two is to ensure you have defined and prioritized your identities and roles. You need to know and define them. This helps to guide long-term, short-term, and even moment-to-moment goals and decisions.
Step three is defining your purpose for each role and identity. Roles tend to be other-focused (relationships and vocation), therefore, as previously mentioned, we also need to establish goals and commitments for ourselves in each valence.
Next, step four, is to look at each identity, role, and life where you have established personal goals and, being brutally honest, define your current reality. Change and growth can only begin with honesty.
In step five, you establish specific action steps—commitments—for each goal.
We will use my Physical Valence as an example: “Train every day with mission-specific purpose, to be strong, durable, and useful. Some commitments are to “program for the year and your ‘Centenarian Decathlon’.” This covers the “Energy” or “Self” identity.
You can’t achieve primary greatness by neglecting yourself—your health, your mind, your emotional and spiritual life. Each of these vital areas of your life needs constant, even daily, renewal. Pushing the lever a bit every day can offset a slow or even catastrophic downward decline in your personal energy and even save your life.
Stephen Covey, Primary Greatness
Now you do the same for your Relationships and Vocation identities. Feel free to flesh these out as much as you want, but remember this is your Grand Strategy. It is meant to provide high-level guidance to your later decisions about daily, weekly, and monthly plans. Think of it this way: the Grand Strategy is the marrow and bone. You’ll add the flesh and muscle later.
My pre-retirement Vocation can serve as an example here. “I am a professional Law Enforcement Officer. I am a scholar, statesman, and guardian. I commit to lifelong learning. I will engage the communities I serve. I will honor my Oath, perform my duties to the best of my ability, and actively pursue my potential. I will prepare to be someone’s hope in their time of need.” I plagiarized this from “VALOR for Blue” after attending their train-the-trainer program.
Note the way the above is formatted. They are first a vision—”Professional Law Enforcement Officer”—defined—”Scholar, Statesman, Guardian”—as I would want people to speak of me at my funeral. Then there are several ‘commitments.’ These commitments are what I believe will achieve the legacy or vision. Why commitments and not goals?
Commitments: the Bridge Between Vision & Goals
Vision is a broad, all-encompassing, and open-ended conceptualization of how you want your life to be ‘in the future’. A vision allows for adaptability as reality changes, applying OODA looping to your personal development, and reorienting with new knowledge of yourself and the environment.
Lacking the deeper meaning found in a vision, goals are specific, measurable, and time-bound objectives a person aims to achieve. They provide a focal point for your resources, actions, and decisions. Goals are more concrete than intentions but are often outcome-based, rather than behavior-based.
While we need goals—we are teleological as Socrates says—there is a psychological phenomenon known as ‘goal lock’. Goal-lock is a self-defeating single-mindedness that can lead to depression and anxiety, even if you do achieve the goal. Stories abound of Olympians having won gold and sunk into the depression of “now what?”
So visions provide purpose and goals provide a target. How do we get from here to there? Commitments. A goal is something you want to do: I want to lose 20 pounds in six months.” A commitment imports that goal, becoming something you have to do.
As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control, and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods. -Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People
“My vision is to lose weight in six months to look and feel good” and “My goal is to exercise every day and lose 20 pounds in six months.” Therefore, “I commit to walking 10,000 steps every day; to doing 100 kettlebell swings and 10 get-ups every day; to doing power yoga every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.” Now, I can’t guarantee those specific commitments will accomplish your vision (you can’t outwork a bad diet), but I think you get my point.
Commitments should describe only a minimal necessary amount of the behavior you want to do in support of your goals. Commitments can be about what you will do or get to do generating a positive emotion. They can also be ‘bright line’ don’t dos. These are most helpful in the face of peer pressure: “I don’t drink alcohol on work nights,” or “I don’t eat that.” These types of commitments make it easier to act in accordance with your identity, vision, and goals.
A last word about commitments. ‘Commitment devices’ are any techniques that help people commit to a behavior. These could include contracts or pledges, and even accountability buddies. From the study of human behavior and habits, we also have “Odysseus Contracts,” aka “pre-commitments.”
The Odysseus Contract is a commitment device that allows us to make a choice in the present that binds us to an action or a decision in the future. A simple example is sometimes referred to as using your willpower on offense, rather than defense. That is, don’t buy junk food at the store, and then you won’t have it on hand at the house when your willpower is weak.
Now you have a complete first draft. Therefore it’s time for the final and most important step: Evaluation and editing. Stephen Covey offers a series of questions well suited to this evaluation process:
1) Is my mission based on timeless, proven principles? Which ones?
Stephen Covey, Primary Greatness
2) Do I feel this represents the best that is within me?
3) During my best moments, do I feel good about what this represents?
4) Do I feel direction, purpose, challenge, and motivation when I review this statement?
5) Am I aware of the strategies and skills that will help me accomplish what I have written?
6) What do I need to start doing now to be where I want to be tomorrow?
7) Does this statement inspire me?
If this is your first time drafting a mission statement or grand strategy, I’d recommend visiting this evaluation and editing process every day for at least 30 days. When we start talking about ‘personal management’, you will learn the benefit of reviewing this once a week as part of your weekly review and planning. That’s for making sure your weekly plans are in alignment. The first thirty days are for embedding the Ultimate Mission and Grand Strategy into your psyche.
I’d also suggest having this “ready at hand”—in your phone or a pocket notebook—so you can refer to it in the moment of decision-making.
And that completes the first half of this series. In parts I through IV we covered Personal Leadership. Stay tuned for further installments where we will shit to Personal Management.
