Defining Your Personal Aspirations

 

Once you have defined your personal values you need to determine how your life will represent those values. It clarifies what’s important to you providing you with focus to help you design your life, instead of having it designed for you.

There are a lot of people who go to work day-in and day-out, putting in long hours of hard work, who never feel any personal connection with their work, much less any personal reward. They feel dissatisfied, directionless, without purpose. They don’t have all of the elements of their lives working together toward a common purpose.

If you have ever experienced absolute fulfillment and even joy in the middle of a doing something that others might find hard and you feel like saying, “I was made for this,” then you understand what it’s like to function in the space of your life purpose.

When you live your life with a clear purpose, you not only have more fulfillment and passion but you also have the controlling vision you need to make wise choices, and judge important issues in your life.

Your personal mission statement builds on your core values to function like a personal constitution by which you make all decisions for your life. The more you check in with it, the more truly successful you will be in life. This will not be something you write down and stick in a file somewhere. You’ll use it and refer to it often. So write a mission statement that you can remember easily and reference often.

The best mission statement captures an overriding theme already present in your life. It puts down in words what flows out of you as the real passion and purpose of your time on this earth. It describes the cause you will pursue, the wound in individuals or society that you want to heal, the problem you will devote your life to solving. It states the highest, purest, most others-oriented aim of your life.

Keep in mind that your life mission is broader than your business. In fact as you discover your life purpose you may be surprised to find that whatever business you are in now could take on completely new meaning as you find ways to use your business as a vehicle to accomplish your mission. Or you may find that clarity of your life mission will lead you, over time to change how you do business. Or it may lead you to even start a different business that allows you fuller expression of your life purpose. A clear and compelling personal mission statement is more powerful than your present circumstances and more influential than the baggage of your past.

 

The Process of Creating Your Mission Statement

Creating a mission statement is not something you do in an hour. It takes deep thought, careful analysis and often many rewrites to create a final version that will serve you well for years. One of the best ways to get started is to take a half day to a day off by yourself with no distractions to make space to hear your heart and plan your life. Most of us don’t need more information, we just need to make space and time to think and write. Ideally you can take a large block of time to get started on this process then continue to fine tune it over time. It may take several weeks or even months until you think you have a clear, concise, compelling expression of the outcome you want for your life. Even then, you will want to review it regularly and will potentially make minor changes as the years bring additional insights.

Looking Through the Lens of Your Key Roles and Relationships

A good way to begin gaining insight into what you want your life to be about is to look back from the end of your life through the lens of your key roles and relationships. When you examined your personal values you thought about how you want to be remembered by the most important people in your life in terms of the guiding principles that affect how you interact with people — how you live your life. Who you want to be.

Take that a step further now. You’ve already answered the question of how you want to be remembered in terms of character. Now think of the same roles and relationships and ask yourself what you would want the key people in your life to say about what you did in your life — your contributions, achievements, and experiences. What would you want your spouse to say about the contribution your life made? How about your friends? Business associates? Children?

Think about your various roles in life and imagine how you want the important people in those roles to describe their thoughts and feelings about what you have accomplished in your life.

You could start by writing a purpose statement for each of roles you fulfill, such as,

My spouse ⎯ My spouse is the most important person in my life. I will love and cherish my spouse and pursue intimate friendship at all times.

My children ⎯ My children courageously lead generations of people to be devoted friends and sold out followers of Jesus. I will provide them the foundation for fulfillment in life and effectiveness in building a better world.

My friends ⎯ My friends are my devoted support community. I take time to develop meaningful relationships that add value to them and they add value to me.

My business associates ⎯ My business associates look to me for influence and inspire them toward worthwhile dreams and goals. I will always be an example of value based leadership and continual growth.

My God ⎯ My God is the highest priority in my life. I will always seek to more fully experience God more his principles for life success.

My community ⎯ My community is my responsibility to transform with an enduring self-perpetuating legacy. I will develop my family and my business as a platform for improving the world in every way I can.

To help you define your life mission statement, review the purposes phrases you list for each role of your life and look for themes that may inform you of the overarching purpose for your life?

You can also gain helpful insights into your life mission if you think about your heroes. Who has impacted you in the most significant, positive way? Was it a friend? A teacher? A relative? A peer? After you identify your “personal heroes,” list the qualities, accomplishments and values you most admire in them. What does this tell you about what you want people to say about you at the end of your life?

Looking Through the Lens of Your Values, Passions, Abilities and Dreams

The most effective personal mission statements are created by looking through the lens of your values, passions, abilities and dreams. These are the four most clarifying catalysts for defining life purpose.

• Core Values: What kind of person do you want to become? What character traits do you want to possess? What values do you want to be known for? What you want to accomplish in life should be based on the core values you have identified. Make sure the personal values you have identified are the foundation of your personal mission statement.
  • Values are the non negotiable principles that will guide the way you go about living your life mission.
    • For example, if one of the values you are most committed to is bringing hope to the hopeless, your life mission should give you a platform to express that value of bringing hope to some segment of society.

• Passions: What do you care deeply about? What makes your heart sing and what makes it weep? What lights you up and what energizes you? What makes you get off your chair so you can’t sit still anymore? What is wrong with the world that drives you crazy? Passionate discontent can lead you to your place of most meaningful purpose.
  • Your passions help you know where to live out your mission and provide motivation or energy to excel at it. Passion moves us to action in a way that causes us bring all that we have to the cause.
    • For example, if you are passionate about eradicating child abuse then your mission might have something to do with bringing hope to victims of child abuse.

• Abilities: What are you really good at? What do you do that regularly produces good outcomes?
  • Your skills and abilities give you ideas for how you can be most effective in getting something of importance done related to your passions.
    • For example, if you are passionate about eradicating child abuse and you excel in your ability to show compassion, it might indicate that your life purpose has something to do with demonstrating compassion to those who suffer from child abuse. But if instead your primary ability is leadership, then your life mission might have something to do with developing an organization or leading a movement that addresses child abuse.

• Dreams: What do you want to accomplish in your life? What dreams do you want to fulfill? What are the primary outcomes you want by the end of your life?
  • Your dreams of what you would love to accomplish are indicators of the outcomes that would make you feel that your life really counted.
    • Following the example above, if your passion is eradicating child abuse, what specific outcome do you dream about? Do you dream of children being free from hunger or free from sex slavery or free from poverty? Or do you dream of providing and safe, comfortable home for every child?

It can also be insightful to look back over the history of your life and reflect on how the experiences of your life have shaped you and prepared you to make a valuable contribution to this world. Think about life situations that have caused great joy or success as well as those that have cause significant frustration or pain. You might even do a timeline of your life and make note of key milestones, significant people, times of great joy and times of great pain and times you felt you were operating in your “sweet spot”. How might these life experiences prepare you for, or focus you on a worthwhile cause for your life? Maybe you experienced abuse as a child and because of that horrible situation, you have a unique understanding and compassion for abused children that puts you in a better position to address that need in society than others. Or maybe when you were a child, you had an amazing teacher that significantly changed your life for the better. Then you may have a deeper understanding and appreciation for the power of mentoring children than most. Or maybe as you reflect on the timeline of your life you see a recurring pattern of related activities that each made you feel you were in your sweet spot doing what you were meant to do.

In addition to thinking about what’s going on inside you right now and in addition to reflecting on your life experiences, take some time to think about the situations and events taking place around you. Your life mission will obviously take place in the country, the community, the culture and the generation where you live. When your life mission intersects with the deep needs of people and society around you, your life will result in a better world!

Your place of greatest effect is the place where your greatest passions and the world’s biggest problems meet.

 

TAKE ACTION!

Looking Through the Lens of Your Values, Passions, Abilities, and Dreams

 

 

Drafting Your Personal Mission Statement

Once you have thoughtfully looked through the lens of your roles, values, passions, abilities, and dreams. And after you’ve reflected on your life experiences and the needs in your society, you are ready to start drafting your mission statement.

Drafting your mission statement can take many forms. It can start with a bulleted list of statements such as:

• Always put my family first.
• Have balance between family and work.
• Always be honest.
• Respect others.
• Allow myself to make mistakes in order to learn and grow.
• Give back to my community.

Your drafts can range from a single sentence or paragraph to several pages. You might start with a paragraph of sentences that are meaningful to you like:

“I will lead a balanced life, devoting time to family and friends. I will not hold grudges, but will forgive those who wrong me and go on. I will not take myself too seriously, but learn to relax and enjoy life. I will do what I can for those less fortunate than me. I will be the best I can be, devoting full effort to whatever I do.”

Ideally, over time, you will narrow it down to a clear, concise and compelling mission statement that describes what you want to do, who you want to help and the results you want to leave behind at the end of your life.

The following is an example of a clear and concise mission statement that includes the what, who and result.

“To develop and implement a self-perpetuating leadership development system that draws millions of people around the world to fully experience God and his systems for life success.”

WHAT do you want to do? (the action, activity or process you care about and will pursue)

“To develop and implement a self-perpetuating leadership development system”

WHO do you want to help? (what type of person or thing do you most want to leave an impact on?)

“-that draws millions of people around the world”

What is the RESULT? (what value will you create in the world?)

“-to fully experience God and his systems for life success”

TAKE ACTION!

Write Your Personal Mission Statement

 

Defining Your Personal Life Map

The act of writing your personal mission statement is transformational because it causes you to declare your life priorities and intentionally change your behaviors to support what you say is important.

Now that you have written your personal mission statement its time to define the specific steps you’ll take to accomplish your mission and live out your values at this point in your life. You begin that process by defining your personal objectives and the goals required to meet those objectives. If the mission statement declares your life destination, then developing strategic objectives and goals creates the map to get you there.

You will go through four primary steps to develop your personal life map …your strategy to get where you want to go in life:

1. Defining the critical spheres of life in which you want to succeed.
2. Developing your measurements, objectives and goals.
3. Setting your personal action plan.
4. Reviewing your progress.

Defining the Critical Spheres of Your Life

Critical spheres of life are broad areas of your life where exceptional performance is critical to the success your life mission and living out your values. They are the factors most likely to determine the success of your overall life — areas where the failure to perform would harm your life mission or even lead to ultimate failure.

Think of your critical spheres as the vital signs of your life. What should you be watching or measuring right now in order to insure that you will progress toward achieving the vision of your life?

The first step in developing your life map is settling on a set of critical focus areas for your life, because this creates the basis for alignment—getting and keeping your entire life focused on the direction you’ve established. Your critical spheres of life create the broad outline from which you can develop a clear strategy that will keep everything in your life focused on a handful of key priorities. And identifying your critical spheres of life will help you to take the specific next steps and allocate the focus, time and money necessary to ensure that you become a leader who succeeds in life!

You can categorize and label your spheres of life in any way that you believe represents all of the critical focus areas of your life. We recommend that you don’t identify more than five or six categories. The six critical spheres of life that most successful leaders focus on are:

• Physical (Health and other tangibles that are not financial)
• Mental (Knowledge, wisdom, and continual learning)
• Relational (Relationship with others and self)
• Financial (Creation and management of money)
• Spiritual (Relationship with God/higher power)
• Missional (Compelling cause to improve society in one or more of the following realms: business, government, education, arts, media, or family or religion.)

Determining Measurements

Once you settle on the critical areas that require diligent focus in life, you will need to determine what you will measure to evaluate progress in each of these areas. You will need to define specific measurements for each critical sphere of life. These measurements will serve as guideposts to help you develop the objectives and goals that are most likely to produce the desired outcome at this stage of your life. Ten people could identify the exact same critical spheres of life but each end up determining very different measurements for each sphere depending on the unique needs and desired outcomes of each person.

For example, for the critical sphere of Financial, there are several possible ways to measure progress.

Critical Sphere of Life: Financial

Possible Measurement Options:

• Amount of money in savings.
• Amount of residual income from investments.
• Amount of annual earnings.
• Increase in annual earnings.
• Increase in savings.
• Decrease in expenses.
• Amount of giving.
• Number of streams of income.

 

Choosing the right measurement for each critical sphere at this point in your life is a process that forces you to carefully answer the question, “At this stage in the development of my life, how will I define improvement or effectiveness in this critical area?”

Determining the right measurements will also lay a foundation for goal setting and evaluation that will enable you to “manage by fact” rather than simply managing your life by intuition or subjective judgment. By clearly determining what you will measure to gauge your progress in each critical focus area, you will be able to set goals and evaluate results based on facts about your actual effectiveness and actual results. By definition, measurements must be something you can verify, quantify or objectively evaluate, and as a general rule this will require that you are able to take “before measures” – measures taken before the strategy is implemented, and “after measures” – measures taken after the strategy is implemented.

For example, if you decide that the way you will measure progress in your financial sphere right now is by the amount of money you earn from investments, you will need to decide how you can take before and after measurements and when you will do these measurements. Do you have a system to quantify how much money you made on all your investments last year so you can compare that to the amount you make on all your investments at the end of next year? If you aren’t able to effectively take before and after measurements, you may want to choose a different measurement.

The next implementation task will help you determine the right measurement for each of your critical spheres of life.

 

TAKE ACTION!

Defining Your Critical Spheres and Measurements

 

Defining Your Personal Objectives

Objectives and goals are equally important, but have different purposes. Objectives are clear statements of intent — what you want to accomplish in a specific area. Objectives are broader in scope and are used to define long-term desires. They focus on end results. Objectives should be challenging, yet achievable within the resources available to you. They should also be verifiable. Anyone looking at the results should be able to agree that the objective was met or not met.

Your objectives should be realistic and concrete enough to put in writing. They should also be within your control and not dependent on the behavior or actions of others. You should set objectives for each critical sphere of your life that you need to focus on in order to accomplish your life mission and live your personal values.

Take time to develop specific objectives to make your personal life mission a reality. Objectives are the guiding light that will get you from where you are today to where you want to be in each critical area of your life. Objectives help insure that you are making progress toward accomplishing your life mission and living your values. You will want to look at your list of critical spheres of life and identify objectives for each sphere.

Following are some examples of how your objectives relate to your person mission.

• Perhaps your personal mission statement requires you to give priority to quality relationships. Then one of your critical spheres of life would be Relational. To make progress in the relational sphere of your life and ultimately accomplish your life mission, you might need to spend more quality one-on-one time with your spouse.
• If part of your mission statement is to be a good parent, your objective in the relational sphere might be to build a stronger relationship with your kids.
• If part of your mission statement is indicates that you want to live a life filled with inner peace and joy, you might need to spend more time on the spiritual sphere of your life and create an objective to build a meaningful relationship with God.
• If part of your mission statement requires you to be financially successful, you might need to set an objective to increase your net worth.

Now is the time to clearly define what you want now for each sphere of your life and so you can design your business to help you attain your personal aspirations. Often the initial reasons for going into business for yourself are easily met or simply defined. For example, if you just wanted to be your own boss, you succeeded when you opened your doors for business. Or maybe your reasons were more vague. Maybe you wanted to improve your standard of living, but you never defined what that meant. Does it mean owning a new home? Having more disposable income? Spending more quality time with your family? Developing objectives for each sphere of your life will help you clearly define what great performance looks like. It may not be great performance for your business to double your income if it is at the expense of the physical or relational spheres of your life.

A common performance-enhancing technique used by world-class athletes is envisioning a great performance. In the days leading up to their event, they set aside time to daydream. In their dreams they envision themselves running the perfect race or making the perfect throw. This technique capitalizes on a powerful tool: the human mind. Defining your objectives and periodically reviewing them can produce the same beneficial effects for a business owner as a world-class athlete.

If you focus on success in just one or two spheres of life, you will likely create a business and a life that is less than optimal. If you define objectives that help you see what success in each sphere, and plan for your success in all areas, you are much more likely to enjoy abundance and fulfillment in life.

Defining Your Personal Goals

Once you have set broad objectives for each critical sphere of your life, your next step is to set the goals needed to accomplish each of those objectives. Goals are the strategies or tactics you take to achieve your objectives. The number of goals you set for each objective will vary. Set as many as you need to accomplish the objective.

A football team’s desire to win a game is a good analogy to illustrate the difference between objectives and goals. The team’s objective is to win the game. A goal might be to score a touchdown on the team’s first possession of the ball. To score, the team takes action by running a series of plays. At the end of the game, it’s very clear whether or not the team has met its objective. In the same way, you will now establish the goals needed to accomplish each objective. And later on, you will establish the plays or action plans you need to accomplish your goals.

To begin this success habit, it is best to formulate your objectives and goals based on what you can accomplish within approximately a year or less. After you get some “wins” on your personal scoreboard you can begin to also set longer term objectives…like five or ten year objectives. And then you will break those longer term objectives down into annual objectives and goals.

Goals should be measurable in terms of both time and numbers. For instance, rather than a goal to “increase my income as much as possible”, your goal should be specific and measurable: “increase my income from $5000 per month to $10,000 per month.” In fact, every goal you set for your personal and business life should meet the five criteria for SMART goals:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time related

Make sure each goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time related.

Specific goals describe the detailed outcome you want. To simply say “I want to be more healthy”, doesn’t describe the specific outcome you want. Does “more healthy” mean you want to have more energy, more strength, more endurance, or less weight? To say, “I want to loose weight” is more a more specific goal that states the type of outcome or performance you want.

But your goal also needs to be Measurable. What is your measurement criteria for losing weight? Is it loosing 10% of your current weight? Is it releasing a certain percentage of body fat? Is it releasing 10 pounds?

If you just say, “I want to lose weight”, you could succeed at that goal if you weighed a half pound less than you did yesterday. Or if you lost the weight and found it again the next day! To say you want to weigh 10 pounds less is more a bit more measurable. But is that 10 pounds less than your all time high or 10 pounds less than what you weigh now? If you currently weigh 165 pounds and you want to lose 10 pounds, it is a more effective measurement criteria to say “my goal is to weigh 155 pounds”. To achieve goals, you must be able to observe and measure your progress. The easier it is to measure your progress, the easier it is to manage your progress. So if your goal is to move from weighing 165 pounds down to 155 pounds then you can easily measure your progress each time you get on the scale.

Next, make sure your goals are Attainable. Goals should stretch you and challenge you to do your best but at the same time be something that you can realistically achieve. If you said “my goal is to lose 100 pounds”, that may not be attainable. But a 10 or 15 pound goal is probably realistically attainable. And if you do have 100 pounds to lose, you can set and accomplish a new 10 pound goal 10 times!

Your goals need to be Relevant to accomplishing some broader objective, strategy, or vision that you have set. The question here is this. “If I accomplish this goal, is it relevant to accomplishing some larger, more substantial objective or vision in my life?”

I haven’t met many people who have achieved weight loss goals just for the sake of weight loss. But those who succeed usually do so because losing weight is relevant to some larger objective…like having enough energy to play with my kids, or climb a mountain, or compete in some important event. Or or a weight loss goal might be releant to accomplihsing accomplish my vision of being an example of health to my children. So ask yourself, if you accomplish the goal as you have stated it, will it help you achieve your larger objective?

And finally, make sure that your goals have a Timeframe attached to them. This answers the question “by when?” By when will this goal be done? Deadlines help us stay focused and work harder to get something done. A goal without a deadline is just wishful thinking. A goal with a date for a deadline is a compelling force.

Here is another set of guidelines to help you develop effectve SMART goals:

 

• Start with a Verb: start, fund, increase, reduce, improve, deliver, grow, etc.
• Define the specific outcome: what you wish or will work toward to get better at and for whom
• Determine how much: what measurement will you use to determine success.
• Determine by when: time frame for accomplishing the goal

 

You should periodically review your personal objectives and goals and, if necessary, develop new ones. Your life ebbs and flows and change happens. It isn’t enough to set objectives and goals once. Enjoy what you’ve attained, but don’t be satisfied. Always keep something in front of you that draws you to the next level of success.

TAKE ACTION!

Identify Your Personal Objectives and Goals

Setting Your Personal Action Plan

Developing your personal action plan to achieve the objectives and goals you have set is the next step in defining and accomplishing your personal aspirations. Action plans are simply the steps you will take to reach your goals. Without a detailed plan of action, objectives and goals are just good ideas, unlikely to become a reality.

Action plans are like the football plays called by the quarterback in the huddle. A play, when performed correctly, will move your team up the field, ultimately resulting in a touchdown — a major goal toward reaching your objective of winning the game. Like the quarterback, you will allocate resources and develop a support team to accomplish your goals.

There is only one way to make your objectives and goals a reality — set a plan of action and follow it. Most new year’s resolutions never survive beyond the first week or two of the new year because no plan of action is ever put in place to see the goals achieved. Reaching goals takes planning and takes action. Ask yourself the following questions about the goals you have set:

• What actions must I take to achieve the goals I have set?
• When do I want to achieve them?
• What obstacles might I face in trying to achieve them?
• How am I going to overcome these obstacles?

The answers to these questions will prepare you to reach your goals. Your personal action plan may look something like this:

 

Example of Personal Action Plan

Goal: Spend at least one hour each day in some activity with my kids.
Steps to Achievement: 1. Brainstorm with kids different activities they would enjoy. 2. Create an “activity jar” to draw from when everyone can’t agree. 3. Set aside an “activity hour” at the same time each day to commit to and look forward to.
Potential Obstacles:	Overcoming Obstacles:
Business commitments may conflict with activity hour.	Block out activity hour on calendar and consider it a pre-existing appointment that can’t be changed.

 

TAKE ACTION!

Set Your Personal Action Plan

Reviewing Your Progress

How will you know you are progressing toward your goals? A key component of goal setting is identifying how you will measure success. There are specific, quantifiable steps to achieving goals.

Ambiguous goals result in ambiguous results. Consider a person who states that he or she wants to lose 10 pounds in 60 days, but has no clear, measurable steps to achieve the stated goal. Without these steps, it will be difficult to identify success because there are no milestones to measure progress. In the business environment, consider the salesperson who states he or she wants to increase sales by 10%, but has not set specific steps to take and milestones to measure progress along the way. Only what gets measured will improve.

When you set specific and quantifiable goals, the systems to monitor your success should not be difficult to implement. If you have a specific goal that requires a daily action, such as exercising, a worksheet with activity boxes for every day of the month can be used to check off daily progress.

If the goal is paying off your debts or saving a particular amount of money, you can post a thermometer-type chart on the wall with the final goal at the top of the thermometer and milestones marked along the way. Every week or month you can fill in your progress toward the final goal.

You can also set specific deadlines for specific milestones and track those deadlines and milestones on your calendar. You can simply mark on your calendar a day to review your progress toward your goals every quarter.

Whatever method you choose to monitor your success, the key is to keep your goals in front of you and to review them on a regular basis. This way, you always have at the front of your mind what it is that you are working toward.

TAKE ACTION!

Tracking Your Goals