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Focus Your Ultimate Mission with Purpose (4-4)

March 18, 2009 by 12 Comments

“A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.“- James Allen

There simply is no mission without purpose. Without purpose, you are left with a series of misguided, unfocused, lonely, irrational sets of behavior and action that ultimately leads toward nothingness or worse yet oblivion! This may be familiar to some of you as we all have a friend or two that is consistently hopping from job to job or from one deep meaningful relationship to yet another torrid love affair. We all know people that can’t make tough decisions even if their very life depended on it. Don’t get me started on our general sense of societal malaise and obvious lack of creativity. It seems that today’s fast paced high powered world is simply marred with mediocrity; substandard ideas, from mindless people seeking marginal results. If this describes you or someone close to you, don’t get upset, I’m just the messenger! You see without a clear purpose, all of us fall victim to this kind of thinking and we all participate in our own destruction by bringing forward and institutionalizing ideas that put downward pressure on our very society. In my humble opinion, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you are better off doing nothing. I’d rather have you in my way, than on the way to nothing. Besides, there’s a better than average chances that you are not out there by yourself. There’s probably someone that you work with or care about blindly following you off the cliff! [Read more…]

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Mission Tells How Objectives Are To Be Met (3-4)

March 18, 2009 by 17 Comments

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
-Sun Tzu

It’s all about strategy!

In this writing, we hope to help you to clearly understand the mechanics of personal, interpersonal and organizational missions and how they apply to the achievement of real solid goals. If you’ve been following my blog, by now you should realize that there is a subtle distinction between vision and mission. For our purposes here and in my entire VisionQuest90 „¢ system, we consider “vision” a statement of where we are going; then “mission” a statement how we intend to travel. We have to clarify this because these two points are often confused in the popular literature, worst yet in the corporate strategic plans of quite a few major organizations and municipalities. The ideas of vision and mission must exist simultaneously. If not, organizations will not be able to define a rational reason for their existence nor will they be able to garner support along the way. The same is true for interpersonal and family planning.

You see my friends; mission itself actually sets the tone and begins to outline several critically unique ideas, mission: [Read more…]

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Use Mission to Clarify Responsibility in Absolute Terms (2-4)

March 18, 2009 by 18 Comments

“Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the road which lies ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.” – Maya Angelou

I love the quote above for several reasons. It helps us understand and provide a framework for accountability to ourselves. It helps us begin to recognize our basic responsibility to continually make informed choices for everything that we do in life, always with a careful remembrance of our past learning as we establish our future course of action. Even to the extent that our future assumptions are incorrect we must take the required detour onto a new path. It’s also important to be committed to your path but not so over committed that you are inflexible to change when change is obviously necessary. There is a careful balance between passion and goal orientation that must continually be monitored and updated. Yes, you have to plan to plan and keep planning and don’t forget to plan for that which you can’t plan, the unknown. [Read more…]

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Mission is Critical to All Human Endeavors (Mission 1 of 4)

March 18, 2009 by 16 Comments

“A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.” – James Allen

Like the “chicken or the egg” idea, it’s easy to get confused between “mission and vision”. We’ve got a simple and clear answer to this dilemma. Like the chicken and the egg, vision and mission are inextricably linked and individually valuable. It doesn’t really matter which comes first because they both must exist and grow with each other simultaneously. If vision is a statement of where and individual or organization is going then mission is a statement of how they plan to get there. This statement to be effective must answer some essential questions. It must deal with; the recognition of who we are today, why our organization exists, what are the essential responsibilities for which we are willing to be held accountable and who are our major stakeholders and clients? Most importantly it should deal with our objectives and the reasons for them, including the underlying values and principles. [Read more…]

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