The Importance of a Mission Statement
in Career Choices
The importance of a mission statement can often be overlooked. Other activities often seem more urgent. Then the challenges in finding your purpose make it easy to skip over. A little time spent in preparation will enable you to be less ‘busy’ and more ‘effective’ in you career and life journeys. When you are travelling somewhere, if you get lost the first instinct is to push on harder until you become ‘un-lost’. In practise this rarely works. The chances are you are just going further in the wrong direction.
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The best approach is to stop look at the map, figure out where you are and how you can get from where you are to your destination. The importance of a mission statement is the same as that of a map: ClarityThe first steps of
writing a mission statement
will bring massive amounts of clarity on who you really are and what you would like to create. This process is like clearing away the fog so you can see the path in front of you. It makes it a lot easier to travel along without crashing into obstacles like trees, lampposts and pedestrians!MotivationDo you ever feel like your career is caught in a massive traffic jam? When things are not moving forward it becomes easy to forget why we are making the journey in the first place. We just sit in the traffic jam and enjoy feeling miserable about our situation. Finding your purpose is a reminder of your destination and what success means for you. This vision will provide the motivation to press on. Decision Making Tool Another option in a traffic jam to get off the road. Sometimes a short-cut may appear seductive in the short-term but would ultimately lead away from your destination. Other times going ‘off-road’ appears to be a hard path to follow, but actually leads very directly to fulfilling your purpose.Like a map, your vision is a great decision-making tool for assessing opportunities. It helps raise your perspective out of present frustrations. By staying focused on your purpose you can look at how different decisions would be fulfilling in the long-term rather than just offering short-term relief. CommunicationWould you like your career to be one long commute to work or the road trip of a lifetime?! A journey is more fun with inspired company. You get to share driving, music, and jokes! To bring people on board, who will support you, it is necessary to clearly communicate your purpose and how you will achieve this. The importance of a mission statement for communication is that it clearly tells people who you are and where you are going. When this vision resonates with someone, they will join your journey. CommitmentWe all think we know what we want out of a career. Success, money, and making a difference are common ones. They are also impossible to fulfil whilst they remain as such vague intentions. Finding life purpose and writing it down requires you to distil and draw out a new awareness of what specifically your purpose is. If you cannot articulate your vision clearly and concisely then you have not fully identified it yet. Through the process of writing you make a mental commitment, and physical reminder of who you are. This is particularly effective if you place it on your wall in clear view. It is a standard you have set for yourself. The importance of a mission statement is that it calls you play big, and makes it hard to play small in life. How much fulfilment your career choices lead to depends on who you are as you make them. Most people respond instinctively to their immediate surroundings. They get busy in an attempt to avoid difficulties and frustrations. They are going nowhere. The importance of a mission statement is empowering you to be effective in making the tough decisions with clarity, motivation, communication and commitment.
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