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In this lesson, we will talk about having a powerful why and creating a Personal Mission Statement.
What does why mean in this case?
It basically means a big reason that you are doing what you are doing.
Why are you getting up early and trying to create a powerful morning in the first place? If you don’t have a strong reason. you will sleep in. It’ll be easy to go into all the distractions of the day. You will skip them because you don’t have a deep reason to do them. When you wake up and you face some tiredness or feel the pull of distractions and old habits, it is easy to throw out the plans if you do not have a powerful why.
You need a powerful reason why you want to wake up and
- meditate
- exercise
- write
- be mindful
Why does that matter?
Is it because you want to be a supermodel or because you deeply care about your health? Maybe the deep why is because you want to set a good example for your kids, for your aging parents or for the people in your life you can be an incredible example for. If you can change your life, exercise, and be heathy, maybe others will try to do it too.
Why do you want to meditate? Because it sounds peaceful and nice? When it comes to meditation, it may be a lot harder than that. It might not be so peaceful. It might not be so nice. What happens when you face the discomfort of that?
If you have a deeper why, you will push through that discomfort. It will be because I have a deeper, more powerful reason why.
For me, that deeper why is because
- I want to live my life more consciously.
- I want to take advantage of this life I have been given.
- I want to deeply appreciate the present moment and practice that in my seat.
- I also want to lovingly find compassion for my wife, kids, readers, and all the other people in my life. I want to practice that in meditation so I can have an open heart.
- I want to find gratitude in every moment and be a compassionate person in every life that I touch.
That is a powerful reason. Maybe I fall short of this on a daily basis, but having a powerful reason like that will keep me meditating.
If you want to write a book, do you just want a thing on your bio that says you are an author or is there a deeper reason? A person you want to serve? Someone you want to help or who’s life you want to make better? Maybe if you are writing fiction, you just want to create an incredible story that moves people, inspires them, or makes them feel happier in some way.
If you can change the lives, even in a small way, of 10, 100, or even 1,000 people, how incredible that would be! So that is your powerful reason why you get up early and write. Whatever it is, you need that reason in order to push through and lean into it so you can serve yourself, your loved ones, and the world in a powerful way.
I found that I am more likely to stick to something if my deeper reason includes not only myself, but helping others, serving others.
Wake up and say, “Who am I going to help today?”. It could be your
- kids
- spouse
- family
- team
- coworkers
- customers
- readers
- neighbors
Ask yourself, Who can I serve today? Who can I help?
Personal Mission Statement
With all of that in mind, I challenge you to write a Personal Mission Statement. Maybe you already have one. Maybe you don’t and need to think it through.
Ask yourself:
- What are my values?
- What matters most to me?
- Who do you love?
- Do I care about compassion or making other people’s lives better?
- Do I care about the homeless? Battered women? Educating children?
- What is it that you care about?
- What excites you and you have been researching online?
- What do you read about?
Start writing some of these downs. Maybe you already have meaningful work. Ask what you can do for them and in what way you can change their lives.
Maybe you don’t have anything or are a stay-at-home mom or dad and feel you do not have a deeper purpose in life. Maybe your purpose is to serve the kids you are staying home with. Maybe it is to serve your family. To serve a family member or loved on is an amazing, deep, powerful thing!
Play with this during the course of this month. It can change. Write just a test statement for now. It doesn’t need to be perfect. When you wake in the morning, look at that Personal Mission Statement. See if it fires you up and inspires you. If not, find something that does fire you up. It can be one sentence.
Once you have a personal mission statement, it can fire you up and inform you choices about how you spend the first hour.
What can you do in the first hour to support it? You need to be healthy to serve others. You need mindfulness to bring about change in your life.
Practice using the mission statement in the morning and find one that fires you up and informs your decisions in the first hour.
Be sure to do your weekly check-in.