You’re on a mission! (right?) If you haven’t set aside a few minutes to work up a first draft of a mission statement, find direction in the last article. In this article, we’ll look into generating key characteristics and critical actions, two pieces of the personal story pitch puzzle.
In the following we’ll explore the key characteristics you need to aspire to and critical actions you need to take in order to fulfill your mission. Having a mission statement, and knowing what we need to do to in order to achieve that mission daily, helps us live our lives on purpose. Life becomes more meaningful. Give it a try and let me know if you agree.
Key Characteristics
If someone else were to carry out your mission, what kind of person would they need to be? How would you describe them? That is, what are the key characteristics needed to support the mission? These are the characteristics you’ll need to aspire to in order to fulfill the mission. You may come up with a large list of characteristics, but for our purposes we want to whittle it down to the top three.
These characteristics can be aspirational, and probably will be. We don’t need to possess these characteristics right now. What we do need right now is a desire to gain the skills, the mindset, or the habit that will lead us to be known for the characteristics we’ve identified.
Let’s say one characteristic we’ve identified to help us on our mission is being a continuous learner. Let’s also say that our current habit is to come home from work, get something for dinner, and then binge on Netflix.
Unless the Netflix you’re watching is contributing to your required characteristic of continuous learning, this habit may need to change in order for you to make room for a new habit. It’s a sacrifice, isn’t it? Our current Netflix habit is comfortable, and probably entertaining. But it may not be the tool we need to accompany us on our journey to accomplish our mission.
Critical Actions
How we use our time
Examine each key characteristic you’ve listed. Ask yourself what needs to be true to close the gap between your current character and your aspirational character. What needs to change in your daily routine? If you substitute reading a book, attending a webinar, or listening to a podcast for watching Netflix three days a week, you’re on your way to being able to identify yourself as a continuous learner.
How we use our minds
Our key characteristic may not require us to use our time differently. It may require us to use our mind differently. Let’s say one of our key characteristics is to become more engaged with people in our field. Our goal is to learn from others to better our technical acumen. One problem. We’re not comfortable with people we don’t know, and the thought of reaching out to “strangers” is intimidating and maybe terrifying.
We need to commit to building our courage muscles, a little at a time, to become the person who doesn’t fear reaching out to new people (or more likely, has fear and does it anyway) . This might require the support of a friend, or some research to find an appropriate group to engage with. You can see there may be one or more critical actions brewing to support this identified key characteristic.
How we use our habits
Our key characteristic may require tweaking an already established habit. Let’s say we want to get stronger and build muscle mass. We already go to the gym several days a week and focus on cardio, like running. Perhaps we could tweak this habit so on alternate visits we do strength training. We may also want to reach out to a personal training for help with putting a strength-building plan together.
Armed with your mission statement, three key characteristics and three critical actions, you’re ready to identify themes and to craft your personal story pitch. With the themes and story pitch, we’ll not only find what makes for a meaningful life, but we’ll be able to communicate to others in an interesting way that will allow them to genuinely and enthusiastically support us and our mission.
tl;dr
Identifying 3 key characteristics and 3 critical actions needed to support your mission that you documented in the last post on creating a mission statement will help you to fulfill that mission.
The characteristics are likely to be aspirational, and the critical actions are actions you must take to become the person described by your key characteristics.
engineer your life
Take a few minutes to write down characteristics of a person on your mission. Select three key characteristics. Then list the actions you need to take to support becoming the person with those characteristics.
