Always have a mission — you’ll never feel lost
I recently published a Medium article, at the beginning of September, outlining key life lessons I learned in my 20s and 30s, writing from the perspective of having turned 40 this calendar year.
In the article, I chose to identify 10 life lessons, and the 10th lesson — about always striving to live a mission-oriented life — really resonated with a lot of people and is something I want to follow up on and amplify.
ALWAYS HAVE A MISSION!
I am struck by how many people I speak to daily who are desperately struggling with happiness, hope and optimism.
I also can get on the low end of these vibrational feelings, from time to time.
Let’s just say it’s been a weird last three years for all of us.
However, I have found, over the course of my life, that I am most prone to experiencing these feelings of aimlessness and inertia when I am not pushing towards an overarching set of goals and objectives — a mission.
I have seen Lack of Mission destroy many, many people, literally engulfing them in existential flames and causing them to fall deeper and deeper into the depths of despair.
I have also seen the opposite — when you have learned the lesson of Mission, I liken it to having a pair of wings — a jetpack all fuelled up ready to take you to the moon.
Having a Mission doesn’t make you impervious to peril or danger — but its the key to what fuels so many entrepreneurs and allows them to wake up the next day, and the next day, and the next day.
As some wise person said to me years ago, having a sense of mission allows an entrepreneur to almost giddily leap from failure to failure, until one day success is found.
Always have a mission
For the last 15 years, I have religiously kept a vision board and “mission map” — a general roadmap of major and minor goals, dreams and objectives for my life.
I have had great successes. I have founded and exited several businesses in my career.
I have also had countless failures, painful missteps that make me chuckle to myself in my private moments, shaking my head at how things could have gone so comedically wrong.
But through and through — there is always a mission I’m working towards.
There is always a blueprint, a list of goals and objectives and actionables.
I have found that during periods when I’m journaling less or not committing to writing these lists out, when I’m not putting pen to paper and outlining a one-year or 18-month or even 5 year plan — my mental health begins to feel like it’s fraying.
Your missions can change or be amended — your values and the things you hold important will change over the course of your 20s and 30s.
At some point you may even have the experience of looking at your vision board and questioning whether these are things you really want — or whether they are merely things that society has programmed you over time to think that you want.
But don’t be fooled into giving up the practice. Your life will improve exponentially for it.
If you fail to plan — you plan to fail.
So cliche, right?
I’m not perfect. I have hundreds of projects and products and workflows and thoughts and ideas that I have failed at, not succeeded at.
But invariably, I have learned there is an incredible power that comes with being intentional about mission.
Now What?
Literally take out a piece of paper right now, or open a note on your phone, and write the word MISSION in bold at the top of the page.
Write your 3-month, 6-month, 1-year and 3-year goals down.
Map out the tactics of how you will go about achieving them.
Return to this piece of paper on a weekly and monthly basis, re-internalize what you wrote, and make amendments and adjustments where needed.
Think of this as a WIP document, a living, guiding document that will always be with you.
The key is to actually return, to come back to this document — not to write it out and forget about it.
Take your mission seriously.
Literally envision your visions. Be intentional.
There is something about intentionality and the energy involved in that intentionality that has deeply impacted me over the years, guiding my life and allowing me to deal with those peaks and valleys of hope and optimism.
TLDR
If you’re feeling stuck, if you’re feeling lost, if you’re feeling that sense of nihilism creeping in — get incredibly intentional about creating an overarching ‘life mission’ document that can help you guide your life in the direction of your dreams.
