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Vision, Mission, Life Purpose: What Are They?

Monday 05/04/2009

I talk a lot about life purpose and vision and mission with people. If those terms are new to you, I attempt to explain my concepts of them in the next few paragraphs.

Your life vision is your picture of what you desire your life to be like. You may already be living it, or it may be 5 or 10 years down the road. For the single person, their life vision may include being married. For a person living in the city, perhaps sending part of the year in the mountains is key to their life vision. For the person passionate about social justice, their life vision may include having wealth to use to feed the poor, or fund education programs for disadvantaged children. For the person passionate about other cultures perhaps their life vision has them living in Spain. Your vision is the picture you carry in your head of what you are working toward.

Your mission is your life’s purpose. It is who you really are. The “thing” all of your talents, gifts and natural qualities prepare you to do. It may be specific, such as being a plein air water colorist, or a public elementary school teacher. Or your mission may be more general such as a passion to teach, to make music, to write, to speak and you offer that gift in many forms. It is the thing where you are able lose yourself for hours on end and feel energized and refreshed. It defines what you stand for.

Defining your vision and mission provides a guide for decisions you make, activities you say yes to. It keeps you on the path that provides the highest meaning for your life. Once you have defined your life vision and mission, it is clear what you are working toward. You can direct your activities to make your vision become your reality.

So if you are unsure of your vision, purpose or mission, think about the value they can bring to your life.

Can Job Loss be an Opportunity for Positive Change?

Monday 04/20/2009

Sometimes losing a job can be a blessing in disguise. That might sound like an insensitive thing for me to write if you are a recent victim of our economy. Reflecting on my 25 years in business, numerous examples come to mind of people I know who have benefited from an unexpected separation. Being let go from a job helped them to see more clearly their dissatisfaction with the work they had been doing or the organization they had been doing it for, and started them on a path to truly discover what they were meant to do – where their true passion lay.

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