If Not Now, When?

Create a life and career of purpose with a powerful vision, a mission statement and measurable goals

Maureen F. Fitzgerald

• Publisher: CenterPoint Media
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781988072067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

EVERYONE NEEDS A MISSION

Do you live and work with a sense of passion and energy? Do you have a direction that is inspiring and energizing?

People with a clear sense of purpose achieve success by aligning their uniqueness and passion with their work. With abundant energy and a strong sense of purpose and direction, they know exactly where they are going and how to get there. In this book, you will be introduced to a unique new process for creating your own mission for life and work.

You will learn how to:

• Create your personal vision for your life and your work

• Identify your particular uniqueness

• Develop your own mission statement

• Select goals and strategies for fulfilling your mission

• Implement your mission and overcome obstacles

Hear stories of those who have created and are now living their dreams and will walk away with a concrete action plan, including strategies to bring about your mission.

If you want to achieve success professionally or personally—If Not Now, When?

STRATEGY ONE

Creating Your Vision

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first step in designing a mission is to create a vision of where you want to be in the future. Although this sounds like a fairly simple task, it is enormously powerful and can drive all that you do in life and at work. Your vision is the foundation of your mission statement and each of your goals.

A vision is the end result of what you want to have achieved in your life. It is a picture of what your life will look like after you have lived it. It is your ideal life. It is your personal definition of success.

The ideal vision is one that can actually be seen in your mind. Its main purpose is to provide an ultimate goal so that you will know where you want to end up and when you have arrived. Each person’s vision will be different and entirely unique. It will reflect all that you are and all that you want to be. Although your vision will remain with you forever, it will evolve and expand over time.

Visions are useful in another way. In addition to providing your personal picture of success, when you adopt your vision into your consciousness, it will work toward attracting those things necessary to your success. This is called the theory of attraction. In essence it means that once you begin to see yourself as successful, you will begin to act as though you are successful. As a result, people will begin to act differently toward you, and circumstances will arise that support your success.

Vision without action is merely a dream.

Action without vision just passes the time.

Vision with action can change the world.

—Anonymous

As you will see, one beneficial side effect of creating a vision is that much of the negative programming that we have accumulated earlier in life is replaced with a more positive perspective. Assumptions that we might have made that prevented us from being successful are substituted by attitudes of success. These assumptions are the internal programming that impacts every single thought and feeling we have and every action we take. These assumptions enable us to function. Therefore a positive vision can be enormously constructive.

In this chapter you will learn several techniques to help you create your vision as well as the specific form and components of a vision statement.

If you see yourself as being better you will attract to yourself those things requisite to achieving that state. You will attract all that you need. Why are some people successful and others failures? Why are some people negative while others are positive? It has to do with their vision of themselves. You cannot attract money if you have a mind-set of poverty and vice versa. Visions create order to your life.

—Bob Proctor, Born Rich

How to create your vision

Creating a vision involves creating a picture of where you will be when you are “successful.” It involves using your head and your heart, contemplating as well as imagining.

Contemplating involves looking at yourself with a critical eye, asking some very candid questions and demanding honest answers. This happens at an intellectual level. Imagining involves dreaming about possibilities. It means letting go of all your preconceived notions about what is possible and disregarding any thoughts that might prevent you from creating an ideal future for yourself. This happens at an emotional level.

Creating a vision requires spending time alone contemplating and imagining. The ideal situation is to retreat to a quiet location for a solid couple of hours. Try to be totally free from all interruptions and distractions. This will enable you to create a completely new picture of what you want your life to look like.

Creative imagination is not something reserved for the poets, the philosophers and the inventors. It enters into our every act. For imagination sets the goal “picture” which our automatic mechanism works on. We act or fail to act, not because of “will,” as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination. A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment. This is a basic and fundamental law of the mind.

—Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics

It is best to select a comfortable and neutral space. If the space is too closely attached to the pressures of work or home, your creativity may be stifled. Try to limit the impact of any physical, psychological or emotional constraints. You will need some blank paper and a pen or pencil.

In the next section I will introduce the following techniques to help you create a vision statement:

1. Define success

2. Describe your perfect life

3. Write your eulogy

4. Imagine winning a million dollars

5. Visualize future success

If you have time, try them all. The ideas that emerge through the exercises can then be translated into a formal vision statement. The final part of this chapter describes the requirements of a vision and some tips for ensuring that it is useful to you.

Method 1: Your definition of success

Although you may not realize it, we all hold in our minds a definition of what it means to be successful. We know that money and freedom are indicators of success—but what do they really mean, and how much do we need or want?

Although we all share some common ideas about success, upon deeper reflection you will discover that what success might mean to you is not what success might mean to someone else. We each value things in differing degrees. In my workshops we brainstorm what we

mean by success. Hundreds of ideas surface. This is what a typical list might look like:

• having freedom to do what I want;

• having sufficient money;

• being challenged at work;

• continually learning;

• having no external pressures;

• traveling six months of the year;

• having time to relax;

• meaningful friendships;

• health, fitness and energy;

• a life-long partner.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

—Eleanor Roosevelt

Take the time now to list the things that mean success to you. List all your needs, wants, experiences and personal qualities you wish you had. Try to turn off your internal editor for the time being. Just list everything that comes to mind. You can revise the list later.

Success means:

After completing the list, place a small heart next to the ones that you feel are most important. For each item you list, ask you...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: The Power of Mission
• Strategy 1: Creating Your Vision
• Strategy 2: Identifying Your Unique Vessel
• Strategy 3: Developing Your Mission Statement
• Strategy 4: Selecting Your Goals and Strategies
• Strategy 5: Taking Action
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• About the Author