Seven habits of highly effective people - Stephen R. Covey [60]
Writing your mission in terms of the important roles in your life gives you balance and harmony. It keeps each role clearly before you. You can review your roles frequently to make sure that you don't get totally absorbed by one role to the exclusion of others that are equally or even more important in your life.
After you identify your various roles, then you can think about the Long Term Goals are plans you make that support the principles described in your Mission Statement. These goals should represent areas you want to focus on in the near future. Typically, Long Term Goals take longer than a week to complete, but are most specific than the lifetime goals of your Mission Statement.long-term goals you want to accomplish in each of those roles. We're into the right brain again, using imagination, creativity, conscience, and inspiration. If these goals are the extension of a mission statement based on correct principles, they will be vitally different from the goals people normally set. They will be in harmony with correct principles, with natural laws, which gives you greater power to achieve them. They are not someone else's goals you have absorbed. They are your goals. They reflect your deepest values, your unique talent, your sense of mission. And they grow out of your chosen roles in life. An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It gives meaning and purpose to all you do. And it can finally translate itself into daily activities so that you are proactive, you are in charge of your life, you are making happen each day the things that will enable you to fulfill your personal mission statement.
Roles and goals give structure and organized direction to your personal mission. If you don't yet have a personal mission statement, it's a good place to begin. Just identifying the various areas of your life and the two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each area to move ahead gives you an overall perspective of your life and a sense of direction. As we move into Habit 3, we'll go into greater depth in the area of short-term goals. The important application at this point is to identify roles and long-term goals as they relate to your personal mission statement. These roles and long-term goals will provide the foundation for effective goal setting and achieving when we get to the Habit 3 day-to-day management of life and time.
Family Mission Statements
Because Habit 2 is based on principle, it has broad application. In addition to individuals, families, service groups, and organizations of all kinds become significantly more effective as they Begin with the End in Mind.
Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification --not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight.
The core of any family is what is changeless, what is always going to be there --shared vision and values. By writing a family mission statement, you give expression to its true foundation.
This mission statement becomes its constitution, the standard, the criterion for evaluation and decision making. It gives continuity and unity to the family as well as direction. When individual values are harmonized with those of the family, members work together for common purposes that are deeply felt.
Again, the process is as important