Mission ~ Genius ~ Roles ~ Strategies ~ Goals

Posted on December 13, 2012 by David Ruch, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Mission ~ Genius ~ Roles ~ Strategies ~ Goals ~ Evaluations

The objective of this article is to give you practical steps to help you define and develop an overarching life strategy. This will enable you to experience success in all facets of you life expression. It is not enough to be happy in some of your life. The goal is success and happiness in most of your life.

In order to ensure greater happiness and success it is wise to start with a big picture of what you want your life to be about. What matters to you? What do you most want to accomplish? At the end of your life what will you hope you and others will look back and say was true about you. This expression in relationship to planning is often heard, “If you aim at nothing you are sure to hit it and if you don’t know where you are going any road will get you there.” We are reminded that to fail to plan is in most instances a plan to fail. Of course there are guiding forces that often mysteriously allow us to understand things at just the right time and serendipitous encounters that seem to get us where we need to go so we can learn what we need to learn.

It is a given that our life is influenced by our rational cause/effect choices and all other life encounters we experience. I believe it is also true that we are being pulled to our destiny rather than pushed by our past by forces outside our control and even outside our conscious awareness. Given that we all have the ability to think, reason, judge and choose i think it is a good idea to plan and take ownership for your single life expression.

While I celebrate and believe the universe never throws anything away but uses loss and failure as the foundation for the next phase and as the Philip Philips song says if you get lost you can always be found I still can’t help but coach you to do what you can to be your best. If you could keep yourself from becoming lost why wouldn’t you? Investing the time to plan so as to better know yourself and your life mission is a good thing. If you can improve your chances of success as well as help those who are sure to be lost why wouldn’t you?

Einstein once said the three rules of work are: Out of clutter find simplicity; from discord find harmony; in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. How can we take what is given us and fashion order and planning to make it more meaningful?

The path you take when you begin to define this bigger life definition moves you to think through the stages I have defined here in the rest of this article.

Mission- This is your over arching purpose. What it is you want your life to stand for? What would you like for those who come after you to say about you? I reference the epithet or tombstone imagery to stir creativity in your thinking. How do you want to be remembered?

Genius- A key to a well defined mission we believe is the discovery and mastery of what it is you do. When given the freedom to move naturally into the world what do you naturally gravitate towards as far as values, actions, pace and perspective? We pride ourselves on helping you figure this out using our interview techniques and objective assessment tools.

Roles- To show up in the world progressively always requires defining yourself by the roles you choose to play and sometimes the roles you are forced into by your life circumstances. I think it is wise to take some time to think about your roles such as the role you play as a son or daughter, a husband or wife, a parent, a friend, a citizen or neighbor, a business owner or employee we know that you are going to express yourself 24/7/365 through your roles. Without a focused idealized definition of what each role should look like, life is often lived by happenstance and it is not unusual for some of us to have the experience where we get to the middle and sometimes the end of our lives and realize for example, the roles we played as a parent or sibling never materialized the way we would have hope and dreamed they could have. Our values and convictions are manifested in time and space and time and space is always experienced through the roles we embrace. We like to define the first key role as the role of the self. How you define yourself and maintain your life energy.

Take some time to identify the key roles in your life and ask yourself this question. If I were going to function in this role in an idealized way what are the three to four values and behaviors that would take center stage? This definition of roles then becomes the tool for you to practically plan and live out your best life. Where this is especially important is with business owners. We often think of our primary role in our business as the role we complete everyday to sell the service or deliver the product. This is often only one of many roles in your company that need attention. For every business owner you should be thinking minimally about your role with at least three different hats. Owner, Manager and Technician. Chances are you are not great at all three of these and might need to delegate one or two of these to a consultant or hire someone to fill that position. Partnerships can also be a beneficial way to address the differing skill sets needed.

Strategy- The strategy is the plan or the how you will accomplish the larger mission. What are the key elements of success for you to be happy and successful in your mission lived out through your roles? What are the key performance indicators that need to hold your attention? The strategy provides the structure for setting goals. To do goals on a list may be nothing more than an endless list of stuff to do that does not help you reach the ultimate vision for your life. I often say, quoting the 80/20 principle that only about 2-3 activities you have on your list of 10 are vitally important. The other 7 snuck on your list out of your attempt to please someone else, because of some idiosyncrasy you might have or any number of other motivations.

Be careful not to think you are being successful because you are busy. Action is often the enemy of thought and it takes thinking to be successful. It is easy to think all that you have on your to do list is of equal importance but this is simply not true. Defining your strategy can be some of the toughest work you will do. We often say there are many right answers or right ways to accomplish something. Here you need to link opportunities, possibilities, your genius, skills, a little luck and a plan of attack. Clues to this are often the following. Known best practices, what unique passions or skills you might possess, market opportunities, money, time, keen insights and as we said a little luck. You will want a strategy for each role with some being more elaborate than others, taking time to fully define the roles which are most important to you and a simple sentence or two that spells out the strategy. This is the how and what you will uniquely do that will allow you success in your idealized roles and overall mission. This is a living and breathing document. Your strategy and your goals are measured by the success they bring you. The routine management requires making calculated decisions as you experience failure and success. Some things you will continue to do because they bring you success, others you will swap out for better options.

Goals-These are the tactical time bound activities that are directly related to your strategy. In setting goals each week you will be sorting which of the roles you need to focus on as there might be some roles you play that have little to no activity from week to week. Other roles will have consistent goals each week. Goals should have these 5 characteristics which we use the acrostic SMART to help us remember. S-Specific M-Measurable A-Attainable
R-Relevant T-Time-bound.

Evaluation- Celebration and or Adjustment. Daily, weekly and or monthly your goals must be evaluated to see if they are still correctly connected to your strategy, if you are accomplishing them and if they are making a difference. Be mindful that some goals and strategies take time to get results while other may need only a very short time span before the results reveal to you whether or not they need to be adjusted or tossed aside. Don’t forget to celebrate your successes and calculate your adjustments. Remember to get support and feedback if you get discouraged. Never giving up is the usual adage but be sure to link it to never giving up on the Vision and Mission even as you might at times give up on the strategy or the goals for better ones. Remember, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is called insanity.

Big Fat Happiness is open to exploring these ideas practically and specifically with you as you seek to create and live your best life. Give us a call and let’s have a conversation if we can coach you in any of these initiatives. Thanks for reading…David Ruch