Driving in fog[1]
Imagine you are driving at night in the middle of winter. You’re going down a freeway at 65 miles an hour when all of a sudden you drive into a thick fog.
How do you feel the minute you realize you can’t see more than 15 or 20 feet in front of you? Your initial response is probably a bit of panic. Most likely your foot immediately moved to the brake, and you slowed down.
You drive slowly as you don’t want to run into someone who has stopped or is going slower than you are. You are worried about someone running into you.
Then all of a sudden, the fog gets much thinker. Now you can only see 5 feet in front of you. You probably roll down the window and try to follow the lines on the highway. You are afraid to stop for fear someone will hit you, but it is impossible to go faster and not run off the road or into another vehicle. You can barely move forward – it is like you are driving with a blindfold over your eyes.
Then you start to emerge from the fog. Now you can see four, then six then ten lines in front of you. Now you can see the next turn in the road and then you break totally out of the fog and can see 200 yards in front and behind you.
What is your emotional response when you can clearly see?
You probably have a great sigh of relief and an easing of your muscles. Your foot moves off the brake and back onto the gas pedal. You pick up speed. Your hands stop sweating, you put your arm back on the armrest, you turn the radio back on and find yourself relaxing again.
The only thing that changed was your vision. To live your life without a mission/vision is like going through life in a fog.
“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller
A personal mission statement is “a brief written expression of your overall purpose in like.”
For this exercise we will use the words mission and vision and purpose as synonyms. Use whichever word is most comfortable to you.
[1] Adapted from What Matters Most: The Power of Living Your Values. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Page 106-107
Download the exercise here == Insight 3 mission
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