This week we're going to talk about purpose, mission, and vision and as it leads to an idea of ethos. The way I like to describe vision is, this is your long-term goal. This is out on the horizon. If you have this far-away goal, again, most people, and I usually like to say make it a five-year vision, but I'm okay with a three-year vision. I don't want it any shorter than a three-year vision because I don't feel that's far enough out if we go shorter. Some people will do a seven-year vision. I've had one student that said, "Hey Ron, I want to do a 20-year vision." I don't necessarily recommend that, but well, in his case, it made a lot of sense because he was in the military and he knew that after 20 years of service, he was going to get retirement and then move into the civilian world, so he was trying to set up the next 20 years as his vision of what is it going to look like when I get done, with my military service? I just wanted to at least three years out, I like to use five years personally, but whatever it is that it's a long-term aspiration. That's a good way to look at it. It should be aspirational. Your vision should be, if everything is, I wouldn't say perfect, but everything's going really good. What's my life going to look like in five years? I want that to be a little bit of a stretch. Again, that's where we see the word aspirational, let's shoot big. Let's shoot for something big. Let's not limit our vision, so we want to shoot for something big. Try to keep it in the realm of reality. If you say in five years, I want to be, I don't know, the President United States and you're not even in politics. Maybe that might be a stretch. Or you just graduated from college and you're going to want to be a CEO in five years. That might be a stretch, it could be done, but again, you decide what's realistic and what's not, but try to keep it in the realm of being real. Anyway, so out there and we have this target, that's the best way to think of a vision, as this is my target, this is what I'm shooting for, and this is all going to inform many of the things we do in life, the decisions we make. One of the things I like to say about vision is, if you have a tough decision to make. Some people will come to me and coaching and say, "Hey Ron, I have job A and job B. They both have an offer to me. I don't know which one to take". I say, "Okay, what's your vision?" That's going to be my first question. If they say, "Well, okay my vision is this, this, and this," and then they tell me that, I'll say, "Okay, which one of these jobs do you think is going to bring you closer to that vision?" That could be the answer to your question right there which one to choose. You can do this a lot in life of a hard decisions, forks in the road, go back to your vision. Which one brings you closer? Now I would caution that sometimes we're going to make decisions in life that actually move us away from our vision. Perhaps we take one step backwards, so we can take five steps forward. Sometimes we do that, but again, it's always framed with, is this going to help me get to my long-distance target, which is your vision. That's where you're going to do that in the workbook. The other thing that's closely related, this is a personal mission statement. This is your reason for being, this is your calling. What is your mission in life? That's another way to look at it, and I like these to be simple statements. Don't write four paragraphs of what your mission statement is. It should be quick, easy to remember, and powerful. More on mission statement as we move forward. How do we get there? Again, let's talk about core purpose. Your mission is how will you get there? What are the short-term tactics that are going to get you to move toward your vision. With vision, I like to look at it that's strategy. Vision is strategy, mission is tactics. Again, this is what you expect to find at the end of 3, 5, or 7 years down the road. Again, this is going to be strategic and aspirational. That should help you pick apart the three. Each one is important in its own right. Purpose is going to align you or it keeps you focused on why you exist. Vision aligns you with your goal. Mission empowers you on how you're going to accomplish that. Each of these are going to play off each other. They all, in my humble opinion, should be part of a picture that you need each one of those to get clarity on your life and how you want to lead it. The author of this handy little chart or this little graph is in the back of the slide deck. But notice how we see impact at the top here. We'll talk about impact in a lesson coming up. But identity, we've covered that in a previous lesson. We've talked about purpose. Now we're talking about mission and vision and how all of these are going to build to this idea of, how do I have impact in the world? Again, just hold tight on the concept of impact that's common. Lastly, let me wrap this up. Where are we going with all of this? Well, I want you to create your own: vision, a mission, a purpose statement, and some other things. We're going to define values as well, as we move forward. But what does it all driving to is you're going to have an assignment called your personal ethos assignment. Ethos is the Greek word for character. This is all driving to this idea of what is your character. If different, your character, your ethos is going to be different than mine. It's very personal. I have my own ethos statement, I'm going to have you create yours. A definition is distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution. You're going to see sometimes organizations do this, sometimes you'll hear credo or credo, depending on how you pronounce it. That's very similar to an ethos. But in this case, I want you to develop an ethos for you. How are you going to show up in the world? Your ethos is going to combine those things like vision, mission, values, purpose. Inside that ethos statement, those things are going to come out. And really think of this as a governing document that really gives you a guide on how you're going to show up in the world. Each day when I wake up, my goal is to live my ethos. Again, embedded in my ethos is my value, so when I say ethos, all of that stuff comes along for the ride. But again, we're going to try to do that each and every day. Without that clarity, and you're going to have that clarity as you go through this course. Without that clarity, it's hard to live a life that really measures up to what we want do in life. To be our best selves, we need clarity around what is our ethos. That's what I have for you. Much more to come. I hope you're enjoying the journey so far. I'm excited to share what's coming next. I'll see you there.
