Mission Driven
Long Term Success Comes From Serving Others
The most famous, highly functioning people throughout history had one thing in common – they were passionate about their work. This kind of drive comes from a place outside one’s self. It comes from a need to serve others.
Living life as if you were on a mission is the most direct and thorough route to true wealth.
Just as money is neither good nor bad without the context in which it is viewed, your life won’t have meaning unless a context is clearly set. Not-for profits, restaurant chains, and businesses of all sorts often have their mission statement posted where anyone can read it.
Do you know what your mission is?
If you are not sure, don’t worry, everyone has a mission. But it often gets buried early on by fears, doubts, expectations of others and a need for approval. If you enjoy your career but aren’t sure if it’s your mission, take a look at what you find yourself doing in your free time, whether you are paid for it or not.
Your mission will be the one thing you have a burning desire to do.
Like an internal compass, it will point you towards the right direction.
Mission Driven beings are not content to just be good at something. They must use their talents in service of others. This context moves them to learn more about what they do, eventually propelling them to the highest levels of achievement in their given field.
It doesn’t matter if they are dentists, sales people or teachers,
creating value for others is their ultimate goal.
Andrew Rosenbaum writes in his book, The Wealth Swing Coach, “If you study the great value-producers throughout history, you’ll see that the only true wealth producing assets in this world are:
1. Service
2. Wisdom
3. Labor (or the work you are passionate about doing).”
In doing the work you enjoy with an aim of service to others, you will gain both wisdom and prosperity. Because these three qualities combine to provide enormous value to other people, they can’t help but bring more dollars to your bank account. But here’s the catch:
As a Mission Driven being, you must learn to practice the art of non-attachment.
In other words, your happiness on any give day – and this includes your self-esteem, your mood, your cheerfulness – mut not be attached to getting what you want. If it were easy, more of us would be doing it! But it is possible, and I hope the following tips will be of some help.
1. Replace Goals with Preferences
When operating from the lower modes of fear, desire, and pride, goals were necessary to get you from point A to B. But once you get there, and you begin setting goals higher and higher . . . you begin not reaching them. This can become debilitating unless you make this important shift to get to the next level. Replace goals with preferences and discipline your focus on what you can control.
2. Control the Controllables
As best as you can in all situations, learn to recognize what you can and cannot control. With the energy you save by not stressing over the traffic, weather conditions, or a canceled appointment, you can give greater service to others and work to create favorable conditions.
3. Create Favorable Conditions
When you want something too much, it has the opposite effect you intend. Consider the husband so attached to his wife, he becomes jealous and ends up pushing her away. Or the salesperson who has commission breath, or the anxious athlete who freezes under pressure. Take that energy of caring and use it to a better good – create favorable conditions. Buy your wife flowers, learn everything you can about the product you are selling, train a half-hour longer.
These are the things that you can do. Enjoy yourself doing them, and your fulfillment will arrive well before your paycheck, the promotion, or the national-championship.
Got a mission or know somebody who does? I’d love to hear about it! Send me your story and it could be featured in one of our RichLife story spotlights.
Great article Beau. I love the replace goals with preferences…
Good advice for all. It is in caring for others that we find we are also cared for by others.
Great post Beau!
We all have a mission, some of us just are not living it yet.
Thanks for sharing,
AJ
This is a great article. We all like to be part of a bigger cause than ourselves, but when it comes to our own mission we attach ourselves so much t it, that we lose sight of the things that are really important like seize the moment, giving people a hand, helping somebody out, enjoy yourself and things like that. Our mission should be going around and do good! Thanks Beau!
Love this Beau! Control the Controllables is especially important. We can't control the weather, the economy or the crazy-wild driver that zips in and out of traffic, but we CAN control our reaction to all that stuff. By doing that, we can stay focused on the important thing…our mission. Thanks!
Great article Beau! Thanks for the reminders!
Great message we can all benefit from, thanks Beau!
Still working on my mission – it keeps changing! Such valuable insight, Beau, and always right what we (or should I say 'I') need to hear. Thank you!
It is the law of nature – more and more life to all and every one. Mission is giving more life and nature is helping all the way because it is in harmony with the Universal law…and as we know the wealthiest people didn't become wealthy because they wanted money, they wanted to become the BEST at what they did and money followed. Great points – thanks for sharing! 🙂
I wish to mention one by one all the comments' contributors above. But please assume I have done so with great honor. Thanks you all.
But to Beau, I will say thank you twice for being first on facebook and here. I am following you everywhere now. Before I walk around your site with confidence of finding more treasures, I would like to lay down a few words – a mission perhaps.
It has been a number of years (almost 10 now), where I have been asking myself 'Who am I?' In other words 'What's my mission?' Why on earth now and not back 200 years ago? Yes, it is a difficult question, especially when you try things and paths that arouses no vein of extra energy. Then they call you a failure, but inside you know you are not. Yes, inside you know you have not found a mission yet.
I first met Ben Carson's book Think Big, then there was no turning back but to search the for the mission. It is a good thing that Beau mention here that we all have a mission, but the truth is many people don't know their missions. I was one of them, and I found it hard to believe that even me I had a mission. I thought the mission or purpose as others call it, was to get a degree and land for a 9-5 job. I thought it's to have a title and lots of cash flowing by my side. I thought it was keeping the distance from the 'interupting' and the 'needy' who always seems to bother you. Yes, I thought so as I was in need and those who seemed to have a mission distanced themselves from me. But I was wrong.
Even those I thought had a mission, they didn't have it. They lacked the passion I was after. They lacked the 'service' mentality that Beau is talking about here, and they lacked enough gestures to attract me into their world. Actually, they made me think even harder and read even more to find out about my 'mission'.
I then started to see the glimpse of the 'mission'. Excited, I started telling everyone about it. But I sensed that most didn't understand my excitement. But the thing is, when you see it, you will know it and who will even dare to shrug you down! You won't be able to keep it for yourself, you will talk about it. The challenge is, even the family and relatives might not get it. So it's up to you to show them with less of telling them – the only way to make them believe.
After studying almost everything from Social Sciences, International Relations and Management Studies, I was so humble to know that my mission is none of that but to "MOTIVATE AND INSPIRE OTHERS TO LIVE A MORE FULFILLED LIFE BY FIRST HELPING THEM FIND THEIR PURPOSE (MISSION) AND TALENTS SO THATTHEY CAN MAKE A WORLD A BETTER". The medium is writing and speaking.
Oh yes, there it is, a mission for me. After trying many things, and studyig myself closely and even being told it was the wrong decision as it brings no immediate return, I was convinced and converted into it.
So when I saw this post and read it I was even the more become a convert of my mission.
If Beau don't mind, please allow me to point out that towards the end of October and early November I will be covering various aspects to do with 'TALENT/S' in my site. I know you have mentioned it here, but I am exploring it there.
Richlife is already enriching me even now at 05:30am, Berkshire, UK.
Beau, keep heading up!:)