Most people, on their death beds, don’t wish they had stayed at the office longer answering more emails. Instead, their regrets typically begin with not living the kind of life they should have lived, or done the things they had dreamed of doing.
In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey asks people to think of their own funeral and then asks them to imagine what people are saying about them. Is it what they want? If not, now is the time to get going. And, as Covey puts it, begin with the end in mind.
He then offers a tidy little formula to help us create a mission statement/template for living what he sees as the most important values:
- What do we want to be (our character)
- What do we want to contribute and achieve
- What values are both of the above based on
Basically, if we want to change any part of our current reality, we need to have a very clear picture of what we want, and then go backward to see what steps we have to take to make it a reality. In this way we create a solid foundation from which to flourish and bring others along.
