About 10 years ago I spent several months developing my own personal mission statement. I did some reading, I asked family, friends and colleagues key questions and asked them to validate my own perceptions.

I have used this mission for a decade – to help me find my footing, to help me make decisions and to be my north star. The statement is on my desktop and bulletin board, and it is always referenced on my annual vision boards. My statement is below:

As a Mother, I am on a journey of discovery and adventure together with my son. My goal is to raise Toadie to be a man who is resilient, compassionate, self-aware and confident with a conviction of faith and the ability to see many truths.

As a Friend, I am on a journey through life together with the people I care about. My goal is to be a source of enduring support and encouragement to the people I love. I want to live my life with the grace and acceptance of Gran, living into her legacy of roots and connectedness.

As a Leader, I am on a journey creating the future with my colleagues. My goal is to make a difference to clients, staff and the system through the work I do (what) and the way I bring myself to that work (how). I want to be a leader who is mindful of complexity, who honours past accomplishments and facilitates change happening in a generative and integrated way.

I do not want to change my mission statement, rather my experiment is to help calibrate and discern how I will live into my mission more intentionally in the coming years.

My experiment was launched with an email to about 25 people – family, friends and colleagues. I asked them a single question:

If you could take control of my life tomorrow , what would you change? (credit to James Clear)

The responses have already started to come in and I am so excited to get this feedback from which I can launch. Stay tuned for what I learn and how I will use the experiment results!