“How was your day?” “Pretty good. How was yours?”
Sound familiar? It does to me. Honestly, I get tired of hearing myself reply in that way with such regularity. Now, don’t get me wrong, “pretty good” is pretty good these days. My wife is asking me about my day (I’ll count that as a blessing) and for the most part things are fine. I’m healthy, the family’s healthy, we’re all doing well. We’re finding time to play and laugh and enjoy each other’s company amidst the chaos of a normal day in the life of a family with two young kids (or any family or single person’s life for that matter). I could list at least 50 causes for why I’m feeling on the “good” side of things and at least 50 ways it could be worse. Yet, I land on “pretty good” the majority of the time.
Do I want or need more than that? Sometimes, no…and, sometimes I’d be thrilled to get to “pretty good”. Yet, writing this now I suppose I’m at least interested in exploring that desire further. I’m also pondering this because I’m currently working with my coach on both my VISION for the world and my personal MISSION to create that future world. Pretty important stuff if you ask me (or him)!
I’m realizing that when asked “how was your day?” it’s often held up against the backdrop of a myriad different aspects that comprise my day – interaction with kids, work, colleagues, rest, exercise, nutrition, routine or lack thereof on any one or more of these.
However, if when I rest this question against a PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT designed to not only guide me in living the life I want and showing up each day the way I aspire to, but also in creating the world I envision…well, then, it’s less contingent on all the other “stuff” that I let cloud my interpretation of how my day was. You might think “jeesh, your wife just asked you how your day was. It’s a pretty simple question.” And, you’d be right, mostly.
My belief is that many of us don’t consider OR, give ourselves enough authority over how we choose to show up in our own lives and we do ourselves and this world a great disservice by not doing so.
Will I still have mostly “pretty good” days? I don’t know, maybe. If I’m lucky. But, I’ll know if I’m living my mission and perhaps get clear on what I missed which sounds more than pretty good to me.
Care to join me in developing a personal mission statement for yourself? Stay tuned, we’ll likely have a workshop offering in early 2021!
