Remember Your Original Mission

A few months ago, I was poking around trying to find some big overarching goal for the next few years.

I knew I wanted to build something that was my own.

I knew I wanted to find something that would make people’s lives better.

But how could I distill that ambiguity into a clear, specific goal?

Then I thought I found it.

My life goal for the next few years would be to earn $10,000/month from 3 sources of income.

That life goal lasted about 2 days until my boyfriend pointed out that it completely missed the point. He was right.

I’d wanted to build something of value. I’d always held the belief that, (if you were doing things right) the money you earned represented the value you added. Plus, if I had multiple sources of income it meant I was making people’s lives better in multiple ways.

The logic is horribly flawed, but at the time it seemed perfectly reasonable. It didn’t occur to me that sooner or later, the clear, specific goal I’d set would become the only one that existed. Then it wouldn’t be long until I was finding ways to earn money any way I could — whether it made people’s lives better or not.

I’m still working on defining a clear life mission for myself but in the meantime, it’s just been the extremely ambiguous goal of making people’s lives better.

The point of this story isn’t about how horribly misguided my goal-setting tactics were (though that’s true).

IT’S ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF REMEMBERING YOUR ORIGINAL MISSION.

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Because without remembering your original mission, soon your goals will start to stray. And even when you get to where you aimed for, you still won’t be where you wanted to be.