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Lesson 3- What is your Mission as an Athlete?
Do each of the following in order.
1. Please read What is a mission?
2. Please read the Lesson 3 Perspective
3. Please read "What is an honorable mission?"
3. Do the Readings
4. Do Writing your Mission statement
5. Answer Multiple Choice Questions
6. Do the Reflection and Preparation Assignment on examining the goals of your coaching in relation to Servant Leadership?
7. DO ASSESSMENT - RETURN TO BbLEARN and Do Assessment attached to Lesson 3.
Ensure that you have completed the previous lesson and have received an email
response from the instructor before completing this lesson assessment.
If
you have not received a response from the previous lesson please email Brad
Dieter
at bradd@uidaho.edu.
“The benefits derived from participation must include
more than a favorable outcome of the game”
Pete Newell
Free access photo from Wikimedia Commons
What is a mission?
A personal mission statement is a brief description of what you want to focus on, what you want to accomplish and who you want to become in a particular area of your life over the next one to three years. It is a way to focus your energy, actions, behaviors and decisions towards the things that are most important to you.
When you develop and write your personal mission statement, you examine and evaluate the things you want, the person you are, the things you want to do, and the person you want to become. You compare that against the things you've done, and the things you value most, and come up with a clear idea of who you want to be going forward.Out of that process comes the end result of your personal mission development: the personal mission statement. This then becomes a tool for achieving goals and dreams and in effect, becomes the code by which you live.
People talk about "finding" their lives. In reality, your life is not something you find - it's something you create.
-David Phillips
What is an honorable mission statement?
By developing a
personal mission statement, you have the ability to move your life in a
specific direction.
Although mission statements are usually written from an instrumental or
objective focus, i.e., to become a better work, or to be effective in
work, an honorable mission statement is directed toward becoming a
better person and thus a better athlete.
To do this,
demands a certain level of inspiration and inspiration can be an elusive
companion. Sometimes, it seems like we can't get inspired at all. Other
times, we get inspired for a short time, and then, for various reasons,
we lose it.
So how do we write
a mission statement and stay inspired to follow it.
First, what is the purpose of your life?
What do you want people to say and think about you as you travel
through life? What will be
said at your passing from this life?
What values do you want people to associate with your name? She/he made a lot of money. She/he was a hard worker. He/she was a great athlete. He/she was an honest person. He/she is a person of integrity? She/he is a hard worker. He/she is respectful of others. She/he is a fair person. He/she can be counted on to help others.
You will find, that people are valued not so much for their work ethic in life or what they accomplished but for how they treated others and the respect they gave to others and to the conventions of society that affected them all.
Sure, making money and being successful is always important in our societies today, however, wanting to be the world's richest athlete is hardly an honorable mission. In your role as an athlete, you are first a person, second an athlete, and third, a leader for others look to you.
What are the values that will drive your mission? Below read what others have said about honorable missions. As an athlete, you are a leader and thus your mission statement affects those around you.
Robert Greenleaf in his text, Servant Leadership (On developing a mission as a leader)---What are you trying to do? Is one of the easiest to ask and most difficult to answer of questions.
A mark of leaders, an attribute that puts them in a position to show the way for others, is that they are better than most at pointing the direction. As long as one is leading, one always has a goal. It may be a goal arrived at by group consensus, or the leader acting on inspiration, may simply have said, “Let’s go this way.” But the leader always knows what it is and can articulate it for any who are unsure. By clearly stating and restating the goal the leader gives certainty to others who may have difficulty in achieving it for themselves.
The word goal is used here in the special sense of the overarching purpose, the big dream, the visionary concept, the ultimate consummation that one approaches but never really achieves. It is something presently out of reach; it is something to strive for, to move toward, to become. It is so stated that it excites the imagination and challenges people to work for something they do not yet know how to do, something they can be proud of as they move toward it.
Max DePree (in his Leadership is an Art - translated into 10 languages and selling more than 800,000 copies) said, --A mission statement should promote the development of a rational environment that values trust and human dignity, and provides the opportunity for personal development and self-fulfillment in the organization’s goals. Leadership is an Art (1989).
John Wooden---A good leader creates belief---in the leader’s philosophy, in the organization, in the mission.
Lesson 3 Perspective:
The perspective of this Lesson 3 is to begin the process of developing a mission statement for yourself as an athlete. A mission statement should be crisp and clear about your goal being an athlete who is honorable.By developing a
personal mission statement, you have the ability to move your life in a
specific direction.
Although mission statements are usually written from an instrumental or
objective focus, i.e., to become a better worker, or to be effective in
work. This assignment is
about developing an inspired and honorable mission statement that will
help you become a better person and a better athlete.
Inspiration can be
an elusive companion. Sometimes, it seems like we can't get inspired at
all. Other times, we get inspired for a short time, and then, for
various reasons, we lose it.
Readings:
For this Lesson 3, Click on each of the following mission statements and compare the mission statements to what we have already discussed above. C. You will find that some of the mission statements have flaws and do not meet the total quality indicators that we discussed. Take time to think about what each of these statements mean and how effective they would be for you..
Examples of Mission Statements
Click on Each and Read - take notes
Writing your mission statement
There are several
steps in the personal mission development process.
Identifying and
clarifying your values helps you to be able to
create a mission statement that is based
on, and supports, what is most important to you.
In addition, your
personal mission development will include uncovering and writing down
what can be called, your life's purpose. These are the major things that
you would want to accomplish in your personal and professional life.
This is how you want to be, what you want to do, what you want to have,
and how you want to be thought of.
Think all of this
through. Do you have a talent that you have been neglecting? What
accomplishments have made you happy in the past? Are there things that
you are very interested in, but have never explored? Do you want to make
a bigger contribution is some way? If there were no limits, what would
you do with your life?
Personal mission
development is not a one day process. You will not sit down and write
out your mission in life in one sitting. It is also an ongoing process.
No one keeps the same goals and dreams their entire lives. Your life is
a work in progress, and so is the development of your mission.
Periodically you will review and revise your statement.
Since this process
is intensely personal, and also has some rules to it, coming up with a
personal mission statement definition is not all that easy. Mission
statements vary widely in their style, tone, and content.
Since your mission
statement describes your unique purpose in life, it will become the
standard by which you live. It is your anchor in the stormy sea of life.
It is your safety net, and it is also your springboard. It is both the
airplane that gets you there, and the parachute that allows you to land
safely when the unexpected happens. Your personal mission statement will
keep you inspired, and that will keep you motivated.
Most of us are
busy doing what we think we have to do, that we do not think about what
we really want to do.
-Robert Percival
Reflection and Preparation
For Next Time---Think back to your last season of athletics---construct a mission statement that would have served you. Put a little effort and thought into this task. Does your mission statement meet the characteristics as outlined by our comments above?
Return to Bblearn and do Assessment Three.
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