First let me start with an apology.  If you subscribed to this newsletter some time ago you may be surprised not to have received one until now!  It was lack of confidence in having something meaningful to write disguised as being “too busy” that stopped me from making the commitment sooner.  Rest assured your name and email address have not been passed onto any other organisation, they will remain secure on our database until you request they be removed.  Having said all that if you would like to unsubscribe there is a link at the bottom of this newsletter!

Each month we will be looking at a specific topic, usually a challenge you may be faced with as you continue on your journey of living your Mission, your Life’s Purpose.
These challenges fall broadly into 4 categories:

• Money
  
• Self-doubt
  
• Relationships
  
• Health and Well Being

By way of an introduction to the concept of your Mission and Mission Coaching this month’s article takes a look at what Mission is and offers some powerfully probing questions to help you rediscover yours.

This Month’s Article
If it ain’t scary it ain’t your Mission! - An Introduction to Living Your Life’s Purpose

Outcomes for this article:

1. To demystify the meaning of Mission
   
2. To understand how living your Mission is a combination of being and doing
   
3. To give you some questions that help you “rediscover” your Mission
   

"Mission" - What Exactly Does it Mean?
One of the first difficulties we are faced with in any discussion about Mission is to define exactly what the word “Mission” means.  In this article (and on the Mission Coach web site) the word “Mission” means; your Life’s Purpose, your Soul Purpose and your sole purpose for being here on this planet at this time.

You do not have to be religious to believe you have a Mission but it does help if you believe yourself to be a Spiritual Being and you believe in the existence of an organising power which you may choose to call God, Allah, Shiva, Universal Intelligence or something else.

Visions and Versions, Being and Doing
According to Conversations with God (CWG) by Neale Donald Walsch you are here on Earth to “experience the next Grandest Version of the Greatest Vision ever you held about Who You Really Are”.  This definition beautifully combines the 2 elements we need to experience fulfilment, these elements are “being” and “doing”.

Your “Greatest Vision” is your Mission.  Your Mission is not a goal to be achieved, it is the on-going process of you “being” the living expression of Who You Really Are.

Your next “Grandest Version” could be a goal, a milestone on the path of living your Mission, it is something you are “doing” which serves your Greatest Vision.  As a milestone it does not measure how far you have to go to reach your Greatest Vision (your Greatest Vision is not a destination to be reached) but it can measure how far you have come from the point at which you started and it serves as an indication you are heading in the “right” direction.

A Vision and Version example
I would like to share with you a current (and personal!) example which I hope will illustrate Visions and Versions.  My personal Mission Statement starts with the words “I am an Agent of Change..”.  Being an “Agent of Change” is my Grandest Vision for myself for this lifetime.  At the beginning of this newsletter I confessed to not having the confidence to commit to writing the newsletter you are now reading. 

Part of my next Grandest Version (of being an Agent of Change) is to “be” someone who feels I have something of value to contribute to the subject of Mission and Mission Coaching (at least once a month!) and I am “doing” this by writing the newsletter, therefore part of the goal of my next Grandest Version has been achieved.

You already know what your Mission is!
I am going to make a very bold statement: you already know what your Mission is, you have simply developed sophisticated ways of hiding it from yourself and pretending you don’t!  Why do we do this?  “If it ain’t scary it ain’t your Mission” is not just a catchy title, to live your Mission, especially when you first make the commitment,  is to experience a strange and often uncomfortable combination of fear and excitement.  In order to get to the excitement we must first confront (or go round) the “wall” of fear which keeps us from even exploring what it would be like to live our Mission.

Below are some questions designed to enable you to rediscover and experience the excitement and fulfilment of living your Mission which awaits you on the other side of the wall.

Two Questions to “Rediscover” your Mission
If you were given all the resources you need (e.g. money, time, courage, confidence, skill, manpower, child-minders) for a period of 12 months and you absolutely knew that whatever you attempted to do in that time you would succeed…

1. what would you achieve in one year?
   
2. what resources would you need?

Allow your imagination and intuition to guide question 1 – remember you have unlimited resources and whatever you attempt you achieve!  With question 2 be honest and specific about the resources you need.  Once you have your answers you are ready for the next stage.

Four Simple steps to your next Grandest Version
Here are 4 significant yet simple action steps you can take right now:

1. Take your answers from question 1 (what you would achieve in 1 year) and make them into a “symbol”.  A symbol is something (it could be a physical object, a word, a sentence, a sound, a tune, an image, anything!) which encapsulates the energy and inspiration behind your answers to question 1.
   
   Don’t try to analyse your answers or the reason for your symbol, now is the time for you to use your intuition.  If your symbol is a physical object put it in a prominent place where you will see it frequently, if it’s small and portable carry it with you.  If it’s a word or sentence repeat it frequently like a Mantra (Mantras and affirmations are another topic for a newsletter!), if it is an image or movie in your mind, rerun the movie on the hour every hour.
   
   
2. Take your answers from question 2 and find out all you can about the resources you believe you need.  For example if one of the resources is courage find out all you can about courage, read books about overcoming fear (“Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” might be a good place to start), read stories and biographies about the people you believe demonstrate courage (a personal favourite of mine is Richard Branson).  Take a look at the Belief Models on the Mission Coach web site (see the link at the bottom of this newsletter).
   
   
3. Seek out like minded people.  A word of warning; in the early stages take care who you share your Mission with because it can be fragile, even a well intentioned spouse or friend can break it!  In the next development phase of the Mission Coach site we set up a discussion Forum where you can join or start a virtual group where ideas can be freely exchanged.
   
   
4. If you are ready to roll - get yourself a Mission Coach!  Click on the link at the bottom of this newsletter to find out more about your free Mission Coaching Introductory session or find yourself a mentor, someone who will support you in what you are doing.

The outcome for the action steps above is to empower and motivate you to the next stage - you will have to wait until next month to find out what the next stage is!  In the meantime please give question 1 the time it deserves and keep researching those resources you believe you need.

If you want more information about Living your Mission download the article “If it ain’t scary it ain’t your Mission” from the Mission Coach web site by clicking on the link at the bottom of this newsletter.

If you have any comments, suggestions, questions or criticisms of this article feel free to email me paul@mission-coach.co.uk.  In the next development phase of the Mission Coach site there will be a forum where each month’s newsletter will be posted and you can post your thoughts.

This Month’s Tool Review

Each month we will look at a useful Mission Coaching “tool”.  This month we review the book “Authentic – How to make a living by being yourself” by Neil Crofts, Published by Capstone, ISBN 1-84112-519-9, 130 pages. I paid £13 for it in a shop in Glastonbury before I realised I could buy it on Amazon for £7.79! (see the links at the bottom of this newsletter).
 
This book has 4 sections: 1) outline of the way our society currently functions, 2) taking control of our lives, 3) making a living by being yourself, 4) case studies of authentic businesses.

Section 1 describes how we have “evolved” from independent tribal social structures to the highly dependent structure we have today and how our educational systems are designed to make students conform rather than express individuality; “as we are made to conform, our personality, individuality and self-confidence is driven out of us.  Once we are sufficiently lacking in self-confidence we have to demean others to give ourselves a sense of importance.”

This lack of self-confidence as children leads us to become adults willing to sell ourselves into a lifetime of “indentured servitude” often choosing to work a job we dislike in order to pay for a lifestyle we cannot afford - “debts are the shackles of our slavery”.  To compensate for our suffering we become addicted to short term “hits” of happiness - “there is a continuum that runs from Christ to cocaine for externalising responsibility for our own happiness to others, be they products or people”.  Section 1 contains a chilling reminder – “one of the frequent factors in the fall of civilisations is that the people become distracted by decadence and are not able to resolve the terminal issues that face them.”  This section ends with the acknowledgement that we need to find a new way of doing things, a new way of making our lives and our businesses more authentic.

In section 2 our “natural language” is the term he uses to describe our “unique talents” and “point” is the term used for “Life Purpose” or “Mission” (please see the Conclusion).  This section also contains advice on finding your “natural language” and your “point” and feeding your mind and body.  The topics of “Avoiding distractions” and “Making your plan” (I like the idea of sticking Post-It notes on a wall!) are particularly helpful.  The last part of this section is titled “Coming out and being yourself”, this is about putting it all together and presenting your authentic self to the world.

“Being the Change” is the title of section 3 and covers the topics of “Getting started” and “Working for yourself”.  Bearing in mind the sub-title of the book, I found these topics to be a bit thin on advice and no reference was made to any further reading in this area,  for someone just starting out on this journey this was not as helpful as it could have been.  The advice that is given under the topic of “Designing your organisation” and “Finding collaborators” (for the “big” project) appears to be geared towards those people who aspire to having a medium size business, nothing wrong with that but for me this was a big leap from “Coming out and being yourself” only a few pages before! (maybe this is a limiting belief I should be working on!).

“Those who are already doing it” is the final section 4, two of these; “Yeo Valley” and “innocent” (with a small “i”) I really enjoyed.

Conclusion
This book is worth reading.  It contains some useful information about making your Mission (or “point”!) your business.  The inclusion of more information about getting started and a more complete reading list for those people with less business experience would be helpful.  Also my impression is the non use of terms such as “Life’s Purpose” and “Mission” may be an attempt to make the book more appealing to those for whom the inclusion of a spiritual element in the book may be off-putting.

The author has a new book, soon to be released called; “Authentic Business: How to create and run your perfect business”.  This new book may well fill in the gaps in the reviewed book.

What’s New At Mission Coach

The “From Mission to Money” Group has been reformed!
The structure of the “From Mission to Money” group has been revised and the group reformed under the name the “Mission and Money” group (a subtle and for some of the members significant change!).  The group was created in January 2003 as a self-help group for those people wanting to make £1,000,000 in one year by living their Mission.

The good news is we now have spaces for 3 new members!  If the idea of being part of this group appeals to you more details can be found on the Mission Coach web site (see the link at the bottom of this newsletter).

Live Support on the Mission Coach web site
The Mission Coach site now has a “Live Support” facility, visitors to the site have the opportunity to chat to a coach and ask questions about Mission Coaching.  Feel free to use the facility when the “on-line” button is flashing or leave a message when it is not.

Links For This Edition of the Mission Coach Newsletter

To subscribe to the free Mission Coach monthly newsletter click here:
http://www.mission-coach.co.uk/pages/mission_coach_newsletter.asp

To find out more about your free Mission Coaching Introductory session click here:
http://www.mission-coach.co.uk/pages/mission_coaching.asp

To view the Belief Models mentioned in this month’s article click here:
http://www.mission-coach.co.uk/pages/belief_models.asp

To download the article 'An Introduction to Living Your Lifes Purpose' click here.

To order the book “Authentic – How to make a living by being yourself” by Neil Crofts from Amazon select one of the links below (Note: you may have to cut and paste the link if it has wrapped):
UK residents click here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841125199/selfleadershi-21
Non UK residents click here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841125199/missioncoach-20

To go to the Mission and Money Group page click here:
http://www.mission-coach.co.uk/pages/mission_and_money_group.asp

To go to the Mission Coach web site click here:
http://www.mission-coach.co.uk

To email me (Paul Beeston) click here:
paul@mission-coach.co.uk