Tuesday, July 1, 2008

steps towards my personal mission statement

Right now I am reading about 6 books... that is probably too many for any of them to make a lasting impression on my brain because they are all twisting together, but I am attempting to see how they connect.

One of the books is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. In his second habit he challenges the reader to make a personal mission statement, basically the values and principles through which you will center your life and decisions. I had a hard time figuring out where to start on that and have a few drafts going...

Then last night I was reading Habit 4 "Think Win/Win" and came across this quote:

Most people tend to think in terms of dichotomies: strong or weak, hardball or softball, win or lose. But that kind of thinking is fundamentally flawed. Its based on power and position rather than on principle. Win/Win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person's success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others. p. 207

Another book I'm reading is Red Letters: Living a faith that bleeds by Tom Davis. I recently posted my thoughts about Jesus' perspective on living with "what can offer mentality".

When I was in grad school I read some books by Parker Palmer and one of the ideas that we discussed was living a life out of abundance vs. out of scarcity. I started thinking about that again this morning...

One of the fundamental things that I want to base my life on is living my life with an abundance perspective. This will challenge me to be less rigid with my schedule and my "to do" lists, but I think that its something that I already try to do and want to cultivate further.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i love these thoughts. thanks for taking the time to share them. love, mom