After revisiting my personal core values, it’s now time to revisit my personal mission statement. Even though I feel this term “personal mission statement” is rather overused and overhyped, the concept of defining a single sentence for your main purpose in life is still a powerful exercise.

So to start this exercise, let’s first check my current definition:

I, Lodewijk van den Broek, love life and have a lot of love to give. I enjoy authentic growth and I help others to grow. I’m here to have lots of fun and enjoy my freedom in comfort and vitality.

I recognize all my five values in them, even after revisiting them like I did (that’s a good thing!). But I do feel that it needs to be fine-tuned.

New insights

What I learned about myself is that I want to make people learn and make them laugh. This is rooted in my values of Growth and Fun. These values are very much focused not only on myself, but also on what I want to do in this world.

The values of Love, Authenticity and Freedom, are mostly values that are focused on myself; they are at this moment in time anyway. The lesson I learned at the Bløf concert is a clear example of this.

Growth and Fun are outward focused, and the other three are inward focused. This needs to be reflected in my mission statement better than it is now.

New personal mission statement

I, Lodewijk van den Broek, love life and have a lot of love to give. I radiate positive energy and inspire others to learn and laugh. I thrive on growing my freedom and authenticity.

Or as a mantra:

Learning Life Laughing

Parts of it haven’t changed, love is still in the first place in pretty much the same way it has been for a long time. The outward focus of Fun and Growth is better represented.

I dropped the comfort and vitality bits, because they don’t need to be mentioned specificallyand their meaning and importance have changed over time. They represent only different aspects of freedom (vitality) and fun (comfort).

High impact and design

There are two aspects that are important to me, but are not reflected in my mission statement. These aspects are impact and design. They’re not reflected in my mission statement, because I feel they’re more nuances than core elements.

Impact and design are important, because they describe the “how” I want to work with my mission statement, and specifically with the outward focused values of Fun and Growth.

I want to make a high impact in the work I do. High impact in the meaning that I want to reach a lot of people, but time synchronous as time asynchronous. Working one on one, although valuable at times, is therefore not my focus.

Design is another aspect of how I want to do my work. I like visually pleasing things, and aim to create visually pleasing things. This blog is an example of that design at work. But the design mentality permeates in different aspects of life too. I’m not a “design for the design” kind of guy, because in my opinion design needs to be functional.

So whenever I create something I want it to create impact, I want it to be visually pleasing, and I want to inspire people to learn and laugh.

Next step: Guidelines and goals

I’ve already taken a sneak peek towards guidelines and goals in this article. I’m going to elaborate on those in the next post, pretty much along similar lines as last time.

Not exactly the same of course, because I learned some lessons about setting goals in the meantime:

• Not too many goals at the same time
• Watch out for colliding deadlines
• Make sure to quantify enough
• And watch out for moving targets

It’ll be interesting to see how these lessons relate to the three different goals I’m going to set myself. One based on effort, one focused on result and one pure for fun.

PS: I realize that this is turning out a series of posts that’s focused on me, and how I’m working my way through this proces. There’s a lot of “me” in there, and I leave the translation to you … entirely up to you. I can assure you that’s not going to stay that way. But this is the process I’m going through right now, and it’s certainly a good way to get back into the writing rhythm again.

I’m still in the process of defining new goals, even though I wanted to have them finished by this weekend. But that was before I knew that I would make a growth step this week. That got me thinking some more about what I want to achieve, and even though it may not change the goals I’m going to set, it was definitely a moment that I will remember vividly.

Defining new goals

Last week I wrote that the process I’m going through is a growth process. One of the characteristics of growth processes is that they’re hard to squeeze into a timeframe. I experienced that first hand this week (once again … I’m kind of stubborn with regard to this characteristic!).

Initially I planned on writing a new post about my personal mission statement this week, reviewed in the light of the revisited personal core values. I did some of the work for that exercise, but then Wednesday happened. I was at a concert and I made a growth step. Several of my personal core values were working in harmony to make something clear to me. It worked.

But that has taken a lot of my thinking time, and that time was not spent on the mission statement revaluation. I’m still in that process and will finish that early next week.

The outlines of the three goals I’m going to set are slowly forming already, but I don’t want to get ahead of the process. But the division between the goals – one based on effort, one based on results, and one just for fun – is something that has gained even more appeal this week.

Blog performance

First of all, the blog metrics:

• Average daily visitors: 336
• Average subscribers: 325 (old feed) + 987 (new feed) = 1312

As you can see, subscribers are still divided over the old and the new feed. Thankfully, most of you have made the switch already, but please check your feed address.

The new adress is: http://feeds.beanoriginal.net/beanoriginal

Everybody that’s still subscribed to the old Feedburner feed is fetching the old feed. You won’t necessarily miss out on the content, but the new feed has a much better reader experience than the old feed. And besides that, the old feed will stop somewhere in the (near) future. Make sure you have the new feed address in your reader.

A-List Blogging Bootcamp

This week I mostly worked on a new page for the blog, about blogging. Even though that’s not the main topic of be an original, I do get quite a lot of questions about blogging. Most of them I’ve answered on that page, which can be found in the About section, both in the menu and in the sidebar (or through the link in this paragraph).

While writing about the blogging, I also touched on the topic of A-List Blogging Bootcamp. Last August I participated in a program, initiated by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen. The program was a 10 day course, packed with valuable lessons about blogging, ranging from beginner tips to advanced topics. To this day I’m still a member of the club, with monthly sessions that are very valuable.

A-List Blogging Bootcamp is opening its doors again tomorrow. The new bootcamp starts Februari 13 and lasts about a week. If you’re new to blogging and want to explore your possibilities, this is a great opportunity. The bootcamp will consist of live video sessions, addressing several topics. In those live sessions, I will also be present in the chat for most of the days. Even if you’re not interested in joining, I encourage you to hop on over there and download Leo’s ebook, about how he grew Zen Habits to a blog with 150.000 subscribers. A process that also enabled him to give up his dayjob, and that landed him a publishing contract.

That’s it for now. More next week (promise!).

Yesterday my wife and I had our 4th wedding anniversary and she suprised me with tickets to a concert by Bløf, a Dutch band. Their music is about emotions, worries, love, unfulfilled desires, confusion and hope. We have very good memories linked to their music, because we played one of their albums a lot when we were on holiday in British Columbia in western Canada.

Immersed in music

One of the things I know about myself, is that whenever I’m immersed in music – like you are in concert hall – I make a connection with the vibe in the music and become attuned to it. It touches me on an emotional level. The same thing happened last night. As soon as Bløf started playing, I felt that I was touched by the music and that I got tears in my eyes. Happy tears, but tears nonetheless.

Tears in public … argh. I’m a guy; guys are supposed to be tough and crying is not part of being tough – let alone crying in public! This is one of the societal pressures I have felt very strong during my life. I was raised in a family where crying was “not done”, especially the boys might even get ridiculed for it (sorry Dad, I know you’re reading this, but yeah … you did).

So there I was, with the woman I love celebrating our wedding anniversary, immersed in music that touched me emotionally – and I was fighting tears. That kind of tears you apart, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless.

Tears on stage and on my cheeks

Three weeks before the concert, Paskal the lead singer became father for the first time, and he talked about that several times. At one point – about halfway through the concert – he was introducing a song that was written by the bass guitarist for his girlfriend who was pregnant at the time. While introducing that song he choked up and stood there silence in tears, happy tears that is. And there he stood crying … on stage … in front of five hunderd people.

It was at that point that I felt something change inside me. He stood there in front of that audience and allowed himself the freedom to experience and express that emotion on stage. And I was in the anonimity of the audience and I was trying to hide it. It couldn’t be further apart. And from that moment on I didn’t try to hide it anymore.
I let the emotion be there and let it express itself. I felt a tear run down my cheek and I just left it there. It was an authentic feeling, they were happy tears that sprang from love and I felt the freedom to just be there with that emotion, out in the open. Three core values working in harmony.

Applause … for tears

And then the strangest thing happened, now I think back at that moment. While Paskal was there on stage, all choked up and trying to compose himself enough to sing again, people in the audience started applauding him, men and women alike. What were they applauding for? Were they applauding for his guts to express that emotion on stage, even though they look down upon that behavior in everyday life? Or is it just a commendable trait for musicians and not for other men? Or were they applauding for seeing someone do, what they are afraid to do themselves?

I don’t know. I just know that I made a step towards living more attuned to my core values, and for that I’m grateful. I’m an emotional guy, and tears come to my eyes easily. People will notice that anyway, so why hide it? It’s nothing to be ashamed about.

If you travel towards a destination, it’s important to observe the path. The path teaches you the best way to reach your destination, and it enriches you while you travel it. It’s the same with a goal in life. That too, can get better or worse depending on how you choose to travel the path.

Paulo Coelho in The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom

Ok, I just gave myself a kick in the butt. Last week I wrote that I’m starting this weekly review habit again. But first I need goals for the review, or so I thought. I gave myself two weeks to define those goals, and I’m progressing nicely towards defining them.

Yet that’s hardly an excuse to skip the first weekly review. Starting a habit by skipping is not very promising. And defining new goals can be seen as a goal in itself – albeit one for the short term. So here it goes:

Defining new goals

The process of defining new goals has started last week, and the first step was revisiting my personal core values. The next step is to take another look at my mission statement and then set goals accordingly.

This is a process that takes time, since it’s a growth process. Growth process can only be sped up to a certain point. If you go too fast you’ll just end up with results that need some more processing or that don’t feel right – yet.

In growth processes you need some time for your thoughts and feelings to settle as you, and your insight grow. And some stuff simply needs to be slept on for a couple of nights. If you take the time for it to settle, you’ll notice that good stuff emerges.

Besides the introspection activities of looking at my values and mission statements, I also looked through my previous weekly reviews for inspiration on how to do these weekly reviews in a way that’s better. One thing was obvious, it needed a better title. The title of the weekly review was always the same (except for the weeknumber).

Second thing: Trim down on the number of goals. I already discovered and remembered this, too many goals will dilute both focus and time. So I decided to have only three goals:

• one focused on result – in order to achieve something specific
• one focused on effort – in order to do something specific
• one focused on fun – simply for fun

Thirdly, I noticed that deadlines that are too far into the future are neither motivating nor scaring me. So I need to work with smaller chunks for goals. The period I’m going to use is six weeks (inspired by a particular scene in Fight Club).

The fourth thing I (re)discovered was the consistent tracking of blog metrics. That’s something I’m going to do again too. And I’ll be talking about what I’ve done and plan to do on the blog. To make it better and to let it grow of course (it is a core value after all).

So my take-aways from this review:

1. I already set myself a goal, and I’m reviewing it now
2. The reviews need better titles than they used to have
3. I’m going to set three goals only
4. I want to work with deadlines six weeks away
5. I’m going to track blog progress again and talk about blogging every now and then

Blog performance

The blog metrics I will be tracking are average subscriber numbers over the past week and average daily visitors. Those are the most important metrics in my opinion. You’ll see the numbers next week.

I did do some work on the blog this past week:

• added category pictures below the posts. You’ll see an image of black eyed peas below this particular post for instance.
• added the “New? Start here!” page
• added the “Search” page
• added the “Explore” section to the sidebar
• customized the 404 page to suit the bean theme better

That’s it for now. More next week (promise!).

Naming your personal core values is one thing, but understanding how they influence your life is quite another. Words have different meanings to different people. They may even have several meanings withing one person, depending on context or condition.

So to truly understand how my personal core values influence my life and my decisions, I’m going to investigate them one by one. This is the first step in my process to define new goals that are aligned with my values and ambitions.

Freedom

Last time I wrote that Freedom is a very important and strong value for me. That’s still very true. Freedom is best defined for me like this:

the absence of restraints that hold me back or that violate my values

I usually choose to formulate postive formulation instead of negative ones, but I found that this definition most suits how I feel about this value. Working on this value is a process of identifying restraints, investigating them and finding ways to defuse them.

The central theme for this value at this moment in my life is the pursuit of freedom of activity. There are plenty of things I want to do – and a lot of them are rooted in one or more of my core values – but I simply haven’t found the freedom to do all of them yet. Time constraints, financial constraints, and mental constraints are the three aspects that have the most influence.

Growth

Although this is the latest addition to my value set (I used to have a set of only four core values), this is a very important one. So important even, that I took it for granted without even identifying it. Growth is at the core of everything I do.

Growth to me is:

the attitude to continuously try new things, the courage to fail and the peace of mind to learn from the failures. Growth is striving to become better than you are.

The central theme for Growth in my life is to find direction. The desire to grow is there, nothing to complain about that. It’s just that I have a tendency to start too many different paths to learn and grow. My challenge here is to focus my energy on a distinct set of growth areas.

Love

Love is a complicated value and a really simple one at the same time. Sometimes I feel like I will never understand it, and yet I know when it tries to tell me something and usually I understand it too. Confusing and clarifying at the same time.

Even though all values are first and foremost felt from within, and definions are only attempts to put them in words, this is absolutely true for Love. How do you define love? The best I can come up with is:

The willingness to place emotional relationships above ambitions.

But this is only an approximation, hardly a definition set in stone.

As for the central theme here … it’s about balancing my family life and my ambitions. Actually, balance is not the right word … it’s about finding a way for them to enhance eachother.

Fun

Fun! I’m here to have lots of fun! Like I said before, it’s easy to let this one slip, especially if you try to fit in and are totally focused on ambitions and growth.

Fun for me is:

the ability to play and be playful. It’s about not taking life too seriously.

What about the central theme for this value? Well I thought about this one for quite some time. It’s too easy to just say that I need to put more fun in the stuff I do. So for this one I’m gonna turn it upside down, and say that I need to do something with the primary purpose of having fun doing it.

Authenticity

Outside pressure and influences are the factors to consider when evaluating this value. It takes a lot of guts to know who you are, and to be who you are in face of a society that wants you to be what they want you to be. And those two views are often contradictory; they are in my case.

Authenticity for me is:

the ability to know who you are and to act accordingly

The latter part is equally important as the first part – maybe even more important.

With respect to this value, the central theme in my life right now is to act upon what I know and feel about myself. To acknowledge things I know about myself, but are hesitant to admit (because they might be weird, or might contradict society’s expectations).

Recap

This is a long and detailed post, but an important one too. This is the foundation upon which I’m going to build my “house” of goals.

In this post I reviewed each personal core value by itself, but there’s an interdependence between them of course. The best activities are those that feed all values simultaneousely without becoming average.

The challenge is to build upon these values and find goals and guiding principles that enhance all my values.

In the next post I’ll be further investigating how these values translate into my personal mission statement and my guiding principles.

Times had changed and we had 500 million pound in the bank. But I didn’t believe in leaving it there. At this point I could of course have retired and concentrated my energies on learning how to paint watercolours or how to beat my mum at golf.

People asked me ‘Why don’t you have some fun now?’, but they were missing the point. As far as I was concerned, this was fun. Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I’ve done from the outset.

More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin’s success.

Richard Branson in his autobiography Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way.

In retrospect I can say that one of my better habits in the past, was my habit of reviewing my goals on a weekly basis. I’m picking up that habit again, and will be posting the reviews on this blog.

Achievements by public commitment

When I started that habit, I was really into productivity habits and systems and into goal setting theory. Reviewing my goals on a weekly basis seemed like a good habit to get a score on my progress. And it was, especially for the lack of progress … because there were periods with hardly any progress at all. And I put it out there, right in the open, stating that there was – again – no progress.

There were times that I felt bad about posting the progress report, without having something to report besides the lack of progress. But I learned a lot from doing it. And I made a lot of progress. Partly because there was a desire to make that progress, and partly because I made a public commitment to it.

So in retrospect I can say the habit worked for me. So that’s reason enough to pick it up again.

Setting new goals

But before you can review anything, you have to set some goals. Or put your ambitions into words, because you probably already have some goals, but you just haven’t put them in words yet.

Long-time readers know that I start most of my activities from my personal core values. The inner foundation of things I know to be important to me. My five personal core values are Love – Fun – Freedom – Growth – Authenticity. And although I’d love to give every value it’s own audacious goal, I know it’s better to not do that.

In order to set new goals, I’m going to use the same path as I did almost three years ago. But I add the wisdom I have gathered since that time to the process of defining them.

The process of setting new goals

So one of my next posts will be to go back to the roots and investigate my personal core values in detail once more. From that foundation I will look at my personal mission statement again and see if that needs some tweaking. After that I will translate that mission statement into guiding principles for how I want to live my life. And as soon as I have those, I will define new goals.

That may seem like a long route towards setting goals. And it is in a way, but the most powerful goals are the ones that are truly aligned with who we are and what we want. Investing that time into defining my goals will render higher quality goals, and increase the likelihood of motivating me to deeply want to achieve them.

Taking the short-cut to defining goals would probably render goals that are either too easy, unattainable, or unaligned. And that would be a short-cut to failure (and who needs that?).

You know … I’m really looking forward to writing those reviews again. You can expect them on Sundays (after I defined the goals of course). And should I miss one of the weekly reviews, please DO let me know!

Originals live consciously
Originals think for themselves
Originals live their emotions
Originals make their own decisions

Originals are rooted from within
Originals see the world as they live in it
Originals don’t mind liking what others dislike
Originals take self-willedness as a compliment

Originals write their own story
Originals choose their own music
Originals dance their own dance
Originals live their own legend

Are you an original?