Pundits, gurus and hacks of all kinds talk about “Finding your Mission.” Some of them know what they are talking about, but many of them are just trying to separate you from your money.

The truth is that you know your Mission. Down underneath, where you live but are often afraid to look, you know your Mission.

Someone once put it this way. “If you had unlimited time, money and talent what would you do?” And, I will add “if you weren’t afraid that someone you love would laugh at you in disbelief.” For me the answer was always “Write.” This was my Mission (caps intentional) and for me the corollary of Write was Pursue the Human Potential. Study the ways that we humans pursue, expand and achieve our potential.

I hid from this, and massaged it into many other things. I was growing up on a Kansas farm and the most important virtue there was practicality. “Be practical!” I heard that a Million times a year. (That is 2,740 times a day, or 172 times an hour in a 16 hour day… or 2.8 times a minute… and yes, that seems about right.) Building another line of fence was always more important than building a future, let alone reading another book, no matter how it drew me.

Still, I remained a writer and a thinker. In the 5^th grade I produced my first Philosophic proof, and by the 8^th grade I was kicked out of religion classes for asking questions the Priest couldn’t answer. He seemed to really dislike the fact that I did my homework, AND studied up on his “answers.”

My son enters 5th grade this fall. He is much like me; can I help him avoid my mistakes? As hackneyed as it sounds, only time will tell.

So, there I was a writer and a thinker trapped on a farm in Northeastern Kansas. The local library was closed most of the time, and I could never get there when it was open. One time about 6th grade I set up a card table in a spare bedroom. On it I put my mother’s cheap, but nearly new electric typewriter. I was determined to crank out stories. I will never forget when the mother that I loved dearly showed a few unfinished, unedited pages to friends of hers without asking. My embarrassment was palpable.  I never again wrote openly at home.

I will go back to this many times… you know your mission. Have the courage to fight for it.

I knew it at 10, but with lots of help from loving and well meaning people I found the strength to ignore it. For decades. Ouch!

My advice here is DON’T. Don’t delay. Don’t stop. Don’t give in. And, Don’t stop working to be who you really are.

Sit down and unearth your Mission today. Get a cup of coffee in some comfortable space, and spend a single hour writing down what you love to do, and what you wish you did every day, and all those things that you were always good at.  I will say that again… write down all those things that you were always good at. It is the things that come easily, that we often ignore. If it comes easily, it often doesn’t seem important, but it may be the most important thing.

Now file away the notes. Do the exercise again in a week or a month. Then pull out the first list and take a long look. Likely you know what you will find. Believe it.

Ok… there may be a few of you reading this who found your Mission long ago. But, I challenge you. If you read all the way to the end of this article, I will bet that something is missing. Do the same exercise; use it to refine your Mission. Use it to get even more on track.

Now set it up and go do it. Make it happen. Remember, if you are not on Mission, it is just your life that you are wasting.

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The best help I ever found on the question of a personal Mission was Stephen Covey’s work. But, despite the fact that I have devoured many, many non-fiction works I found his somewhat inaccessible. It wasn’t until I began listening to Covey read his own work that I began to “get it.”  Below is a link  to his Seven Habits book.  You can use the link to buy the book, or to find his used CD sets at a discount.   And yes, (smile) this is a commercial message… if you buy something there I will get a tiny bit of commission.

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“What you do instead of your real work, is your real work.” (Roger Ebert)

Today, a few wise people are beginning to “get” a critical issue.   They say: “Do what you love.”  Gary Vaynerchuk hammers away at it.  So does Seth Godin.  Pavlina must have written 500 posts related to this.  Stephen Covey and Jack Canfield have made helping others find their Life’s Work into their Life’s Work.

Think about the quote above.  “What you do instead of your real work, is your real work.”  Do you go to the garage to work on projects?  Do you write?   Do you code?  What do your friends ask your advice about?  Are you a Cyclist or a Martial Artist?  Is there something that you do, just because you love the doing?  That is your real work. 

 This is simple, but painfully profound. 

Jack Canfield put it like this: “Discover what you love to do as early as possible.  Then arrange your life around making a living at it.”

With today’s technology you can make your living doing almost anything.  Vaynerchuk’s favorite example is Smurfs.  He says that if you really, really love Smurfs then you can make $60k a year talking about Smurfs.  Not being a Smurf lover, I won’t test this out.  But you get the idea.  Watch yourself closely.  What do you do, or wish you did?  What kinds of interactions do you need?  What kind do you miss?  What is remarkable from your past? 

Warren Beatty summed it up well when he said: ”Success is when you don’t know if you’re working or playing.”  This kind of life begins by choosing to do what you love to do.

Begin today, don’t waste the only Life you really own.

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In a limited number of important instances they have chosen to stay focused  and driven until they get thru the Dip.  Tne Dip is that difficult spot where you have been working hard for a long time and it seems like you are getting nowhere.  Maybe you are applying to your 20th grad school or you struggling thru the 3rd year of your business.  Maybe you are at that point where no one believes in you, or what you are doing, or what you stand for… that spot is the dip.  The 100 billion dollar question is simple.  Is this the Dip before it all takes wings to fly or is this the inexorable sag that you can’t and shouldn’t try to prop up. 

I understand that feeling, both the situation and the decision are brutal.  I tried to prop a business like that up.  If I had read the Dip a couple of years earlier, (Ok, ok it was published in 2007 and I needed it in 20005 or 2006) things could have been a lot different.  My advice is read the Dip.  Spend some time figuring out which Dips you must push thru and which you must simply quit.  Quit those now.  Don’t wait.  The truly important should never be at the mercy of the unimportant.  Can’t decide which is which?  That is a tough one and a subject for another day.  Hint:  Stephen Covey said a lot about this, so did Jack Canfield.