Personal mission statement

This should reflect your core values, be your higher calling at work, and sustain your motivation to not only keep going, but to keep improving.

There are few things in my life that have fueled my desire to thrive in my profession more than my personal mission statement. My personal mission statement reflects my core values, is my higher calling at work, and sustains my motivation to not only keep going, but to keep improving.

Before I connected with my mission, my motivation for completing projects was that I was helping my clients, increasing my monthly billing, getting a larger bonus, and working as a part of a team to get the project done. These are all important and good things. They each have had their place in my life, but they were not inspiring.

I love what I do. I get to work on projects all over the country designing systems to provide construction workers arm’s length access to bridges and buildings, and designing systems to structurally support the bridges and buildings. I get to be creative. And, I get to train others to do the same. But, even though I love my career, my motivation to complete projects fluctuates. I was grasping at external fixed-end motivators that were neither leading me to a higher calling nor were they sustainable.

My motivation fluctuations got me thinking – could there be something that provides sustainable motivation? My question led me to ask others these questions:

1. What is your personal mission statement you work by?
2. What is your number one priority at work?

I got answers like “bill as much as I can,” “get more clients,” and “design safe systems.” Again, all good things, but I do not believe these provide long-term inspiration to keep going.

To be effective and sustainable, I believe a personal mission statement should be your heart’s song. The thing you connect with to your core. When you’re supporting your clients, developing your team, or increasing your billing, you should do these things through the lens of your personal mission statement.

If you choose to develop a personal mission statement, it will be what you use to identify if you connect with your company culture, determine how many hours you work, and set your priorities at work and for your life. When you decide to write your statement take a half day at work, or spend time on the weekend, but make sure to be intentional. Be somewhere that inspires your creativity, listen to music, or go for a hike – I have found that externally supporting what I am trying to do helps me write, dream, and be curious about what can be. Get a huge piece of paper and make a spider map of times in your life that brought you joy, times you were fulfilled to your core, or you connected with something larger than yourself. Your statement will be the core from which you will develop your goals.

Josh Rubero, PE is a branch manager for DH Charles Engineering's Colorado office. He can be reached at joshr@dhcharles.com.