The most important aspect this week is to look at our brain's perspective in order to see how we can utilize to develop our Personal Mission Statement.
If we use the brain dominance theory as a model, it becomes evident that the quality of our first creation is significantly impacted by our ability to use our creative right brain. The more we are able to draw upon our right brain capacity, the more fully will we be able to visualize, synthesize, transcend time and present circumstances, to project a holistic picture of what we want to do and be in life.
Expand perspective.
Sometimes we are knocked out of our left brain environment and thought patterns into the right brain by an unplanned experience. The death of a loved one, a severe illness, a financial setback, or extreme adversity can cause us to stand back, look at our lives, and ask ourselves some hard questions: "What's really important? Why am I doing what I'm doing?"
But if you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own and visualize many things you want to achieve in life, personal and professional. You can visualize your retirement from your present occupation. What contributions, what achievements will you want to have made in your field? What plans will you have after retirement? Will you enter a second career? Expand your mind, visualize in rich detail and involve as many emotions and feelings as possible and as many of the sense as you can.
There are a number of techniques using your imagination that can put you in touch with your values. But the net effect of everyone I have ever used is the same. When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and do, they become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and tomorrow.
Visualization and
affirmation
Personal leadership is not a singular experience and it doesn't begin and end with the writing of a personal mission statement. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things. And in that effort, your powerful right brain capacity can be a great help to you on a daily basis as you work to integrate your personal mission statement into your life. It's another application of "begin with the end in mind".
Let's go back to an example we mentioned before. Suppose I am a parent who deeply loves my children. Suppose I identify that as one of my fundamental values in my personal mission statement. But suppose, on a daily basis, I have trouble overreacting.
I can use my right brain power of visualization to write an "affirmation" that will help me become more congruent with my deeper values in my daily life.
A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, positive, present tense, visual, and emotional. So I might write something like this: "It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that I (personal) respond (present tense) with wisdom, love, firmness, and self-control (positive) when my children misbehave."
Then I can visualize it, spend a few minutes each day and totally relax my mind and body. I can think about situations in which my children might misbehave and visualize them in rich detail. I can feel the texture of the chair I might be sitting on, the floor under my feet, and the clothes I'm wearing. I can see the dress my daughter has on, the expression on her face. The more clearly and vividly I imagine the details, the more deeply I will experience it, and the less I will see it as a spectator.
Then I can see her do something very specific which normally makes my heart pound and my temper start to flare. But instead of seeing my normal response, I can see myself handle the situation with all the love, power and self-control I have captured in my affirmation.
I can write the programme and the script, in harmony with my values, with my personal mission statement.
Think about this visualization and we’ll see more of it next week.
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