Personal mantra anyone?

Spend some time on Google with "personal mantra" and see what turns up for you. 

Apparently, mission statements, at both personal and corporate levels, are becoming passé.  Something to do with length, actual utility and impact. 

The new move is toward the shorter, more focused and memorable personal or corporate mantra--one to four word commitments that shape life, value and action consistently. 

One way to understand this notion is to consider how work and life are not only ordered, but what is the fundamental value proposition relative to how daily life and work roll out.  What is the fundamental commitment of my organization?  What about my own life, day by day?

The video below gets at the organizational mantra.  I think you'll find it challenging.

But, on a personal basis, what is the one indispensable commitment, truth, action or goal that I bring to every day and to every situation and encounter inside every day, no matter where I am, who I am with or what I am doing?

Here's mine:  Listen carefully.  Listen constantly. 

What's your personal mantra? 

Finding New Focus

While I love the excitement and the "feel" of the calendar turning off into a new year, resolutions have never been much help to me.

What I find myself needing most has to do with, well, I suppose you could call it "focus."

Energy runs right up against focus though! Maybe the way to put it is I'm looking for the energy to discover a new, motivating focus as I move out into what we call 2009.

Today I am thinking that the dimensions of my new focus won't be very complicated.

Whatever I do, I want to be more inclusive, of people, of new ideas, of different opinions, of new ways of working. Ironically, in order to get clearer and more precise about matters, I need to mess things up even more by including lots of other factors, relationships and data. I need to find new sources of information, developed from a different context and perspective. I need to find new friends who work in fields that are unknown to me. I need to see, to witness new developments, events, happenings.

But then, I want to be more on task in the day-to-day stuff. I'm determined to waste less time, to spend the hours I have in more productive ways. I mean, I don't have to be distracted or concerned about everything!

Again, there is a tension here. Sometimes inclusion butts heads with mission. But I know that if people become more of a priority for me, this conflict will sort itself out in some very surprising and creative ways. I' ve been here before!

So, I want to be quieter, more reflective, more eager to listen and to understand; and not just ideas, but people. If at this time next year I am feeling any satisfaction, even a measure of renewed contentment, I know it will be because I have found new ways to be with the folks who define the focus I'm out to discover.

How about you?

Happy New Year!
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Focus

"We need a focus. A main thing. Something bigger than skin cream or tennis shoes that reminds us of the purpose of it all. If we expect to regain a more simple heart, a more centered pace for our day, we need to order our lives in specific ways."

David and Barbara Sorensen