🚀 How To Create Your Mission 🧠
Freedom, autonomy, purpose and impacy.
4-minute read.
For a deeper insight into creating your mission, check out the video 👆
Multipotentialites need to know two things.
You don’t have to be one thing
You need a mission
Niching -Fucking- Down
It doesn’t work.
That’s hardly news, right?!
We hate being squeezed into tiny boxes.
And we get bored.
Niching down is zooming in to be one thing i.e. to be a web designer or be an illustrator.
But as the existential philosophers said: we’re not human beings, we’re human becomings as we’re constantly evolving and creating new identities.
This is why we can’t niche down.
We can’t be one thing.
We’re always evolving to become something else.
So what is the alternative? It’s to niche up our hard skills to complete a mission.
We have been socially conditioned to be one thing.
How old were you when you were asked “What will you be when you grow up?”
I was about 3 or 4 IIRC.
Upon creating the American education system, John D Rockefeller was quoted saying “ I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers”
The education system is structured to create educated workers who will be one thing for 50 years and then retire and die.
This is not you — or me.
But we need a mission.
Missions
Why are missions so important?
👉 Decision making
👉 Clarity
👉 Focus
👉 Emotionally attachment
My divergent brain generates several business-related ideas daily.
All of them are peachy ideas.
Without a filter, I’m going to get stuck spinning my wheels.
My mission is to help other multipotentialites share their ideas and fulfil their creative potential.
This is my filter.
Does this idea help or hinder my mission?
It’s a binary choice.
Yes or No.
If it hinders my mission I discount the idea instantly.
A mission simplifies business decision-making.
This saves me energy.
Not to mention the stress of overthinking.
It gives me clarity and focus.
A mission provides resilience.
Being emotionally attached to my mission helps me overcome adversity as I’m part of a mission that is bigger than me.
It stops me from getting bored.
We all need a mission.
Multipotentialite Mission Examples 👇
Tim Ferris’s mission is lifestyle design and human potential.
Why?
He was stuck running a business that was burning him out and making him miserable.
Solution: He did a series of experiments to redesign his lifestyle gaining him freedom to travel and experiment.
Mission: He wrote the best-selling book: 4-hour work week. The book goes on to sell 2.1 million copies.
This spawned podcasts, TV shows etc.
Maya Angelou’s mission was to use her creative talents to advocate for equality, empower individuals, celebrate Black culture, inspire personal growth, and educate and mentor future generations.
Skills used: Poetry, Activism, Public speaking and writing books.
Dr Seuss’s mission was to inspire kids to read more as the children’s books of the time were bland.
He was challenged by William Spaulding, director of Houghton Mifflin's educational division, to write a story using the vocabulary list of 348 words for first graders to learn.
Dr. Seuss accepted the challenge and "The Cat in the Hat" was born.
Skills used: Poetry, Illustration, Storytelling, Creative writing.
These are famous examples.
This is one of my former clients.
Susanna was stuck but created a mission. She is from a fashion background.
She recognised that major brands were ignoring Gen X so she started a mission for Gen X women to be seen and heard.
She has gone viral several times getting millions of impressions on Linkedin.
She has started a magazine and community.
What do all these multipotentialites have in common?
They have/ had a mission.
This clarity meant they could focus their hard and soft skills to solve the problem.
This makes decision-making easier.
They could ask themselves, “Does this idea help or hinder my mission?”
How to create your mission
What is the mission statement of your movement?
This is the most important question.
All movements solve a problem.
2) Who are you solving it for?
Me? It’s fellow multipotentialites
Dr Seuss helped first graders entertainingly learn vocabulary.
Tim Ferris helped stressed-out people redesign their lives and fulfil their potential without burning out.
Susanna Hancock inspires Gen X women by helping them feel seen and heard.
3) Help the younger version of yourself
We all experience problems that piss us off.
There are over 8 billion people on the planet connected by the internet.
Whatever pisses you off will also piss off hundreds of thousands of others, perhaps even tens if millions of others.
Start a mission around the problem.
4) Reverse engineer the solution
Solve the problem or name the ache.
Then reverse engineer the solutions/ and or platforms to your hard skills and soft skills to build your movement.
5) Niche Up Hard and Soft Skills
To start your movement
What are your hard and soft skills?
See the graphic above ⬆️
Donald Glover a.k.a Childish Gambino’s mission is to use his creativity as social commentary surrounding racism, mental health and social mobility for Black Americans.
He uses his Grammy-winning music and his Golden Globe-winning TV show, Atlanta, which he writes, directs and stars in as a vehicle for his mission.
I’ve broken down his multipotentialite mission in the graphic below.
Check out the video for an explanation of how you can apply this to your situation.
Hope this helps ✌️