“If you had to describe yourself using just one word, what would it be?”

Everyone answered more quickly than me. I take questions like that pretty seriously, and found myself irrationally afraid of answering incorrectly. The closest I came to was “connected” because it has many meanings I think apply to me (though my second choice of “geek” would have been fairly accurate as well).

That question, and the process I went through to get to an answer, got me thinking on another path. Maybe the appropriate follow-up question would be:

“If you could choose one word to be described as by everyone who knows you, what would it be?”

What do you aspire to be remembered as, as opposed to what you believe you would be remembered as today. How would you like to be able to most accurately describe yourself? In one sense this is harder than the first question, because it’s more theoretical and less concrete than the question asked of me by my friend on that trail in the woods. But in another sense, it is easier in its lack of need to be based on the reality of now. It is an opportunity to create a new, somewhat different shade of you.

As alluded to in a recent post, I have been working on focusing my life through a simple, specific set of goals or, if you will, mission statements. Between last night and this morning, I came closer than ever to figuring out what one of the big mission statements ought to be. It came partially out of conversation with a friend last night (in a bar this time rather than in a forest) and partially while walking this morning along a canal with my wife. This new mission statement is:

“To inspire myself and others through my actions. To be outstanding in the pursuit of my goals. To be generous in my respect for and trust in others, so that others may come to trust and respect my generosity.”

To be remembered, in one word, as “Inspiring”. That’s my dream.

What’s yours?

I have noticed life beginning to nudge me in another direction lately. Not to move completely away from my JoAT style, but to rebalance and refocus. The balance point is difficult to pinpoint for me. On one side of it, I’m too focused on too few things, and some things I’m responsible fall through the cracks. That can be remedied either by reducing the level of focus on what I am paying attention to, or by removing some of the things I’ve taken ownership of without necessarily having need to. The other side of the balance is where I feel I am now, spread so thin that I can’t afford to focus on anything too much because there’s too much that needs my attention. In fact, there is so much demanding my attention right now, it’s nearly impossible to focus on anything but the essentials for very long at all. (Look at how long it has been since my last blog post here, for example.)

Brad Bollenbach recently wrote about keeping things simple. Provided within that writing is the following list of questions, which I have decided is a good starting point for figuring out how to find my focal balance again.

• What’s my goal?
• How will I know when I’ve achieved it?
• How am I measuring my progress?
• How well is my current approach working?

A clear example of something I can apply these questions to is the work I’ve been doing on my book. My goal is to write a book anyone can use to figure out what their passions are in life, how to spend more time doing things that strengthen the things they are passionate about, and why you’d want to spend more time doing that. (That’s probably too long of a mission statement, but it’s where I am right now). I’ll know I’ve achieved it when the final manuscript is sitting in my hands and the hands of my publisher. So far so good. But… I’m really not measuring my progress. I don’t even have a loose, qualitative way to express my progress on it. So that’s a huge question mark, and something easily indicative of a lack of focus on the project. My current approach is so-so. I’m collecting lots of information, and the concept is getting more and more refined, but I need to get a lot more organized about the project.

I’m going to work through this more over the weekend and report back in a blog post update.

• “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer
• “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas A Edison
• “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” – Winston Churchill

As I read it, I was suddenly transported back in time to countless arguments I had with my father (the high school English teacher) about different words being corrupted by our ignorant culture and/or miscreant youth. I remember the day it dawned on me that people using language in different ways is how language comes to exist in the first place, how it evolves and new meanings are added to the dictionary so as to keep the good folks at the dictionary-printing factory employed. I remember that day, because despite the seeming infallibility of that argument, my father dismissed it.

Sometimes, despite knowing it is the way of things and there is no stopping it, corruption of words just drives some people nuts – even me! Yes, I’d like to say I’m immune, but I have my own lexicon-based pet peeves (whoever is responsible for turning sherbet into a word most pronounce sherbert should be dragged out into the street and beaten with a hardcover Merriam Webster’s).