Making a Statement

"I want to use my empathy, intuition, creativity, and leadership skills to help youth and young adults, particularly young women and girls, feel heard and valued. I want to help them build the confidence and skills to be healthy, resilient, and engaged individuals, so that they can in turn build healthy, resilient and engaged communities."

This is my personal purpose statement.

Believe me, it's scary to put it out there because it's not fully refined, it may change in a year or month or two, or I may never fulfill this "purpose". But for now, there it is.

This all came about because my boss encouraged me to develop a professional development plan. I've never made one before, so I signed up for a workshop at Compass Point on exactly that. I don't know what I was expecting, but this far exceeded what I had anticipated and I left really energized.

Through a few exercises, we were encouraged to think about and explore our:

• Unique contributions (core attributes, skills, talents and values)
• Central concern (the people, communities, and/or issues that we would like to focus on)
• Desired impact or outcome (what you hope will be achieved; your aspiration)

Those three elements are combined to form a personal purpose statement. It seems simple, but I honestly don't think I could have come up with this without the guidance and structure of the class. I have had so many thoughts and ideas throughout the past few years about what I'm passionate about, what type of job I should seek out, where I'd like my career to go, but had never challenged myself to be so bold as to sum it up in one statement. I somehow had never thought to link up my unique contributions, my central concern, or my desired impact in this way. I always had framed it before as "What is my passion?" or "What is my purpose?", which were much too daunting to answer. Again, it seems simple, because it is, but having a new way to think about things is sometimes all you need. It was also helpful to work through this process in a nonjugdmental space with people who knew nothing about me or my work. I felt like I could fully claim my strengths and talents, without worrying if others were silently disagreeing. 

After we wrote our statements, we had to share them with a partner and talk about how it felt to say this statement out loud. For me, it was hard to say out loud and put it out there, because of my fear that I will never accomplish it. It also made me uneasy because it raised a lot of questions in my mind about how my current position aligns with this purpose, and what I might need to do outside of my job to work towards this. 

We also had to say how we will remind ourselves of this purpose statement. I decided that I would put mine on this blog. 

I'm so grateful that the workshop motivated me to think more strategically about my career, from a place of personal strengths. I've got a few more ideas floating around in my head about how to leverage what I learned today and translate that into action. Let's hope this spark lasts! I hope to keep the conversation going here, and offline with anyone who's interested.