Very early this morning I made my way to the 23rd annual High Tech Prayer Breakfast at the invite of Kyle Porter. Billing itself as the “earliest networking event on the planet” networking began at 5:59am without me.

As always the program was very uplifting. And it reminded me of the event that I went to back in 2004 when Pat Gelsinger, then CTO of Intel, now CEO of VMware, motivated me to read his book and make the time to write down a personal mission, values, and goal statement. Upon reflection today I highly recommend that everyone do the same.

I have never written my vision and purpose publicly. Here they are.

I believe in a world of authentic leadership where stated values do an excellent job of serving customers, providing meaningful work, delivering exceptional returns, and being a force of good (hence the name of the blog) in the community. This is heavily influenced by my time at MindSpring and I am sure if Charles Brewer ever reads this he will smile.

My purpose in life is to be a loving husband, attentive father, and values based business leader. I intend to lead the growth of organizations and communities so that others may have opportunities to enrich their lives. Sometimes I fall short at doing these things, but it serves as a compass for me.

I have written about my personal values and life goals previously.

With all that said what I learned two things today from Dr. Christopher Kersey, whose background is so perfect it almost makes you laugh in disbelief. One is that I can not control everything, and I am going to stop trying to do that in areas where my control freakness is not helpful at all. Two is that it’s not about me. So back to the point at hand.

I highly recommend that you create your own personal mission, values, and goal statement. Pat’s book has a great outline for doing so. The one I read, Balancing Your Family, Faith and Work seems to be out of print but is available used for less then $4 on Amazon.

Invest the time to create a your own personal mission, values, and goal statement. You will be glad that you did.