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31 Day Reset: Day 6 – A Balancing Act of Values

nonprofitchapin2 Comments

I’m participating in the 31 Days to Reset Your Life program at Happy Black Woman. The program is designed to help you evaluate your goals and priorities and think of them in the context of your life today and how you might be able to refocus on what’s important. Read on to learn about my experience with the challenge!

This was a difficult one!! Today we developed our personal mission statement. Rosetta quoted the following as the definition of a personal mission statement:

Your personal mission statement should be a concise representation of what’s most important to you, what you desire to focus on, what you want to achieve, and, ultimately, who you want to become. In its purest form, it’s an approach to your life, one that allows you to identify a focus of energy, creativity, and vision in living a life in support of your inner-most beliefs and values.

Um, yeah. That sounds really easy. No!!! This was difficult. But Rosetta told us to focus on our values and values in action to create this statement. Once I took each value and wrote out a sentence for it, things flowed a little better.

Well, it’s always changing, but here’s what I’ve come up with!

I always live with my values in balance, making sure everything that’s important to me gets the attention it deserves (and nothing gets too much). It’s important to me to always be a role model to others by acting with integrity, being compassionate and generous, and showing quiet conviction. I incorporate leadership into my life by showing initiative, going for opportunities at full force, and always acting with respect for others. I make a difference and will leave a legacy by paying it forward at every opportunity, creating big lasting change, and impacting others through my actions and attitude. It’s important to me to always be generous, always contributing to the nonprofit sector (with time and money) and being available to my friends and family. I make it a priority to spend time with those I love and who love me, deeply connecting with them and encouraging them to challenge me. I value learning from others and make it a priority to expose myself to new people and perspectives and put myself in new situations so I can form new connections.

I would love to hear your thoughts, especially those of you who know me and can tell me: do any of these things surprise you? Are there elements you think are obvious in the way I act? Unbelievable? I know how I feel, but would love to know what my friends and family think!

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 4 – My Top Ten Values

nonprofitchapin4 Comments

I’m participating in the 31 Days to Reset Your Life program at Happy Black Woman. The program is designed to help you evaluate your goals and priorities and think of them in the context of your life today and how you might be able to refocus on what’s important. Read on to learn about my experience with the challenge!

I had a leg up on Day 4’s exercise, because I’ve actually done something similar before. We were asked to take some time to write down everything we value, anything that we care about – at least more than 12. Then, we needed to designate from that list the ten we felt were at the top.

In the previous exercise I did, I had narrowed it down to five. I did the original exercise with Deirdre Maloney; you can read about her company Momentum San Diego here. And not surprisingly, those five were on my list again (I didn’t do the exercise that long ago). But I found my additional five to be very interesting. I had to very, very selective to do the first five – but now I had the opportunity to list other parts of my life that were important.

My original five: Being generous, leadership, leaving a legacy, love, making a difference

The five I added tonight: Being a role model, connecting with others, having a family, integrity, succeeding in my career

I think being a role model and connecting with others are the two that jump out to me most. Being a role model perhaps is my elaboration of leadership, leaving a legacy, and making a difference all at the same time. It’s important to me to always conduct myself in a way that others respect and love. I also value making connections – this is why my friendships and relationships with my family are so important to me – because connecting with others is an important part of my life.

I encourage you to do this exercise, too! Doing the original five was so eye opening to me, and allowed me to understand the underlying motivation for everything I do.

-N.C.