I love it when a plan comes together

If you’re a content creator like me, then you’ve done a similar exercise.

In this last issue of this series, we’re going to be taking everything that’s been shared this week and distilling it down to a simple, clear, and concise statement that states your values as your personal elevator pitch. It’s a great opening for anyone that you’re meeting for the first time, and it’s also a powerful reference point for how well you present yourself in public.

It also makes for a nice tagline when stripped down further.

Simple is profit

Mark Thompson uses this phrase for his content creation newsletter.

It’s clear, straightforward, and it implies a sense that most of what we face in life is all in our heads. While his focus is on how to build a system to create products and monetizing your work, it can be used as a springboard into any discipline beyond this field. When we make mountains out of molehills, it’s likely due to some sense of reluctance somewhere in our minds when it comes to moving forward with an endeavor that requires deep commitment but also has a potential for great rewards.

You don’t have to go far to see slogans and taglines that have this kind of direct approach. Everywhere you go, you can see it.

• Billboards - “Just do it.” - Nike

• Book titles - “The Obstacle is the Way” - Ryan Holiday

• Periodicals - anything on the cover of any magazine

If you’re as oversubscribed as I am, you most likely see value statements in your inbox.

Let’s start putting together yours.

Tinkering with the chemistry set

Every single issue this week has provided a piece of this puzzle:

• Why values as the core of your legacy

• Clarifying on your values

• Principles as values in action

• Living your values in all aspects of life

• Inherited and chosen values and the impermanence of them

• Passing your values on through principles

• Tying it all together

All of these lessons are meant to drive towards helping you create your personal statement, your credo, your raison d’etre, your north star or objective in life at the moment. Every season has its focus, and that’s why it’s good to treat this exercise as a living document. The digital heirloom isn’t set in stone. It’s a chronicle of each chapter that you wish to pass on so that those who come after can learn and gain insight from your lessons.

At one point, my statement was “I’m always around.”

Superman is one of my fictional role models, so you can guess that I adopted that statement from the 2006 reboot.

While your statement doesn’t have to boil down to a single tagline at that level, it does have to have three qualities:

• brief

• memorable

• sincere

What did I mean when I adopted that line?

My values were cleanliness, community, self-development, academics, and physical fitness. At the time, I was focused on taking care of myself physically and mentally as I pushed towards finishing my degrees, pursuing a Masters and my PhD. I was also very committed to my contributions as a member of a multi-cultural dance team on campus. Those two activities took up a vast majority of my time, and I devoted myself to being available to both my colleagues and my team members regardless of the time of day.

So yes…”I’m always around” pretty much summed up my credo until I completed my degrees and graduated in 2010.

Thoughts to take from this week

Even if you haven’t taken any time to write down any of your values or flip through the moments of your life, these lessons will hopefully allow your brain to work in the background. You can’t help but think about them if you’ve read up to this point (and it can’t hurt).

Here’s a framework to get you going:

1. Write down between three and five values that motivate your life.

2. For each value, write a sentence or two concerning the actions that demonstrate your commitment to them. These are your principles. If you can’t do this, then it’s not really a value to you.

3. In each action that you wrote down, label it as something you do in your personal, professional, or both aspects of your life.

4. For each value, also label them as either inherited (passed to you from your parents or mentors), or chosen (something you’ve decided that was important to you).

5. Write a sentence or two concerning how you would pass these values on to your children or how you would go about showing others how you have done so in your life.

6. Take everything you’ve written from the first five points here and put it together into a statement. This is the beginning of your personal statement, your “values manifesto” as they say.

7. Edit this blurb down to a sentence or two. From these sentences, see if you can distill it down to a phrase that encapsulates your values.

If you complete this exercise, not only will you have a concise statement you can make as an introduction for yourself, but you now have a metric or reference point for when you are unsure about what to do in your life.

As usual, I’m going to take a little break from this and write about a few thoughts that have been floating around in my head recently.

The next topic will be about resilience and overcoming challenges…something we all love to hate, right?