If you confuse what you do with why you are doing it you will experience frustration, burnout, and lower productivity.
Your purpose comes from who you are. Your mission is the avenue of fulfilling your purpose. It is what you do. What you do is not who you are. When these becomes confused, all sorts of problems arise on your journey.
Your Identity
The popular idea of your “identity” has taken many forms. The term “I’m an accountant” is really an expression of what you do. You are not an accountant, if you stop doing accounting when you retire or change careers, are you still an accountant? You DO accounting. That is not who you are.
Burnout comes when we mistake what we do for who we are. You can love your job or what you do but not be fulfilled. Find your purpose first and then look for the mission that will fulfill that purpose.
Purpose comes from who we are, our God-given talents, skills, knowledge, abilities, personality, and even our experiences. When that is combined with what we are passionate about we will have a much better idea of our purpose. From an understanding of why we are here we are able to look at the variety of possible missions that fulfill that purpose.
What To Do
Mission is what you do to fulfill your purpose. People spend a whole lot of time stressing over what to do without thinking about why they are here in the first place. Your work, job or business is a means to fulfilling your purpose. If that mission is removed, you are not done. You still have a purpose, now find the next best mission to continue to fulfill your purpose. This is how you prevent burnout.
To be clear, your purpose is “the why” that drives your life. Mission is the vehicle or “the what” to accomplish that purpose. When we make anything that we do (being an accountant, even being a mom or dad) into who we are, we are setting ourselves up for a hard road ahead. Roles and responsibilities, like your mission will change, but your purpose in life will not.
“Chart Your Course, Change Your World!”
Stan Broesder
Leadership Mapping
