Health and Psychology

I have a sign up at my office at the Westwood Counseling Center.  There's a flying pig over the sign that suggests both the aspirational nature of the saying and the impossibility of living up to it.  It says that "My mission is to inspire people to be their best self and to inspire others to bring out the best in the people they come in contact with and to inspire them as well.  Nothing can stand in my way.  There is always a way.  There is always time."

Having that idea changes me.  It changes how I see my job.  It changes how I interact with my life as it unfolds.  It changes my students and my supervisees.  The idea produces drive, ambition, and purpose.  It produces those in the face of any and all obsticles.  It forms resilience.  The idea battles ambiguity, doubt and tyranny.  it makes me, as an individual, both responsible and goal oriented.  It forces ethical consideration in the aspirational sense rather than in the risk management sense.  It forces me to be clear, direct, and purposeful.

Those things are all hard.  There are lots of forces that would make it easy to avoid confrontation, avoid introspection, avoid honesty, and just get things done rather than do them right.  But that's not the mission. 

The mission is to use inspiration as aspiration and to use that to inspire others.  There are always things that get in the way.  I get tired.  I run out of time.  I run out of resources.  I fall short.  I'm human.  But the purpose is to go on despite all that.

It's something you may want to try.  Being your best self and inspiring that happening in others.