The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

IDENTIFYING ROLES AND GOALS
Of course, the logical/verbal left brain becomes important also as you
attempt to capture your right brain images, feelings, and pictures in the
words of a written mission statement. Just as breathing exercises help
integrate body and mind, writing is a kind of psycho-neural muscular
activity which helps bridge and inte grate the conscious and subconscious
minds. Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break
the whole into parts.
We each have a number of different roles in our lives—different areas or
capacities in which we have responsibility. I may, for example, have a role
as an individual, a husband, a father, a teacher, a church member, and a
businessman. And each of these roles is important.
One of the major problems that arises when people work to become more
effective in life is that they don’t think broadly enough. They lose the sense
of proportion, the balance, the natural ecology necessary to effective living.
They may get consumed by work and neglect personal health. In the name
of professional success, they may neglect the most precious relationships in
their lives.
You may find that your mission statement will be much more balanced,
much easier to work with, if you break it down into the specific role areas
of your life and the goals you want to accomplish in each area. Look at your
professional role. You might be a salesperson, or a manager, or a product

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developer. What are you about in that area? What are the values that should
guide you? Think of your personal roles—husband, wife, father, mother,
neighbor, friend. What are you about in those roles? What’s important to
you? Think of community roles—the political area, public service,
volunteer organizations.
One executive has used the idea of roles and goals to create the following
mission statement: