Join Mike as he embarks on a thought-provoking expedition of self-discovery and personal growth. This episode is a candid exploration of his personal mission statement inspired by the challenge from David Goggins. As Mike unpacks his core principles,he dives into the significance of committing to improvement in all aspects of life, the vitality of curiosity and continual learning, staying true to one’s word, and the importance of accessibility and affability. This is an episode you wouldn’t want to miss, stuffed with practical wisdom and actionable steps you can undertake in your personal journey.
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Episode transcript below:
0:00:00 – Mike Malatesta
This episode is sponsored by the DreamExit. The DreamExit is a private bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between $5 million and $100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their DreamExit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized DreamExit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post-exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dreamexits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million and you want to learn how to 10x to 100x your chances of achieving the DreamExit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. Hey everybody, welcome back to the how to Happen podcast, so happy to have you here and today on this free Thinking Friday episode, I am going to be talking to you about a personal mission statement and I will tell you that I’ve never had a personal mission statement until today, at least, I haven’t had one that’s been written down. I guess there’s like a lot of things in my life. I tend to well, at this point in my life at least, I tend to be pretty sure about who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing. But I was listening to David Goggins and if you haven’t heard of David Goggins you can look him up. He’s a phenomenal human being in terms of an athlete, a thinker and just a hard to kill person, and he’s probably most famous for his book, which is called Can’t Hurt Me, which I read and I loved. But anyway, david was talking about his personal mission statement and he was sort of challenging people to have a personal mission statement and because I respect him, it made me start thinking about what my personal mission statement might look like if I had one. And so I put one together and I’m just going to go through it and the points of it, the bullets of it, and see if it resonates with you. And I’d be interested how you think about your personal mission statement, whether you have one, whether you think it’s important or whether this podcast makes you think about thinking about your personal mission statement a little bit more than perhaps you were before. So I’ve got a number of bullet points. I’m just going to go through them.
Number one make things better. So I feel like my role in life not just in my family, but in my businesses and my professional and my coaching is to make things better. I feel like I manifest that by, first and foremost and I think this drives my life crazy sometimes but I clean up. I love cleaning up messes, even if they’re not my mess, like, for instance, in the men’s bathroom. You know, oftentimes the towels, the paper towels miss the trash basket and they’re on the floor, and I always make a point of trying to clean those up, for example, or clean up the sink around it, which is it’s not in my business, probably doesn’t get noticed and doesn’t mean anything to anybody else, but it helps me live my mission every day of making things better as a result of me being involved in them. So that’s number one.
Number two be interested and curious. There’s no excuse for me not to learn something new every day. You probably feel the same way no excuse in the world not to learn something new every single day. And by being interested and curious, it prompts me to want to know more about all kinds of things that I run into every day and so when I see something I’m interested in it, I’m curious about it, I write a note if I can’t explore it right away, if I can’t explore it right away I do, I look it up or I ask chat GPT about it, and I just want to satisfy that right away so that I know that as soon as I’m interested and curious about something, I can learn about it right away.
Next one is do what I say and be where I need to be. This is an easy thing to put down on a personal mission statement and I think it’s a lot more difficult for you and I to really live this as a mission statement. Do what I say. That sounds super easy and it should be easy actually should be easy to do what you say. But sometimes you say things and situations change, or people change or whatever, or you said something just to be convenient, so that you could get out of a situation, and you end up not doing what you say. People remember that and they don’t remember it in a good way.
Be where I need to be here’s one of my pet peeves people who sign up to volunteer for an organization, let’s say, and they know that the commitment is going to be one meeting a month for the year, or one meeting a quarter for the year. They sign up for that, they agree to do it and then they don’t show up. They just don’t show up and I don’t know what’s going on in someone’s mind when they just don’t show up, when they’ve agreed to show up and they knew what was involved, what was expected of them, but yet it happens all the time. So I try not to do that. I try to always be, do what I say and be where I need to be.
Number I guess this is four be approachable and polite. Sometimes people take advantage of this, but very rarely and it gets probably gets back to the be interested and curious about other things. But I feel like I’m approachable and I’m definitely polite because, one, I think everyone deserves politeness and two, I have no reason not to be. There’s no reason for me not to be polite. And, from an approachable standpoint, I never know who I’m going to meet and I never know who I’m going to be able to help. So, even though you probably can’t like everyone who reaches out to me that wants to improve my online presence on LinkedIn, for example, I can’t, you know I can’t be approachable to all of those people, but to anyone who makes a genuine effort to connect with me, I am going to make a genuine effort to be approachable to them.
And polite Number five care a little bit more than I need to. This is also a hard one and I’m not the best at this. I can say that for sure. I think my wife cares a little more about a lot of things than she needs to and definitely does it in a better way than I do. But I’ve learned from her and I do think about and practice caring a little bit more than I need to about as many things as I possibly can. That also maybe gets back to be interested and curious and do what I say. If you can help someone or make things better, for that matter, if you can help someone by caring a little bit more or you can learn something new by caring a little bit more, why not? And then the last one is be an icon to those you care about.
I never thought much about being an icon until pretty recently actually, when I was asked to do a keynote about what it means to be an icon, and it was funny because I had to actually look up on chat GPT what an icon was. I mean, I knew what it was but I wasn’t completely sure about what it was and I’ve got a funny story about that. But I’m gonna save it for the next podcast because I am going to do the next episode on what it actually means to be an icon, but so I’ll leave this one just generic. Be an icon to those who you care about, and when you come back to listen to the next free thinking Friday solo episode, you will find out what I mean about that. So let me just wrap up this personal mission statement thing that I started thinking about and actually documented here, based on me listening to David Goggins talk about and encourage people to have a personal mission statement. So here here am I just to summarize make things better, be interested and curious, do what I say and be where I need to be, be approachable and polite, care a little more than I need to, and be an icon to those who care about you.
So what about you? What about your personal mission statement? Jot down some thoughts that you have right now and start thinking more about it. Encourage other people to talk about and think about their personal mission statement. What is it that they’re doing or trying to do every day that makes their lives and the lives of the people that they touch a little bit better than it was before you touched it?
So thank you so much for listening to this free thinking Friday solo episode. I do appreciate you. I hope you found this time valuable and, if you did tell someone, tell a friend, follow the podcast. If you’re not following the podcast already, shoot me a note. Let me know what you’re thinking. I do this for my own thinking and I do this for your thinking as well. So you and me are sort of in this together and I am very open to your thoughts and what you would like to share, and your personal mission statement as well. So until next time, please maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today and make your future your property, something that you are very, very proud to own.
Until next time, everybody, thanks for listening to this show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer, if you’re really into it. Leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere. If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential, order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy and, if you get it, please let me know what you think.
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