Mission Statement

On this track to self improvement I have come across the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey.  It is a incredible book that has helped me really focus my life.  In this book, the author charges everyone to develop a personal and family mission statement.  I have been working on this for months and have been stalled many times.  Dr. Covey states that you don't write a mission as much as you detect it.  He was right. Yesterday while doing my bike ride portion of the triathlon, my mission statement flowed out of me like water.  I felt so alive and full of life, that I started thinking about it and boom, there it was.  So...

"I exist to LIVE this life to the fullest, to selflessly serve others with my WHOLE heart, and to die with NO regrets"!

Heath and I have also been working on our family mission statement.  We thought about making it one or two sentences, expressing the essence of our family.  That seemed difficult to have children understand and be able to repeat.  Since this is our family mission statement, we needed it to be a little more tangable.  Heath came up with the great idea of having a acronym.  That seems like a great way to keep it simple, and have it easily remembered and apply it to our lives.  Heath and I refer to our family as Team Kahler, and that seemed to be a good acronym to fit our mission statement into.

We took a drive to Estes Park today.  Since my personal mission statement was now intact, I felt that our family's mission needed finishing.  We seized this opportunity, and our family mission statement is as follows:

T - Teamwork

E - Earnest

A - Attitude

M - Magnanimous

K - Kind

A - Active

H - Honest

L - Laughter

E - Equality

R - Respect

Teamwork is work done by several people with each doing a part that contributes to the efficiency of the whole.  Earnest is a seriousness in intention, purpose or effort.  Atitude is a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state. Magnanimous is a showing or suggesting a lofty and courageous spirit.  To be kind is to be sympathetic or helpful in nature.  Active is to be engaged in full time service.  To be honest is to be marked by high integrity.  To laugh is to find amusement or pleasure in things.  Equality is to be like in quality, nature or status.  Respect is to hold others in high or special regard.

So there it is, my and our family's mission statements. It is my hope that these can keep us focused and help us develope goals that are in line with our mission.