Outstanding Club Newsletter - June 2nd, 2008

This issue’s topic: Ignore Your Misdirectional Compass

Congratulations to the winners of last month’s Personal Mission Statement winners, Rob Jensen and Jake Dahn!

Outstanding Quote

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ignoring Your Misdirectional Compass

When the compass you rely on is giving you inaccurate readings, getting lost is easy to understand. Here are a few bad directions you might be getting from your own Misdirectional Compass:

• N - Not probable means not possible
• NE - No Eagerness for things to change
• E - Establishing resolutions is only for New Years
• SE - Succeeding Every time is critical
• S - Saving or Spending are the only two options you have when it comes to money
• SW - Seeking the World for answers to your problems
• W - Weaknesses are what you should focus on improving
• NW - Needing to Worry about things

I discovered some time ago that the compass I was using to guide my life was taking me in different directions than I wanted to go. It seemed like nothing I did to try to fix the compass was working, until finally I realized that like many problems in life, the answer was deceptively simple -

This was not my compass!

Finding Your Own Compass

There are many people out there more than willing to let you use their compass to help guide you through life. Some people have less than ethical motives for steering you astray, but many are actually well intentioned friends and perhaps even loved ones. The problem with using someone else’s compass for your own life, whatever the original intention, is that no one in existence knows the answers you need to find your way through your life except you. So many of us are trying to use some other compass than our own to find our way through life, no wonder the path we’re on often seems confusing and not correct!

The only way to have a compass of our own that can help guide us is to build one for ourselves. No one else can give you the answers you need to find your course through life. That isn’t to say others can’t help by providing you tools and asking you questions, enabling you to discover the answers that lie within your self. In the weeks ahead, the Outstanding Club will look at several common misdirections and attempt to help you work through some of them. We also want to encourage everyone who may have found themselves lost as a result of using someone else’s compass to share your stories about them in the comments section below.

The First Misdirectional Compass Heading

As mentioned before, these misdirectional headings will each have more attention given to them in the weeks to follow, but it seemed appropriate to give you at least a brief introduction to the first one now.

Not Probable Means Not Possible - Winning a multi-million dollar lottery is improbable, but many people clearly perceive it is not impossible to do so (lotteries could not exist if this were not the case). We all have dreams we would pursue, things we imagine we’d do just as soon as we bought the winning Powerball ticket. Yet if we took the context of lottery tickets out of the conversation and I simply asked you if you’re pursuing those dreams, the answer all too often is some form of “that’s impossible”.

The way to take dreams and turn them into actionable goals with the potential for outstanding results is simply the choice to take a deep leap of faith (often, actually, a series of them). Once you realize what is improbable rather than impossible, you need only take that deep leap of faith no one else is willing to do - that’s how the improbable dreams you have become your successes, your victories.

I couldn’t even name one person who won the lottery and turned their dreams into reality as a result. I could, however, provide you with a book of the names of people who took deep, improbable leaps and created reality from their dreams, changing the world in profoundly powerful ways.

Outstanding Community Recognition - 826 Valencia

From the 826 Valencia website - “Simply put, 826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can be made when skilled tutors work one-on-one with students.”

If you take no other action from this e-mail, I would ask that you at least watch this video of Dave Eggers winning the TED Prize this year. In it, he describes how this wonderful organization came to exist. You’ll see the passion he has for the profession of teaching, be entertained as he explains the existence of a pirate supply store within the location of the tutoring center, and how his group of volunteers has quickly grown to number into the thousands (across the United States).

On a personal note, I need to tell you the video of Dave at TED made me realize that my dreams aren’t so huge that they couldn’t someday turn into goals, actions, and eventually results. I watched the clip, and after several minutes of processing its power, I realized I needed to pursue my own passions at a level I hadn’t been daring enough to take it yet. 826 Valencia’s success was the challenge I needed to start the Outstanding Club project (of which this website is ultimately a rather small but significant component of), and it is required viewing of anyone getting involved in the Outstanding Club effort.

The original location is at 826 Valencia Street in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. However, through the 826 National Foundation the concept has spread to Los Angeles, Chicago, Michigan, Seattle, Boston, and New York City. It has also spread to everyone anywhere via Once Upon a School, which brings us to this month’s…

Four Hour Challenge!

When he received this year’s TED Prize to make a wish to change the world, this is what Dave Eggers wished:

“I wish that you—you personally and every creative individual and organization you know—will find a way to directly engage with a public school in your area, and that you’ll then tell the story of how you got involved, so that within a year we have 1,000 examples of innovative public-private partnerships.”

Once Upon a School is a website dedicated to harness the power of everyone’s responses to that wish. This month, I challenge each one of you reading this to find a way to spend at least four hours of your time taking action to make Dave’s wish come true. Here are some possible ways to make that happen:

• Ideas - Look through the list of currently submitted ideas, and submit an idea of your own related to a passion you have around the education of our youth that might address something these other ideas haven’t captured yet.
• Pledges - If you looked through the ideas and found one you were inspired to take on yourself, pledge to take action and make your project a reality!
• Volunteer - If you live in one of the areas where there is a chapter of 826 National, consider volunteering your time, skills, and strengths.  
• Innovate - as always, I encourage people to come up with their own new, inspired ways to help promote 826 National’s efforts.

On a Personal Note: Junior Achievement

Normally when I work on the newsletter, I put myself in the role of representing the Outstanding Club as a whole. This request, however, is a personal one. On June 20th I am taking part in a charity event in which I am bowling to raise money for Junior Achievement. JA is a worldwide organization dedicated to promoting “workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs.” I am a strong believer in their efforts, and my goal is to raise $1000 - enough to offer their program to an entire classroom of students for an entire year.

I’ve donate my entire “economic stimulus” check of $600 to this organization, because it’s one of the best ways I can think of using $600 to stimulate our economy in the long run (as well as create positive change in the lives of dozens of students in my community). That leaves it up to you and your generosity to make it the rest of the way to the $1000 goal. If just twenty readers donate $20 between now and June 20th, we’ve achieved a great thing for the entrepreneurs and leaders of our future.

To sponsor me at the Junior Achievement bowling event, simply follow this link to my Junior Achievement page and make a secure credit card donation.

Thanks for your consideration. - Iain Hamp

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Writing your own Personal Mission Statement is an important component in understanding how to align your career, your time, your finances, your relationships - just about any significant part of your life - to the things you value most, the things you are most passionate about. Because this is such an important concept, the Outstandng Club would like to encourage everyone to write their own Personal Mission Statements and the process they went through to discover them.

Post them on your blog and submit the link and an introduction to yourself in the comments below. If you’ve already written one previously, we’d love to see those too. Our hope is to create a large repository of examples of people’s Personal Mission Statements, and if we see one that shines particularly brightly, we have every intention of awarding prizes from time to time and calling special attention to them in the Outstanding Club blog.

For reference, here are some related Outstanding Club blog posts about writing a Personal Mission Statement:

• Personal Mission Statement - Group Writing Project
• Thinking Through Your Personal Mission Statement
• Personal Mission Statement - Iain Hamp
• Group Writing Project Entries
• Group Writing Project Winners Announcement

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• Chris Brown votes for Rob Jensen and Jake Dahn
• Jake Dahn votes for Rob Jensen and Jake Dahn
• Rob Jensen votes for Rob Jensen and Jake Dahn

Rob Jensen and Jake Dahn are our winners! They have each been sent a US $25 Amazon Gift Card.

I want to personally thank all three participants for submitting their entries, and I hope the process was beneficial to all of you as you worked through your entries. I also have an important announcement to make about the project…

It’s not over!

The contest for the US $25 Amazon Gift Cards has been won, but the Outstanding Club is going to put a permanent link on the website to encourage everyone to still consider working through writing their own Personal Mission Statements. We think it’s such a critical piece of improving your life, we’ll continue looking at new Personal Mission Statement entries, and from time to time we’ll be awarding additional prizes to recognize outstanding entries that come in!

Do a Google search of “personal mission statement” and you’ll quickly realize how important career services organizations believe this process is to go through in order to find people work they will not only be good at, but also work they will enjoy.

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• Learn. Share. Evolve. It’s My Personal Mission Statement was submitted by Chris Brown of the Branding & Marketing blog
• Jake Dahn’s Personal Mission Statement published at jakedahn.com by Jake Dahn
• Rob Jenson’s Personal Mission Statement published at jensenrf.wordpress.com by Rob Jensen

The original contest called for the entrants to pick three favorites, but since there were only three entries received, I think the fairest way to determine the winners of the US $25 Amazon Gift Certificates will be to have each entrant pick their favorite two (you can vote for your own as one if you wish, totally up to you to judge which are the best). Please pick your favorite two entries and post a list with your favorite entries in your own blog (with a link back here so I know you’ve completed the task).

You have until May 14th. If I receive notice of all three of you completing the task ahead of that date, I’ll announce the winners sooner.

Again, many thanks to Chris, Jake, and Rob - I hope it was a meaningful exercise, and good luck to you!

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• In case you’re wondering what the point of writing a personal mission statement is in the first place, here are a few thoughts:It can help your focus in getting a job aligned well with your strengths and interests
• By being aware of the things you value most in life, management of resources like time and money becomes significantly easier
• You create a potentially powerful filter to look at what life has to offer through, and decide if an opportunity is something you want to take advantage of or if it would just be a distraction to what you’d rather be spending your time on

As stated in the original post, simply send us an e-mail with a link to your entry, or post a comment in the original post for the group writing project so I can find your entry. Do that by Wednesday, April 30, at midnight Pacific Standard Time and you stand a nice chance of winning a US $25 Amazon gift certificate!

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Lodewijk van den Broek not only created his Personal Mission Statement, but turned each piece of it into specific goals at his How to Be an Original blog. I like his advice on putting the mission statement together –

The process of sculpting the mission statement is a creative process. Take some parts, make phrases, shuffle them around, combine them, erase parts and so on. There’s no science in this, it needs to be a statement that feels right and has the right words in the right places for you.

Franklin Covey, who gets a decent chunk of money from me each year so I can keep my daily planner moving along, actually has an online Flash-based tool you can use to help you work through thinking about your Personal Mission Statement.

Randall S Hansen, PhD, has a nice, structured five-step approach to pulling together an effective Personal Mission Statement at the QuintCareers website. One of the many benefits of going through this writing exercise is coming up with a good filter to consider new job opportunities through in the future.

“A personal mission statement … allows job-seekers to identify companies that have similar values and beliefs and helps them better assess the costs and benefits of any new career opportunity.”

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“Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity - not a threat.” - unknown

While I’m not sure this is an all-encompassing definition of innovation, I do believe it belongs as a key part of discussing innovation.

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It seemed appropriate to share a few thoughts about the subject of Social Media, to frame the necessary discussion we all face around how best to use this emerging, synergizing, collaborative, boundary-erasing technology. What part will you play in the Social Media Movement?

“Wikipedia works because so many contributors figured out how to self-organize into a group that produced something far more useful than a traditionally organized document.” - from the Seth Godin blog

“Folks, you use social media to connect with people not to market to them.” - Josh Hallett

“Social media is a cult of generosity. Share everything you can with the world” – Shel Israel

“Everyone is, or soon will be, connected to everyone else, and all available information, through instantaneous, multi-way communication. This is ubiquitous connectivity. They will therefore have the experience of being immediately proximate to everyone else and to all available information. This is pervasive proximity…It is a world of entangled, complex processes, not content. It is a world in which the greatest skill is that of making sense and discovering emergent meaning among contexts that are continually in flux. It is a world in which truth, and therefore authority, is never static, never absolute, and not always true.” - Resonance Partnership blog

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