Online Counseling Question: How do I write a mission statement during COVID-19? (Video)

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Hi, my name is Anna Sihon. I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with Thriveworks McLean, Virginia. And someone sent in a question about how to write a mission statement during COVID-19.

COVID-19 responses have really messed up our way of doing things. So we’re having to adjust to how do we find our purpose or make goals or find our direction? You know, when we have to do everything from home, when we have to do things six feet apart, when we have to be conscious about how many people do we have together.

And sometimes that can feel like it sets us up for being kind of off balance. One book I really like when you’re thinking about personal mission statements is The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler. I think that’s a fun name for that. So Bruce Feiler wrote this book, The Secrets of Happy Families.

And I want to say it’s chapter three, talks about branding your family and how do you find your mission statement and what’s, you know, what is our purpose? Sometimes you can think about just what is it that you want to put out there in the world? My general opinion is most relationships are energy exchanges. And so you put in energy and you get out the same energy that you put in. So energy in, energy out.

What are you putting into yourself that helps you then put into your relationships, the energy that you then want to throw out there into the world? And so if I’m anxious and if I’m fixated on problems or worried about things that I can’t control, then that’s one of the things where maybe finding something and really focusing in on, “What is my purpose?” can be helpful.

So you can look at books like The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler and get some ideas from that. You can look at religious practices and what are, what is your faith base and how does that influence the way you see who you are and what your contribution is out there within the world?

Another great book that just recently came out is called The Age of Overwhelm. I really love this author because she this is the second book that she’s come out with. One of the previous books that she has is Trauma Stewardship, which is like how are we sharing our gifts with the world in a way where we’re holding our part of the web of life and kind of helping keep our web together. You know, if you’ve seen like a spider web, once they, it gets like a part that’s broken, it kind of flaps around and looks a little bit frazzled and afraid, but when it’s all together, it’s tight.

That’s kind of where we’re at right now. We’re a broken spider web and we’re having to figure out how do we put it back together. Those are some things that you can think about of like, you know, researching and reading and getting some of that information of what is this that I need it to do for me?

So that it has that purpose that feeds you the information and the energy that you need to become who your best self is so that you can put that then out into the world. Hopefully that answered your question. If you have any other questions or, or things like that that you need help with, feel free to give us a call. Take care.

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