Hold Onto Your Mission

This weekend we witnessed history. Starting with the inauguration of President Donald Trump and leading into the largest one day protest rally ever, the Women’s March on Washington. The weekend was transformative for so many Americans, yet for many more, cemented the idea that we are divided as a nation, and that this division does not look like it is going to end soon.

Every person in America has an opportunity to make history every day. We create new businesses, which leads to new stories, which leads to new clients, and so on. But sometimes our stories are fatally flawed. We saw a lot of that this weekend as well.

The prevailing position in 2017 seems to be that whoever carries the loudest voice, wins. Certainly, these people are heard first and perhaps most adhered to in the beginning. We latch on to the most divisive and flagrant news, of course, because we love drama. But if that person is allowed the space to continue to speak hate into the equation, then we allow hate to become the new normative and therefore lose our missional focus.

In light of this weekend’s news, we want to start a new blog series about sharing our story, better. We cannot allow our stories to become about hate, the other side, about people we disagree with. We need to show our audiences what we stand for, who we stand with, and what we are doing to make positive change. In short, let’s try to remember that we need to constantly remind people what you are for, not what you are against.

This allows your main thing to be the main thing. Sure, people will join a movement even if the movement is anti-something or against someone, but eventually a movement needs to be about something, not against everyone else.

As we continue down this road of sharing our story better, we want to encourage you to take a hard look at your mission and ask yourself the question: “What are we for?” If you cannot answer that question with crystal clear articulation or you can only tell people what you are against, perhaps you have unintentionally created some distance between your true mission and the mission you are carrying out in real-time.

Hold onto your mission and start sharing better stories today by reminding people what you are for, not what you are against.