Here is my mission statement

Over the past couple months I've discovered & written the character goals that motivate me most. I'm calling it my mission statement. It's my mission statement because it is the declaration of my core values and because this is the most rewarding & unrelenting daily & hourly challenge to me.

These core values frame my approach to each of my endeavors everyday.

They are to work, learn, and be a friend.

Put these on a tombstone and they look like this:

• Worker
• Learner
• Friend

If you meet me somewhere in time & space, you will find me actively improving one or more of these abilities. My abilities to work, learn, and be a friend are also the three capacities I am most grateful for and which are my highest aspirations to be excellent in.

Working, in any one of its many forms is the first solution to any circumstance.

Being engaged in energetic purposeful work is the most useful resource & medicine I have ever encountered. And as work is the prerequisite to learning and meaningful friendship, I'm in the business of continually improving my capacity to work. I work.

Learning is how I absorb knowledge. My most exciting experiences consistently involve achieving a usable understanding of a new concept. In this Information Age (a.k.a. Info Decade), opportunities to learn by study and by doing are unprecedented. I take opportunities to both learn and improve the way I learn. I continually find ways to educate myself in a given situation. I actively expand my understanding through both formal education and the informal habit of curiosity toward the people and cultures I find myself in. I learn.

Being a friend is the crowning value in my mind, because it makes sense out of everything. Being a friend is also the most enjoyable experience I've found.  I define a friend as a person who works to put himself in a sustainable position to voluntarily give his own time to empower you to live in a sustainably happy way. Being a friend is finding or creating a way to contribute to the wellbeing of the people in my life. What does working or learning amount to without friends to share the experience/results with? Friendship makes sense out of everything.

I look up to people who work,
who make an effort to learn,
and who are genuinely friendly
In everything they do.

These people are my heroes.

Who are yours?