Mission: unstoppable.

Mission: unstoppable.

I come from an organizational management background, although I am not working in this capacity at the moment. One thing we were always told is that the leader must clearly articulate the goal to the followers, and engage them in a way that they will want to accomplish the goal. Every organization must pinpoint its mission statement, publicize it for all to see, then evaluate each year how they are doing to achieve their expressed goals.

This week, I went to a class and the Rabbi who spoke compared this time of preparing for the high holidays to a time when an organization evaluates its progress to achieve its goal. However, the rabbi made a unique point that stuck with me. He said, “You are not in an organization. There are not 100 people working toward the same goal. You need your own goal, your own mission statement.”

The month before Rosh Hashana is a time to design or redesign your own personal mission statement. Now is the time to think about what it is you really want to achieve in the coming year, and devise a plan of how to achieve it. Rosh Hashana is not the time to first contemplate what you want and ask God to grant it to you. Rosh Hashana is the time to say, “I’ve thought about this. Here is my plan, here is my goal. I will do x, y, and z to achieve it—please help me”.

Your goal should not be something life changing. Don’t choose mission impossible. If you have two left feet, you cannot become a professional dancer this year. If you are extremely high strung, you cannot resolve to be completely calm in every situation, and let everything go. This will never happen. But if you choose a goal that requires small but achievable steps to accomplish, you can succeed. Say you will take a dance class once a week in the hope of becoming more coordinated. Say you will work hard to let things go in a very specific situation, like every time the kids have been bathed, fed, and calmed down only to get up and start jumping on their beds giggling again. Situations like these put me over the edge, but they don’t have to if I say this is the one thing I am working on right now. Once I have mastered holding my temper at bedtime, I can choose a new situation to work on my composure.

If I devise a plan now with forethought, and I design small, realistic and achievable goals, my mission statement is not impossible, but unstoppable.