If you’re chasing a dream, I’d like for you to consider something different. Consider a mission.
Dreams are meant to be fictional, etherial, nonsensical even. Missions are practical, modest, and concrete. The former sounds way more fun. With a dream…
- You don’t have to succeed
- Failure can’t really be measured
- If you get part of your dream, it’s magical
- What a wonderful story it is to pursue the heartbreak and triumph of a dream
Missions are mightier
While a dream has huge ups and downs, a mission is a force. A mission is a reason to wake up early, to exercise, to make difficult phone calls, to look at things in a mundanely straightforward way.
When you communicate your mission to others, you can fuel them on the same mission. While collaborating, the mission gives everyone autonomy and prevents conflict. Nobody shares the same dream.
Entertainment peeps get caught in the dream trap
The light-weight creative dreams that they can make something with their heart, the people like it and somehow it spreads because it’s good.
The hard-working creative dreams that they make a lot of things and eventually something catches on in the same way.
The hard-working mission would be make a lot of things with the intention of having maximum impact. Figure out which thing works best, keep improving it.
We want validation and no accountability
How wonderful would it be for the world to tell me that the thing from my heart is awesome, and therefore my heart is awesome, therefore I’m a worthwhile individual. At the same time, most of our creative role models are not this at all. They are very focussed on serving a specific audience and they are prolific as fuck.
We are responsible for setting up our own mission. We’re responsible for sticking with it especially when it’s hard. We’re responsible for validating ourselves by reminding ourselves of the mission. I leave you with a few mission statements of companies so you can see how a mission is general enough to pivot, heartfelt, and empowering.