How to Develop Your Personal Mission Statement by Stephen R. Covey

Author:Stephen R. Covey [Covey, Stephen R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-07-08T22:00:00+00:00

Highest and Best Use

I’ve used the phrase “highest and best use” here. It comes from a friend in the real estate business who taught me the phrase. He said to me one day, “Blake, you know how we value property when we do an appraisal?”

And I said, “Well, you measure the acreage and look at comparable properties or something.”

He said, “Yes, we do that; we look at the current use of the property, but we also try to envision the highest and best use of that property. So if someone were to tell me they have 10 acres, what’s it worth? I’d have to say, where’s it located? Say it’s out in the desert and it’s covered in sagebrush and some toxic waste. That pretty much determines what its value is. But what if those 10 acres were just on the outskirts of town in the direction in which the town is growing. Well, that’s worth a lot more because it’s good development property. What if it’s actually adjacent to a new strip mall that has just been put in? The value increases even more. And what if it’s not adjacent, what if it’s a part of the mall development, or what if it’s on the land that is going to be used for a high-rise condo? Or what if it is property in downtown Hong Kong? Can you see that the highest and best use is a function of the capacity of that land to be productive and to be used in some way that’s wise and well?”

Now what if you take that concept and apply it to you?

You can do so many things with your life. Sometimes a person might say to me she always felt she was going to do something with children. Okay, I’d ask, does that mean start an orphanage? Does that mean have biological children? Does that mean adopting some developmentally disabled children? Does that mean that you raise the funds to create a summer program for some inner city kids to get out of the city and out into the country for a week or two at a time? Does it mean a scholarship for enthusiastic and budding musicians so that they can go to the university for a couple of weeks?

Because an interest in children can have so many manifestations, you need to select from among them. You have many possible ways to fulfill that desire and that passion in you.

However you get started, start. Don’t just think about it. Don’t just find somebody else’s mission statement and say, “Well there’s a couple of good things there,” and just use theirs. Pay the price to dig deep. Talk to people who care about you. Work with this process for a while, because when you’re done, it will provide guidance for the rest of your life.

When someone has really worked with this process and given it considerable thought and then shares with me their attempt to clarify it in writing, I recall a statement a mentor of mine gave to me when I first got involved in this work.

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