a first draft of my personal mission statement

I am reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. As a result I have been challenged to write a personal mission statement. Here it is, my first version.

I want to draw close to God and hear his voice.
I want to be a best friend to Anthony, and a support to help him grow.
I want to help students experience and explore mathematics with the end of understanding and appreciating it. I want to empower other teachers to do the same with their students.
I want to bless others with friendship and be mutually encouraged and loved.
I want to bless others with whom I interact by listening to them and valuing them.
I will do what I say I am going to do.
I will look ahead to tomorrow's work today.
I will solicit feedback, be reflective, and seek to grow.
I will seek to maintain my health and fitness.
I will be grateful.

reframing some ideas

Recently I have been trying to change two of my negative ideas.

"Long haul flights are a chance for some quiet me-time." I have decided it would be better for everyone if I no longer hated long journeys. So instead I will enjoy them as a chance to sit quietly, create my own quiet, read, and rest. My weekly life is very energy draining so perhaps I can use a long flight as a chance for napping and calm. Also, I usually feel quite introspective on planes, perhaps because ideas of home and belonging have always been somewhat hard to pin down. So I can capitalize on this by using my plane time as planning and goal setting time.

"Saying no to something I shouldn't do is also saying yes to something I should do." I have realized that  deciding to say no to bad food can be looked at in a more positive vein. It is saying yes to good health. (A recent post on Mark's Daily Apple inspired this thought.) Saying no to wasting time means saying yes to feeling great when I get things done. Saying no to being annoyed with someone is like saying yes to a better relationship and a more patient me.

Reframing my ideas is really just a fancy way of saying I am trying to look at things from a more positive angle.

how to get out of a bad mood

Why isn't living more of a science? It would be so much easier if sometimes there was just a formula such as "If this, then that". I feel out of sorts and cranky and I don't know how to stumble forward. I would prefer the rule, "If you feel cranky, then mope for a day and the next day get on with being excellent." But it doesn't seem to work that way.

I feel out of sorts for a number of reasons. I hurt my knee while trail running and by the end of the last three working days it has been throbbing with a hot pain. In addition to this, I have had some setbacks at work that should just be minor bumps but somehow have grown to little mountains. My marking is piling up; also I am late with a few tasks that people depend on. A few parents criticized my teaching methods last week; also my students seem to be confused by things I thought they had learned.

At home I have failed to get a grip on the laundry and it seems to be taunting me from the overflowing baskets. I forgot to buy toilet paper for one day too long. And all I can find in the fridge for dinner is three red onions.

For now I am making my own life formula. It starts with "choose the success criteria for tomorrow". Since I know that I can't solve all these problems, including my foul mood, in one day, I have chosen just four tasks for tomorrow that will be the way I will judge my success. Two are for work, and two are personal tasks. One of them is to talk to God. If I can accomplish those four things, I will celebrate the day as a small success. And then tomorrow I'll set new success criteria for the next day. This is my small effort to structure my bleak days.