Welcome to Every Day A New Thought I'm Thor Challgren. Today I want to talk about writing your own mission statement, like the one created by the character in the movie "Jerry Maguire."
This was of course the movie that Tom Cruise starred in from 1996. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Tom Cruise. And then also Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor which one for for the performance given by Cuba Gooding Jr.
So in this movie, it's about a sports agent who has an epiphany about where his life is going. And in a nutshell, he sets out to find a better way to live both in terms of his work and his romantic relationships. And the movie is all about the consequences of him creating a mission statement at the very beginning of the movie. And then we see what happened.
So I wanted to go back and look at that, because there are three things that he says in the beginning when he's creating his mission statement that I think are worth us considering, as we may be looking at our own lives and what we're doing, and the kind of mission that we're on. So I'm going to quote three lines of dialogue from the script.
And this was a script written by Cameron Crowe also nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Now, you may be familiar with other lines of dialogue from that movie, which are way more famous than the ones that I'm going to quote, you probably have heard of, "You had me at hello," or "You complete me," or "Help me help you." And, of course, probably the most famous line from that movie that still gets quoted to this day, "Show me the money!" That's probably the most famous line from that movie. But what I'm going to do is look at three lines that are written in the early part of the movie, like in the first 10 minutes, as the character Jerry Maguire is writing his mission statement.
So the first quote is one that he has, when he's had this epiphany, he's in the middle of the night, he wakes up, and he starts typing his mission statement. And in voiceover, what he says is he asked the question, "What had I become?" And he says this, because what sort of leads him to have this epiphany is the son of a client of his basically calls into question his character, the son, his dad has just had another concussion playing football. And Jerry sort of breezes it off and says, Oh, it's no big deal. Your dad's super tough, he'll be fine. And the kid basically calls him an asshole for doing this. And so Jerry sets off on this idea of what had I become, he says this in response to this question. And he's, he's lamenting the sort of state of the business that he's in, which is being a sports agent. And he says, In the quest for big dollars, a lot of the little things started going wrong." And he's not only talking about work, but he's also more importantly, talking about personal relationships.
So as we think about how to apply this to our own lives, I think it take away is that idea of what had I become now, you may be perfectly happy with where you are. But if you have any level of dissatisfaction, either in your work life, your personal life, your business, ask what have you become? Where are you now, and try as best you can to be dispassionate about it. When you ask, what have you become, don't be critical or judgmental, but be willing to ask, are the results that you're living? What you actually want.
The second line, the second quote from the movie that the character says when he's having this epiphany is, he's typing this up, and he's suddenly becoming so excited by the possibility of what he's imagining this future. And he's suddenly for the first time in his life feeling proud of himself. And he says, "It was the me I'd always wanted to be."
I love that the idea that he's now imagining the version of himself that he had always wanted to be, he even says, He's talking about writing this mission statement. And he says, suddenly, "I was my father's son again," meaning there's a new optimism in him that was reborn, and that he could imagine that his father would be proud of what he had become.
As you look at your own mission statement, and maybe thinking about where you want to go in life. Ask is the version of you now is this what you'd always want it to be? If not, maybe there's a new direction that you can move in.
Finally, the last line is what he titled his mission statement. He says, "The things we think and do not say." That's the name that he gives the mission statement. Well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? The things we think, but don't say, another way to look at it is the thoughts or dreams we have, but we don't take action.
You know, as you think about where you want to go in your life, are there things that you would write in your mission statement? But you'd be afraid to say out loud, or you'd, you would hesitate to take action on it. So might be worth looking at that and asking, why is it that you're not moving in that direction?
In tomorrow's episode, I'm going to talk about how the movie portrays the consequences of Jerry writing a mission statement and see how the world responds to it. Because I think it's worth looking at for us knowing that when we put ourselves out there, there are going to be consequences. And how do we handle those? That's tomorrow's episode. Until then, thanks for listening.
