WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR?
Here's a question worth considering:
If someone who knew you well were asked what you stand for, what would they say?
Not what you do for a living. Not the roles you fill or the responsibilities you carry. What you stand for — the thing that shows up, again and again, in the choices you make when nobody is watching.
Most of us have never actually put what we stand for into words. And in a world that grows noisier by the year, that omission costs us more than we realise.
Why this matters
We live in a time of algorithms designed to seek out and trigger our hot buttons. We face a relentless information onslaught from social media feeds, highlight reels, notifications, opinions, breaking news, and so on.
Never in human history have so many voices had such easy access to our attention and, by extension, our sense of what matters.
That drifting feeling
The result is a peculiarly modern condition. Not unhappiness, exactly. More a kind of drift. Busy days, full calendars, and a nagging sense that we're being carried along by a current we didn't choose.
Here's what I've come to believe after nearly two decades in this work:
Drift isn't caused by a lack of effort, it’s caused by the lack of a reference point.
When you know what you stand for, the noise doesn't disappear … but it loses its grip on you. You have a reference point — an anchor to counter the drift.
An exercise that has stayed with me
Many years ago, while still in corporate life, I attended a leadership training programme that was, in parts, intensely thought-provoking. One exercise in particular stayed with me.
Each delegate was asked to articulate — out loud, to a room of about thirty senior managers, in as few words as possible — exactly what he or she stood for as a leader.
It may sound simple. It was anything but.
One by one, we stood up and had a go. And one by one we were questioned, challenged and sent back to think again.
“Why does that matter to you?” “Is that actually true, or does it just sound good?” “What would your team say if they heard you say that?”
We re-thought, re-evaluated, clarified and refined until what each of us had come up with was simple, powerful and — crucially — authentic!
Here's what I eventually arrived at:
"As a leader in this business, I stand for inspired people. My personal mission is to use my position to make a difference that enhances the quality of life of the people I am privileged to lead."
A rare opportunity
I still recall the effect of hearing the others say their pieces. One company, one management layer — but thirty strikingly different responses.
Afterwards, over coffee, it was clear that the mood in the room had changed. We had each been handed a rare opportunity to arrive at a clear articulation of our own driving force; our personal mission.
Cutting through the confusion
Purpose, values, mission.
These three words often get used interchangeably, causing confusion and putting many people off doing the work to identify and clarify them for themselves.
So let me separate them simply.
Your life purpose is your overarching reason for being — the golden thread that runs through your whole existence. It's normally quite broad and doesn't change much.
Your values are the qualities, or states of being that matter most to you, like integrity, freedom, connection, and growth. Values describe what you are attracted to and how you want to live.
Your personal mission sits between the two, and it's context-specific. It's what you stand for in a particular area of your life, expressed in a way that drives action.
That last point is the liberating one. You don't need a single grand statement that covers everything you are. You might have one personal mission in your role as parent, another in the context of your business, another in your community or your church.
Each one is authentic. Each one is different.
That's not inconsistency. That's being a whole human being.
An invitation to give it a try
For reasons we’ve touched on, you may feel tempted to file this under ‘Interesting exercise to try one day’.
But it’s too important to delay. I’d like to invite you to give it a go now. It takes just fifteen minutes, and it can genuinely change how the next year of your life feels.
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Choose one area. Just one. Your work, your role as a parent or partner, your community involvement, your coaching practice if you have one. Pick any area where you most want to get clarity.
2. Answer four questions honestly.
- What do I stand for here?
- Why does that matter to me?
- What would change if I lived it fully?
- What am I already doing that betrays it?
That fourth question is uncomfortable. Ask it anyway. It's usually where the real insight lives.
3. Write it down in no more than two sentences. Longer than that and it isn't clear enough yet. Beware the polished, corporate-sounding phrase that could belong to anybody. If it doesn't feel slightly exposing to say out loud, keep working on it.
4. Say it to someone. Speak it out loud to a real person whose opinion you respect. This is the step almost everyone skips, but it's the one that does the work.
Something written in a notebook stays theoretical. Something spoken to another becomes real, and their response will tell you a great deal about whether you've landed it.
5. Live with it for a while. Test your decisions and actions against it. You'll quickly notice which of your commitments belong and which don't.
A practical application in coach training
There's a practical application of this — an unexpected benefit — that our Trainee Life Coaches discover with some delight.
At New Insights, aspiring life coaches are guided through a version of this exercise, but the outcome does double duty. It becomes the foundation of their unique selling point, or USP, as a coach.
Think about it from a client's perspective.
‘Life coach’ typed on your business card might raise a flicker of interest. But add, beneath that, a succinct and honest statement of what you genuinely stand for, and you're no longer one of many. You stand out, and people are drawn to that.
In a crowded market, clarity about what you stand for isn't just good for the soul. It's the most authentic marketing you will ever do.
Your point of reference
Whether or not you are a coach or training to be one, the value of doing this work is the same.
A clear personal mission becomes a point of reference — something solid against which you can measure the relevance and effectiveness of your actions.
It won't make your decisions for you. However, it will render them a lot easier to make, because you'll finally be answering to something you deliberately chose, rather than to whatever is shouting loudest at the time.
We all have a choice about how deliberately we live. Most people never make that choice consciously.
You can.
If you feel comfortable sharing what you stand for — in any one area of your life, or in general — please leave it in the comments below. I'd love to read it, and I'm quite sure other readers would too.
Ready to go deeper?
If this article has stirred something in you, that stirring is worth following.
Getting clear on what you stand for is exactly the kind of work life coaching was built for — and it's integral to our training. At New Insights, we've spent over twenty years helping people uncover their purpose, identify their values, articulate their mission, then build and align their lives accordingly.
Most people that we train aspire to a genuinely fulfilling vocation helping others find clarity and purpose. They leave with more than that, realising that they have found great clarity for themselves in the process.
If you love working with people and have always wondered whether you were meant to do something more meaningful with that passion, life coaching may well be worth looking at.
Find out more about training with New Insights — and discover what you stand for in the process!
