Values and Mission

I have been working in large organizations for most of my work life. In just about every one of them, there are a set of values and a mission that is presented to every new employee. The problem that I've always had is that those items are only mentioned again at the yearly evaluations. I've watched co-workers violate the values and mock the mission statements. I've rolled my eyes when the ideas presented by management clearly do not match up with what the employees have been told to hold dear. I've thought about how the values and mission paint a pretty picture, but are not very realistic.

However, I have been thinking about values and the future a lot lately. I've started to think that I would like to develop these ideas for myself in relation to farming and our future. I want to move ahead thoughtfully and make decisions that I hopefully will not regret later.   It would be so easy to go crazy and buy whatever whenever for things for my new life.  Do I want to go with cheap and readily at hand, do I want to make a plan about what specific breed of chickens I want or do I want to just buy what comes up on Craigslist, etc etc?  I know that in the past my decisions were made spur of the moment and with convenience being the foremost thought in my mind.  From the food I fed my family to our living situation to the clothes on our back, I was in survival mode. Never believing that I had a choice in buying situations or that we deserved to have the best I could afford. Why was I like that? I think I was so overextended and stressed out that I was just trying to get through the day and was taking what looked like the easy way out. But this is not what I want to be like moving forward.

Tami is way ahead of me in these thoughts. Her family has made decisions with their values in mind and with an eye towards the future. They make decisions about what to grow and how to grow it. 
The more I think about it, the more I realize I want to set specific goals, a mission if you will, that will be my guiding idea. I know it may change, but I want to set down what I want my overall ideal situation to be and to work towards that. So I've been thinking about values and a mission. It may not be something that I will print out and post around my house, but it will be interesting and hopefully insightful to think about.