Last week I was scheduled to talk to an exclusive networking group that I attend.  There are about 20 people in the group, no two represent the exact same industry, and we've all agreed to actively look for appropriate referral-opportunities to send good business prospects to the others in the group.  Each week we meet and talk briefly about referrals we've received and given.  And everyone is given about 30-60 seconds to briefly introduce themselves and describe their ideal prospect.  Then one person is given "the floor" to give an extended intro, followed by a Question/Answer time.

Last week it was my turn to give the extended intro.

Now, I'm thinking, "why not give a similar intro here?"  So, without further ado...

I'm Dave Holzmann... your honest, creative, service-oriented Mortgage Consultant for Life - serving by realizing harmony.

I say that almost every day as I have opportunity to talk to people about who I am and what I do.  But it's such a short intro that most people probably miss most of what's packed into that simple statement.  So, let me "unpack" it for you.

Let's start with the end: "serving by realizing harmony."

That's an excerpt from my Purpose Statement.  My full Purpose Statement is: "To the glory of God, I exist to serve by realizing harmony."

A Purpose statement is different from a Vision or Mission Statement.  Purpose answers the questions: Who am I? Why do I exist?  Vision, on the other hand, answers: Where am I going?  What are my goals?  And Mission answers: What am I doing?  How will I achieve my goals?

One other definition that's important: Values.  Values describe what is important along the way.

One's Purpose is unique and never changes.  It's who God created you to be.  It can be represented by your heart or your DNA.

Vision(s) are not necessarily unique and they do change.  As we realize our goals and get to where we plan to go, we need new Visions.  Otherwise we'll stagnate.  Vision is represented by your eyes.  (This works especially well for my wife, Julie.  She's got blue eyes - which can be a reminder to have "blue-sky" thinking when dreaming up Visions.)

Missions, too, are not necessarily unique and they, too, change.  Depending on what the Vision is, one Mission may be more effect than another.  Sometimes we'll determine a Mission and later discover that it's ineffective or drawing us off course.  Then we need to change the Mission.  Missions are represented by your hands and feet.

Values are very slow to change, if they change at all.  Each individual Value is not unique.  But their combination may be.  Values are represented by your throat and your gut... if you do things that conflict with your core-values, you will (sooner or later) get a lump in your throat and/or a knot in your gut.

Living On-Purpose is living in a way such that there is alignment between our heart, our sight, and our hands, within our highest values.  (This is my paraphrase of Kevin McCarthy's concepts which he wrote about in The On-Purpose books and The On-Purpose Poster.)

Back to my Purpose...

As a follower of Christ, I'm called to glorify God in all that I do.  Many Christians mistakenly believe their purpose statement should be "I exist to serve by glorifying God."  The problem with that statement is that it's not unique.  It would be a bit like "clearly" describing someone to a search party by saying: Jean's appearance is that of a human being.  The search party would likely say, "OK, that's nice.  But what how can we identify Jean?"  And you know they're not going to be satisfied with you responding, "you'll know you've got Jean when you see a human being."  While you would be helping the search party clarify that Jean can be clearly distinguished from Rover the dog or Mittens the cat, to say that Jean looks like a human being is not particularly helpful, because ALL humans look like humans.  So too, all Christians are called to glorify God.

So I start my Purpose statement by saying, "To the glory of God..."

Then I move on to the next part, "I exist to serve by..."

We're all here to serve.  Even those who aren't followers of Christ are here to serve.  Those that aren't followers of Christ may or may not be seeking to glorify God, yet they're still here to serve.

Finally, I move on to what is unique to me, "realizing harmony."

I can imagine people reading or hearing that and saying to themselves, "Huh?  What's THAT?"  Well, it's OK for others to have that reaction - it's not their Purpose Statement.  No one is required to understand the meaning or significance of that combination of words but me.  However, for those who are interested, let me start to break it down.

As I struggled to figure out how to describe me, it was suggested to look into these (along with several other) words.  So I checked them out online.  First to look up Dictionary meanings, then checking out all their synonyms by using the Thesaurus.  As I looked at the words I had thought of and those that had been suggested, these two stood out as the best descriptors of me.

Sticking to just "Realize" and "Harmony" gave me over 25 pages of definitions and words to describe them in all their shades of meaning.  Being an analyst, I loved it.  I dug in and boiled it down to just a few over-arching concepts. 

Realize has 5 basic meanings:

1. Comprehending completely or correctly
2. Bringing into reality (creating from an idea)
3. Making realistic (as opposed to leaving unrealistic)
4. Discovering
5. Obtaining (profiting from or getting)

Harmony has 9 meanings:

1. Agreement
2. Amicability
3. Friendship
4. Agreement in feeling or opinion
5. A pleasing combination of elements in a whole
6. The study and/or structure of a (musical) work or passage as considered from the point of view of its chordal characteristics and relationships
7. A combination of sounds
8. Accompaniment
9. A collation of parallel passages, especially from the Gospels, with a commentary demonstrating their consonance and explaining their discrepancies.

One of the things I loved about studying this was discovering (realizing!) how much depth there was in each of these words, and how closely they mirrored various aspects of who I am and/or who I've become.

This is getting a bit long for one post, so In my next post, I'll share a bit more about how I see these two combining and interacting and relating to various aspects of my life.