Talk About Want You Want To Accomplish
Before my vision for Bear Den Sanctuary solidified, I was listening to several books by author Louise Hays on audiobook. She suggested speaking about your dream and what you are trying to accomplish.
In doing so, she says, people will start to show up to help in different ways to make that dream a reality.
Working as a nurse, I started talking to my co-workers and patients about the cat sanctuary that I wanted to create. I talked to people in line at the grocery store, friends, family…anyone who could possibly be interested.
Lots of people really did not care but many people did! One patient, turned friend, doesn’t even like cats and told me when I get my nonprofit status, she’ll write me a generous check.
Two years later when I became a 501©(3) organization, she made good on her word. She was my very first donor and it made a huge impact to have someone invest her hard-earned money and believe in me and achieving my dream.
Preparing Mission Statement
Two friends wanted to help me in another way. Glenn runs a very successful business. His wife Stacy has been a long-time employee of one of the nation’s top companies and both are fun and charismatic people!
They invited me to their home one evening for two purposes. They said I needed to hone in on my vision by creating a mission statement and have clear goals. Right then and there that evening in their home I came up with the
mission statement for Bear Den Sanctuary: To provide a forever home for unadoptable and feral cats and to spay and neuter the rest.
The mission statement described which cats would be living at the Sanctuary and also revealed my intent to engage in spaying and neutering community cats.
Big Hairy Audacious Goal
Next came setting clear goals. I wrote some goals about how many cats I thought could live at the Sanctuary and how many community cats I could spay and neuter in 1 year, 3 years and 5 years.
Goals can always be adjusted but this was a great start to have an action plan.
Then Glenn introduced me to a concept called a BHAG. I had never heard of it. He said it’s a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. He asked if I could accomplish anything with my dream, what would it be. So, I thought about my BHAG. I wrote it down that night and it remains
my BHAG today: to end the suffering of homeless cats in the world.
Nothing Is Impossible
That’s crazy! That’s insane. That’s ‘impossible.’ Why set yourself up for disappointment? I hear these critics and I choose to tune them out.
It was impossible to walk on the moon until it wasn’t. It was impossible to split an atom until it was split. A lightbulb used to be considered impossible until it was created.
I won’t let anyone tell me that ending the problem of cat homelessness is impossible because we don’t know. And honestly, what is the point of having a dream if you don’t dream big? Louise Hays and Pam Grout and my buddy Glenn Franson encourage all of us to have BHAGs. What’s yours?
