Discover How to Create an Effective Personal Mission Statement

It can often be incredibly difficult to reach your goals without knowing why you began your journey in the first place. Why do you want to train for that crazy marathon? Why are you applying for new jobs? Why are you paying off your student debt? All of these are great questions to be asking! And these goals of yours could be met much easier with a clear focus. That is where a personal mission statement comes in! This mission statement helps you clear your head and understand why you created these goals in the first place. So, ready to create yours? Let’s get into it!

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What is a Personal Mission Statement?

Well, I am so glad you’ve asked! A personal mission statement is a short sentence or two that outlines your life’s goals, encompassing your motivations in life. When you read your personal mission statement, it should get you PUMPED UP! You can read this every day and understand why you’re chasing after your dreams.

Why is a Personal Mission Statement So Important?

A personal mission statement allows you to focus your energies when goal setting and achieving. It will help you on your path to greatness in every area of your life by giving you a clear focus and purpose… including family, career, health, personal, school, finances, and so many other aspects of your life you find important! In Stephen Covey’s best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he suggests that in order to be highly effective and productive in life (and in goal setting), you must begin with the end in mind. He further suggests that there is absolutely no better way to do this than creating a mission statement.

Check out Covey’s best-selling book here!

Mission statements are also a great tool to use in your everyday life. They can help you steer important decisions, such as which college major to pursue or career path to begin. For example, my original mission statement revolved around public safety, science, natural hazards, and engineering. This statement is what eventually led me to pursue a career in civil engineering and has been a HUGE game changer for my life.

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How do you Write a Personal Mission Statement?

Alright, now that we have the basics down, let’s actually start writing! While you’re reading these instructions, I want you to remember that this process is not a race. Taking your time with this process can be very rewarding. And, who knows? While you’re creating your own personal mission statement, you might learn a lot about yourself. Ready to get started? Let’s do it!

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Phase 1: Research and Brainstorming

The first stage in writing a personal mission statement is to brainstorm ideas and research topics you might want to include in your statement. These can include several smaller steps so let’s break it down further…

Write Down Your Initial Thoughts:

Pull out a blank sheet of paper, your journal, or whatever you have handy and begin jotting down some initial thoughts and ideas about what you might want to include in your mission statement. Here are some questions to get you started:

What are my current main priorities in life? (School, work, family, finances, etc.?)
- What is one major thing I would like to accomplish before you die? (Have you always wanted to become an astronaut? Perhaps you would like to start a family?)
- What brings me happiness in life?
- Do I have any major goals I am trying to achieve?

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Do Some Soul-Searching

Now that you’ve got a small start, begin doing some soul searching. Begin by asking yourself “do I have any major questions I still need answers to?” Perhaps you haven’t decided on a career path yet, maybe you need to think a bit more on this topic (for this, I HIGHLY recommend reading the book Now What? by Nicholas Lore). Or maybe you want to create a bucket list and want to incorporate that into your mission statement.

Find a quite space and begin journaling out some ideas and questions to ask yourself to do a bit of a deeper reflection. Maybe even go on a quiet walk and think about what you want to achieve in your life. When you’re done, write down your main ideas and topics to consider in your mission statement.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Finding Your Dream Career

Research Ideas on the Internet:

Afteryou have put down your initial thoughts to paper, begin combing the internet and books for other ideas that might spark a few more points for your statement. Make sure this is your last step in your brainstorming process. This will help ensure you stay true to yourself.

I personally recommend you pick up one of the listed books below (or a similar book on personal mission statements) and read it from cover to cover. This will ensure you take your time with this entire process and learn the best way for YOU to create your own mission statement.

Here are some resources to get you started:

Books:

Articles:

Phase 2: Organize Your Thoughts and Develop Themes:

Now that you have a decent idea (or list of ideas) on what you might want to include in your mission statement, you need to begin organizing your thoughts to move forward with this process.

Organize Your Notes and Thoughts into Themes

First, read through all of your notes and ideas and begin assigning them to themes or categories. This can be easily done by using highlighters and a quick color code system (here are my favorite highlighters, I’m obsessed with them…). Some categories ideas you might use include: family, financial, career, business, school, travel, health, personal development, home, creative, and mental.

Choose Your Top Five Themes

Now is the time to begin to seriously think about each theme and evaluate if it is truly important to you. This might be a bit easier to do if you pull out specific statements and turn them into actionable goals instead of your mission statement. For example, running a marathon might be a big goal of yours, but living a healthy and long life can be a part of your mission statement. You should try to narrow down your themes to five or less.

Phase 3: Begin Drafting Your Mission Statement

Now is the time to actually start pulling together these themes and ideas to form some personal mission statement drafts. Take you top five themes and begin pulling them together into a sentence or two that makes sense. Start with the words “The purpose of my life is…” or “My life’s mission is…” By the end of this step, you should have three different rough drafts that vary. Perhaps they have slightly different themes or simply are worded differently. I’ll use my current personal mission statement as an example to get your juices flowing!

Themes: happiness, balance (combines health, family, and career), travel, and public safety

Mission Statement: The purpose of my life is to lead a happy, balanced lifestyle, use my intellect to ensure the public safety of my community, and to experience the world to grow this knowledge.

Man, that gets me pumped up just typing it!

Phase 4: Finalize Your Personal Mission Statement

Now is the time to take a quick break. Take a few days off and return to your three separate drafts. If you don’t like them when you return, repeat the process until you’re happy when you return again. Then, choose you final statement. You want to be sure it does the following:

Pump you up and motivate you to reach your goals
Answers the question “what is my current purpose in life”
Gives you some insight into your priorities and lifestyle choices

And that is it! Once you have chosen your final statement you’re done with the process! That wasn’t so bad, was it? Don’t stress if it isn’t perfect, over the years you will have plenty of time to revise it! Speaking of…

Phase 5: Revisit and Revise Each Year

Each year, take a an hour or so to revisit your personal mission statement to ensure it is still relevant and pumping you up. If not, restart the whole process or begin tweaking it until it fits your life again.

What’s Next?

Now that you have a fantastic personal mission statement, turn it into actionable tasks through goal setting and project management. Begin creating a life you want to live by using your mission statement as a tool and a statement you can turn to when assessing your priorities. I also highly recommend typing it out and printing it out multiple times to put in different places around your house and desk where you can see it every day.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Project Planning (10 Easy Steps + Freebie!)

Top Books on Goal Setting

The entire goal setting and achieving process can be overwhelming and difficult. There are absolutely right and wrong ways of going about it and these books have helped me achieve my biggest dreams (and continue to lead me in the right direction today!). I am sure they will lead you on the path to achieving your largest goals in life.

The Compound Effect: Jumpstart your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy

If you haven’t read this book you are seriously missing out. It is a complete game changer and should be sitting on everyone’s shelf. This Wall Street Journal and New York Times Bestseller covers the powerful yet surprisingly simple principle that little everyday decisions will either help you achieve greatness or end up in disaster naturally, and how to steer them in the right direction. It covers how to win at everything, abolish bad habits, maintain motivation and more. It is an absolute must read!

Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt

As the title suggests, this is book covers a phenomenal 5-step plan that guarantees you set and reach the most important goals in your life. It covers tips that help you when you get stuck, how to quit-proof your goals, and so much more. As an added bonus, it is a quick and easy read!

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr

This New York Times Bestseller explores the secrets of the famous and wildly successful goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that has been proven time and time again to be effective. This system ensures you maintain focus and stay on track until your goals are being met!

Goals! How to Get Everything You Want – Faster Than You Thought Possible by Brian Tracy

This is a fantastic book that helps distinguish the people who reach their goals from those that just dream of having a better life. It then dives into a simple yet powerful goal setting method that is incredibly effective. Tracy also focuses on specific goals in different areas in life, such as finances, health, and family. A fantastic read!

Related: 21 Life-Changing Books You Must Read in Your 20’s!

Goal-Setting Series

This post is part of my goal-setting series. Here are the rest of the great posts included in this blog series (and what order I recommend reading them in):

Well folks, there you have it! The ultimate guide to writing your personal mission statement. I truly hope you found this guide useful and you’re now on the path to writing a killer statement. I know it will help you in every aspect of your life and I am so excited for you! Happy goal achieving!

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