Creating a personal mission statement can be one of the most powerful and unifying activities that you can do for yourself, your business, and even your family.  The process of creating a mission statement can take as little as a few minutes or as long as a few months, depending on the number of people and the issues involved.  For our purposes here, we are going to be creating a personal mission statement just for you.  It certainly could fit into a larger family mission statement if you want it to, but for now we’re going to focus on you.

The impact a mission statement will have on your life is directly related to the degree that it reflects what you do, who you do it for, and how you do it.   The more accurate your mission statement is regarding those three elements, the more powerful a tool it will be in terms of managing your life.

The purpose of a mission statement is to summarize your primary purpose or life’s mission in a sentence or a group of sentences.   As stated earlier, in these statements, we would describe what we do, who we do it for, and how we do it.  For example, using an airline metaphor, we would want to identify precisely what our primary purpose is for being in business.  We might decide that as an airline, our mission is: To help vacationers create the vacation of their dreams by being friendly, helpful, clean, and timely.

Notice how the mission clearly identifies what we do, “create the vacation of their dreams”, who we do it for, “vacationers”, and how we do it, “by being friendly, helpful, clean, and timely.”  Most importantly, it does not limit behavior but rather liberates behavior as you explore the endless ways of fulfilling that mission.  It does not state how the mission will be carried out, but allows the supporters to tap into their creativity to consistently identify ways to further their mission.

The same is true for a personal mission statement.   Your mission should be written with specific enough language to guide and direct your behavior but it should not be so specific that it details how you are to fulfill the mission.  It’s a great process, get started and find your passion.