Create Your Own Mission Statement

A personal mission statement tells you who you are; how could you become a great achiever and serves as a great sense of purpose and promise. It keeps you accountable to yourself and focused and prevents you from drifting off course. It’s something clear and concise that provides direction for creating a lifestyle that will be satisfying. Referring to your personal mission statement can help you make decisions and be a guide in your life and career. Creating a mission statement is not easy or quick. The best mission statements require time, inspiration, and positive thinking. It is vital and helpful to take a serious personality assessment of which the results will provide you surprisingly accurate reflection of yourself and your talents. You have to consider both personal and professional dimensions of life.

The statement generally appears to be; “My mission is to (few words to explain personal and professional priorities – step 1) by enhancing or through the use of/with (include the most important talents or competencies you may have to develop - step 2) to serve the needs of or I value being … (write about what you really value - step 3).”

There are three simple steps to follow;

1. What are the two great priorities of your life?

First clarify what are your personal and professional priorities of life. Where do you truly want to direct your talents, energy, time, and resources? Mission statements are formulated based on the great personal life-priorities and are the backbone of any personal mission statement. There can be one or two such great priorities in your life too. Remember, you need to align both personal and professional priorities having a clear understanding on how the two factors affect your success interdependently.

Examples:

1. To assure wealth, security, happiness and love for my family
2. To play the role of most productive and dedicated production executive
3.  To become an outstanding marketing manager and caring father and husband
4.  To become highly qualified HR executive with better financial stability
5.  To an outstanding manager with higher income and significant wealth
6. To have the opportunity to appreciate and benefit from nature and the arts
7.  To continually educate myself in my field of psychology and career consulting
8. To balance health and spiritual sides of my life by getting adequate exercise, meditation and rest each week

2.  What are the strengths/talents you want to develop?

Begin crafting your mission statement by listing your character strengths or talents you want to develop in future. Try to define who you are and what strengths or personality traits you need to develop to achieve success in personal and professional lives. Define the best set of strengths or talents and decide the most crucial ones.

Examples

1. Being creative and innovative
2. Being highly productive
3. Result oriented
4. Leadership/leading
5. Team player
6. Open-minded
7. Being a dedicated learner
8. Empathetic communicator
9. Critical thinker

3.  What you really value or interest?

Think about personally and professionally again about what you value most at the end. Personally, you might be passionate about emotionally supporting your children helping them to lead meaningful lives filled with joy, purpose and good relationships. It can be something about your education, social work, contribution to poor community, dedicated religious practices or an intellectual commitment.

Professionally, you are pulled in the direction of helping team members find their way. Perhaps you can be committed to make your department the best among others or to achieve higher productivity level or to create better working environment for the co-workers. You can be committed and to devoting the skills and effort necessary to helping and delighting your clients. I would be better if you combine both personal and professional interests to make it more balanced way of thinking. It further gives you inside out perspective to create lot of synergies in future.

Examples

1.  I value supporting my team members to overcome their difficulties at work
2. I would dedicate my spare time for possible social development activities for disabled people
3. I am dedicated to support the charities of my church
4. I value compassion and caring for all people, including myself, paying particular attention to my family and closest friends.
5.  I’d maintain my meditational practices to become emotionally intelligent person

Tips for Final Touches

1. Make is simple, meaningful and inspiring
2. Use powerful works avoid jargon
3. Read it with a rhythm and make modifications till you get nicer meanings
4. Don’t make it too longs and four to five sentences are enough
5. Get more ides from personality development experts or coaches
6. Memorise it and read it loudly and repeat more than three time
7. Visualise with pictures and use your mind camera
8. Print it and decorate with graphics
9. Formulate a set of SMART goals to realize your mission