I have been thinking about writing a personal mission statement for a while now. However, I was unsure of how to articulate “my mission.”
I started on this path, by first creating a vision board to get a sense of what is important to me and what my goals are. It is a visual display of what I would like to do with my life. Vision boards are really fun to make. If you haven’t made one, you should give it a try! You can check out mine here.
Soon after, I realized I needed to write a personal mission statement. It took a bit longer than I had hoped, as I had many general ideas but needed to get specific.
According to Covey, Merrill, and Merrill (1994, p. 113), “An empowering mission statement:
- represents the deepest and best within you. It comes out of a solid connection with your deep inner life.
- is the fulfilment of your own unique gifts. It’s the expression of your unique capacity to contribute.
- is transcendent. It’s based on principles of contribution and purpose higher than self.
- addresses and integrates all four fundamental human needs and capacities. It includes fulfilment in physical, social, mental, and spiritual dimensions. [”To live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy”]
- is based on principles that produce quality-of-life results…
- deals with both vision and principle-based values…An empowering mission statement deals with both character and competence; what you want to be and what you want to do in your life.
- deals with all the significant roles in your life. It represents a lifetime balance of personal, family, work, community – whatever roles you feel are yours to fill.
- is written to inspire you – not to impress anyone else. It communicates to you and inspires you on the most essential level.” [bold added]
Over the past few weeks, I was inspired to actually write my statement for two reasons. First, I gained clarity about what I actually want to do with my life. Secondly, I was inspired/encouraged by a fellow blogger Tara Jacek (Girl Seeks Career) to get my thoughts on paper. Tara – you started a ripple effect too! Thank you so much : ) I gave her the following picture and my mission statement and she designed a poster (see below) for me. I love it.
Social support and encouragement are valuable tools. Tara showed me such support through designing a display of my mission statement. I am excited to share it with you. I hope it encourages you to write a mission statement for yourself. You should check out the one she made for herself as well.
Goals written down are more likely to be accomplished (Gail Matthews). Let’s start a ripple effect and accomplish our personal goals through supporting each other!
Covey, Stephen R., Merrill, A. Roger, and Merrill, Rebecca R. First Things First: To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Related articles
- My Mission Statement (tarajacek.wordpress.com)
I love it! I’m so glad I was able to inspire you. Making the poster was fun and I enjoyed it. I hope I was enough help when you were asking for advice. I didn’t want to push you one way or another because knowing what _you_ want is so important. I didn’t want to influence you into something you wouldn’t be happy with.
I’m so glad we connected! Thank you for reaching out to me.
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