As a leader in your business, you must be familiar with one thing, and that is your business “Mission Statement.”. But what about your personal mission statement?
Besides helping business, a mission statement can be personalized to stay aligned with your values (e.g. environmental friendly or making people happy). It can also help to attract those customers and employees who share the same values as the business leader.
Almost all businesses spent hundreds of hours crafting a mission statement. Here's one about being a leader by Denise Morrison, Campbell Soup Company:
“To serve as a leader live a balanced life, and apply ethical principles to make a significant difference”.
Why is Personal Mission Statement Necessary?
It creates boundaries so that you can play freely, deal freely, and create freely. Everything you do, such as investment in terms of money, time, and relationship, should be within the boundaries of the mission statement. Most of the people love to play freely and don’t love the boundaries. But sometimes these boundaries can avoid you from distractions. A personal mission statement allows you to focus on such things that you feel are important.
If you have set your boundaries, then a personal mission statement can be the number one tool for decision making. When you have set your boundaries and goals, anything that will come outside of these boundaries, you won’t accept those. You can live a good life if you are living by following your personal mission statement. Once you have declared your mission statement, you start to live according to it.
5 Questions that must be answered in a Personal Mission Statement
You can’t create a meaningful mission statement in just a few minutes or hours. You can’t even pull out of thin air. These five questions you will be asking yourself every day. These questions can help you to create an effective personal mission statement.
What things are important in your lives? And what is the connection of your life with those things?
It is the most important question to answer while creating a personal mission statement. You can answer this question in lots of different ways. It can involve physical and mental destinations. In simple words, you want to describe your career. What you want to do and what you want to achieve?
It is time to dream big. At this stage, you don’t have to be realistic. Assess what possible and the best results you can achieve? It is not bad to dream big until and unless you are on track to achieve those dreams.
It is the most important question. Think about how you want people to describe you? What should be their reaction when your name comes in front of them?
If you have lived 100 years, then what kind of impact you have on the lives of people.
Try to answer these five questions.
Follow the Guidelines to write an effective Personal Mission Statement
The best thing you can do is to write a mission statement in a single sentence. You will have to focus on important things in your life. Boundaries you set can help to remain focused.
No doubt, it is a personal mission statement, but don’t forget about the others. Tell how you want to benefit others by your life?
Share your personal mission statement with those people who are important to you. Get feedback from mentors, special friends, parents, and spouses. They can provide you with valuable feedback.
When you start learning and growing, you will have to change the mission statement. So, keep space for changes and make changes when needed. As long as you are on track to complete your mission, you can’t do anything silly or wrong.
The Best Examples of Personal Mission Statements
It is not easy to find a perfect wording for a mission statement. Once you know everything about the mission statement, take a look at these examples. These examples will make your mind more clearly about the personal mission statement.
A few examples of personal mission statements are given below:
- “If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it” – Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla. (Imagine the multiple failures at Space X and going all-in)
- “To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate self-worth and net-worth of women around the world” – Amanda Steinberg, Dailyworth.com
- “To make people happy” – Walt Disney, Founder of Walt Disney Productions
- “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive and do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style” – Maya Angelou
- “I want to serve the people. And I want every girl, every child to be educated” – Malala Yousafzai
- “To be a teacher and to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be” – Oprah Winfrey, Founder of OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network
- “To impact the lives of every person positively I meet.”
- “To create opportunities for today’s youth”
- “To inspire people through teaching and coaching”
- “To bring positive changes in others, make yourself positive”
- “Encourage and engage people to believe in possibilities”
- “Encourage everyone you meet in your daily life”
- “Allow people to live their lives because they are the one who knows how to live it better”
- “Help people to create the best version of tomorrow”
- “Try to simplify the complicated things”
- “Try to help as many people as you possibly can”
Conclusion
Use a personal mission statement to align your career path with personal goals. Make a short personal mission statement so that you can remember it even in crisis as well.