How to Craft an Actionable Personal Mission Statement
A mission statement can be a powerful tool. For business, they serve to remind customers and employees of why the company exists. For me, it acts as a compass which I use to navigate the world around me. And for you, an actionable personal mission statement can provide a sense of focus, ensure accountability, and encourage you to do great things in life!
This semester in my Personal and Leadership Development Seminar held at the Telfer School of Management, I was guided through an exercise where I crafted my very own actionable personal mission statement.
Because I enjoyed the process so much, and now reflect on my mission statement on a daily basis, I am going to walk you through the steps to create your own!
Ask some questions
Before jumping into defining your mission, first you need to ask yourself some key questions:
1. Where are you in life and where are you going?
2. What is your core set of beliefs and values? What do you stand for?
3. Where do you focus your energy, actions, and behaviors?
4. What are the most important roles you have now or wish to have in the future?
5. What actions do/will you take to live your life with purpose?
Reflecting on your answers to these questions provides great context for your statement and hopefully, a central theme for your mission. Also important to note, your actionable mission statement is likely to change as you move through life. While your core set of beliefs and values may stay relatively the same, the roles you fill at various points in life will evolve. For example, right now I still consider myself a full-time university student, in just 14 days however, my role will change to being a working professional! Every mission statement is relative to those various roles we fill, our intended purpose in each role, and what we view success as.
Define your mission
Using the answers to the previous questions, define your mission. If only it were that easy right!? To inspire some ideas in you, here’s an example of a great personal mission statement:
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” — Maya Angelo
Although short and to the point, this statement clearly defines the individual’s purpose in life and the core set of values they acquire. For myself, I value integrity, excellence, creativity, health, and dedication. These are some of the key components I considered when creating my own actionable personal mission statement.
Put it to work
Once you have created your personal mission statement, its time to put it to work! For it to be effective, it must be actionable. This is where writing out your goals, aspirations and behaviors comes in. As you can see below, I aligned each of my values with an action that I can take to live by those values in my daily life.
Using these actionable statements, I am able to create goals specific to my mission. For example, I set a goal to practice yoga twice a week to maintain my values in balanced health. Ultimately, this step provides a toolkit for you to use for living out your mission.
Next steps
To take this process one step further, I have challenged myself and now am encouraging you to take these next steps to fully embrace your actionable personal mission statement:
- Put it in a visible space.
- Read it daily, or weekly.
- Share it with others.
By sharing my statement with you, I am already feeling more motivated to achieve the actions and goals I have established in this exercise. If this blog has inspired you to create your own actionable personal mission statement, please share in the comments below!
Happy creating!
Michaela
