How to Create an Effective Personal Mission Statement

A personal mission statement may include zero, one, or more of the following:

• A mention of your goals in life.
• Where you plan to implement your mission.
• Your personal philosophy.
• How others should perceive your mission.
• How your mission fulfils your sense of social responsibility.

Personal mission statements are usually short, something like a business tag line. For example, your personal mission statement might be "To develop innovative solutions to green house gas issues."

Benefits

A good personal mission statement has these benefits:

• It gives meaning and importance to your vision:
  • You want to say, “I make a positive difference to others and have them say that I am a major component of their success”
• It adds clarity:
  • Allows someone to state simply, in one or two sentences, who you are and what you offer.
  • The personal mission statement should be easy to remember.
  • Provides a focus regardless of the changing conditions.
  • Allows you to stay focused and move forward
• It helps:
  • Prioritize your activities by putting first things first.
  • Helps identify your core competencies.
  • Maximize the use of your talents by concentrating on those that help it accomplish your mission
  • Expand your talent pool by extending your existing talents to achieve your goals
• Allows you to act, not react
  • Helps it control your actions instead of letting others determine your fate
  • Helps focus what you plan to do next
  • Helps you determine the direction in which you want to go
• Lets others contribute to your mission
  • Because they understand your mission, it can assist you accomplish your goals

How to create a personal mission statement

Try to answer these questions:

• What qualities are important to you?
• What goals is it meant to achieve?
• How can the your goals benefits others?

To help respond to these questions, you might:

• Brainstorm with others about your strengths, weaknesses, talents, and what others perceive as your deep-felt values and principles.
• Read biographies of people you admire.
• Use the Internet to find personal mission statements of those people you admire.

It might help you if you find a quiet place where you can think about your Personal Mission Statement. Developing an effective mission statement is an iterative process. Your statement may start at a page or two, but over time it should be reduced down to less than a page or to a paragraph or two.

The result should inspire you and cause others to have confidence in you and your goals.

Your mission statement may change over time to reflect changing times and circumstances. However, it should always reflect its fundamental values, purposes and principles.

Criteria used to review your mission statements

One of your submissions will be judged based on how clearly it is stated, how practical, how it inspires, its reflects your beliefs, your goals, and how focused it is.

Examples of Personal Mission Statements

• To assist others so that they can be more effective while giving exceptional service.
• These things are essential to me: deliver value to all my clients quickly and reliably while generating profits.

If you are having difficulty defining your personal mission statement, look at what other well-known people have done for their personal mission statements.