I love to spend time in the morning journaling about what I want next in my life. A great tool to use when you are gaining clarity on your ideal life is to know your values (a list is available for you in my client area, help yourself) your mission and your vision.
Mission statements are brief declarations that describe how we do things when we are “at our best.” Organizations use these documents to clarify their overall purpose; therefore, different organizational cultures have radically different mission statements.
I like asking my coaching clients to come up with their own mission statements to help them really think about their ideal lives. While my regular readers may note that I’ve discussed this topic previously, I’d like to take this opportunity to delve further into the process of creating one’s mission statement—after all, the task can be a bit daunting for some of us!
Get Your Mission Statement in Writing
Start the process of writing your mission statement by reflecting on your past and choosing five accomplishments of which you are especially proud. Then, consider the habits, actions, and behaviors that led to these particular successes. Ask yourself, “how would I teach these competencies to someone else?”
After you’ve written a sentence or two about teaching others, contemplate your answers. Then, write a few sentences about the insights you’ve realized from this process. Ask yourself, “what does my writing tell me about how I work best?”
Now you have the basic components of your own personal mission statement—this paragraph of “explanations” effectively demonstrates how you best operate! Just make sure to word everything positively so that the paragraph inspires you to keep moving forward.
Embrace Success Gracefully
The best predictor of future performance is past performance. So, by focusing on your past accomplishments, you really set the stage to attract more achievement toward you. Including this important aspect in your mission statement thus allows you to more easily make progress toward reaching both your seasonal and long-term goals regarding health, wealth, and relationships.
Plus, this progress will be made in a way that works best for your individual needs and aptitudes. Once you have completed this assignment and formed the basis of your mission statement, try reading your paragraph out loud.
You may need to tweak it a bit to make the language more positive and personal, but don’t give up. Remember that you can continue changing your mission statement over time so that it best fits your current, shifting needs.
Take Action
Take out a piece of paper and list five personal accomplishments—things of which you are especially proud—in a single sentence each.
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For each item listed above, describe the habits, skills, and abilities that allowed you to succeed. Try to keep each answer to a single sentence, if possible. This brevity will make it easier to turn these ideas into a mission statement in the end.
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Combine these last five sentences to create an entire paragraph. You may need to do some editing to ensure that the statement makes sense and is worded in a positive manner but you are nearly there! Cross out any repeated items and rewrite the revised paragraph—this will be your new mission statement, your ‘MO’ in life.