If you have read First Things First or The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People you already known what is a Personal Mission Statement. If you don’t, I will tell it to you.
A Personal Mission Statement is a document where we write what we want to do and who we want to be in our life. Probably some of you are thinking right now: “I perfectly know who I am and I’m already doing what I want to do”. Even if you are thinking this way the reality could be slightly different. A lot of us have thought this way and after writing our Mission Statement we realized we were not aware of who we want to be and what we want to do.
Writing a Mission Statement is not an easy task at first. A lot of people simply don’t know where to start. You see in front of you the blank sheet of paper, asking yourself, How I’m going to fill it?
When I wrote mine, I began doing a list of principles, values, what I’m best at, what I want to accomplish, what I want to improve, etcetera. An example of such a list could be the following:
Honest, Sincere, Good solving problems, Great Speaker, Affluent, Working at IBM,…
During this step don’t waste your time thinking or censuring yourself, just write down, like a brainstorming session.
With this list at hand, we are going to review what we have wrote. You can re-write some entries, remove duplicated ones, think about the best way to write some sentences that say the same thing in different words, re-read the list, add some new sentences, and so on.
When you feel right with your list you are ready to start writing your first draft. When I wrote mine I did it keeping the end in my mind and in my writing. I didn’t write my mission statement saying: “I want to work at IBM as a software developer…” NO, WRONG. Keep the end in your mind and in your writing: “I’m working at IBM as a software developer…”, this is a far better approach.
When you have finished your first draft, read it. Read, re-read, write and refine your Mission Statement. Review it periodically and keep it updated. If something changes, change it in your mission statement. If you want to do something else update your mission statement. A Mission Statement is a dynamic document that reflects your wants, your purposes and your values all the time. A Mission Statement is always a work in progress, it could take months or years reaching a final version.
Finally, keep your mission statement at hand and read it from time to time, specially when you feel yourself a bit lost. When I’m reading mine I feel myself better quickly.
Now you are ready to set up your goals, goals that really matter to you.
“Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming”. – Matthew Arnold
