Why are mission and vision statements important? Formulating your purpose and your intentions creates a motivation that helps you to feel more satisfied with life

• A personal mission statement simply states your purpose in life—it considers and combines all of your values into just a couple sentences.
• It’s important to have a personal mission statement as it motivates you to have a positive impact on the world and helps you feel more satisfied in your everyday life.
• Come up with your own personal mission statement by first thinking about an issue you care about: examples include healthcare, hunger, animal cruelty, and bullying.
• Then, consider what you’re good at: what skills do you possess that can help you address the issue you just defined?
• If you’re having trouble deciding on an area you really want to impact, think about what really captivates you—what activities really draw your attention?
• Finally, put all of the information you’ve gathered to finalize your personal mission statement and begin living a more meaningful life.

A personal mission statement simply defines who you are and how you intend to live. It wraps all of your values into a couple sentences and gives you a dependable framework to base your actions off of. Furthermore, it motivates you to be a better person and creates greater life satisfaction.

Think Big, Live Big

We’ve got the basics down, but let’s delve a little deeper into how a personal mission statement can have a positive impact on your life. Ashley Bradley, a certified professional co-active coach, explains how your mission statement can foster a new sense of motivation:

“Being driven by a personal mission is being clear and intentional about the impact you are having on the world and people around you. Having a purpose and connection to something bigger than yourself is what creates the motivation. Through your intense desire to positively impact the world in your own unique way, you create an internal drive and motivation that will help you to feel more clarity, direction, and satisfaction in your day-to-day life. It supports you in becoming a better and more successful person because the mission is so powerful that you will do whatever it takes to improve yourself personally and professionally to achieve your mission-driven goals.

You are much less likely to allow obstacles and challenges to stop you if you have a deep and conscious connection to why it is so important to you. Similar to how you see someone who becomes a parent gain a new sense of motivation and drive—a personal mission statement has a similar impact. You set your sites on what you are deeply moved to bring into the world, and you do whatever it takes to achieve it—it’s about more than you as an individual now.”

Step-by-Step Process for Determining Your Mission

Now to the part where you determine your own personal mission! Implement the following tips from Yocheved Golani—life coach and editor and writer for e-counseling.com—for defining your purpose and putting it into a personal mission statement that’ll give your life some solid structure:

1) Think about a problem you care about. “Identify what has always bothered you about the world since you were a teen or even younger, the problems that you wanted to address and to correct, perhaps to end forever. Spend time on those thoughts and write them down, or record them verbally. Values matter.”

2) Consider what you’re good at. “Identify the skills that you’re good at plus the qualities that make you different from other people. Why have people complimented you? What makes someone remark that you’re special? Go ahead, write down those answers, or record them verbally too.”

3) Ask yourself: What captivates me? “Focus on activities which draw your attention and energies. What do you tend to find irresistible? Correcting injustices, preparing delicious foods, healing illness, providing helpful insights, building theoretical or physical structures that solve problems, etc.”

4) Put it all together. “Put all the answers together and you’ll be closer to understanding the unique gifts that you bring to the world, insights and talents that other people lack. You’ll be able to realize ‘who’ you are, what you want to accomplish, and how you can do that… Your mood will lift in many ways from realizing what you exist for, why, and what you can do about it.”

If you need a little assistance putting your mission into a personal mission statement, consider working with a life coach. These professionals know just how to help you.

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