How to Write a Mission Statement for Your Life, Career, or Family

4. Choose a life verse and/or write a mission statement for my life and career. 

At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post called Ten Adventures to Try in 2012. As I attempt each adventure throughout the year, I’ll blog about them to let you know how it went. Number four turned out to be more complicated than expected. So I’m talking about mission statements today and will cover life verses next week.

I heard about mission statements while participating in an online seminar from Thomas Umstattd. Thomas is a wordpress developer, social media coach, and a fun and smart fellow. He helps authors and small business sell more books and make more money online using tools like Twitter, Blogging and Facebook, and his company did my new website! (How’s it look, btw?)

Thomas keeps his mission statement at the top of his To Do list so he can see it daily. It not only reminds him of his goal at work, it’s helped him say no to worthwhile opportunities that are outside his mission.

Here is Thomas’ mission statement: To help the Church use technology to advance the Kingdom, until the seasons change.

Nice, huh?

Dictionary.com defines mission statement as an official statement of the aims and objectives of a business of other organization.

So all I needed to do was write a plan that stated my goals for my life and career. It would be my road map through life. My compass.

But I got thinking, in today’s busy world, it’s important to keep work and personal life separate. This is especially difficult for me since I work at home. I don’t want my kids to grow up with a mom who never got up out of her office chair. My kids need their mom. My husband needs his wife. And so I chose to write two mission statements: one for work and one for my personal life.

There are dozens of websites out there that talk about how to write a mission statement. Stephen R. Covey wrote a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and created a website to help people write a mission statement at the Franklin Covey site. I tried it. It was kind of fun. But the end result was a page of text. I’m a girl. I have emotional days. And I already have a massive To Do list. All I really wanted was a simple statement to remind me—when I need motivation—of my plan on earth. A full page of text overwhelmed me.

Here are some questions I answered in coming up with mine. I answered each question twice: once for my personal life and once for my career.

1. What legacy do I want to leave behind (for my family, for my readers)?

2. What are my long range goals (for my family, for my readers)?

3. My roles in (my family, my career) are…

4. What is my purpose (in life, in my career)?

5. What are the values that I stand for? (And this answer should be the same at work and in your personal life.)

I spent some time putting it together. Your mission statement isn’t supposed to make you feel guilty, so be positive. Then set it aside for a few days. The best mission statements are short. One to five sentences are all you need, so take some time to write, rewrite, and edit your statement down until it’s perfect.

Here is what I came up with.

Family Mission Statement: To devote myself to my family, to honor and love them with my actions and words, and to abide with Christ so that I can become more like him.

Work Mission Statement: To create fiction for teen readers that entertains and shares the love of Christ.

And I’d like to note that I used my mission statement to say no (before I even had it!) when I was asked to write for a spec fiction anthology project for adults. I wanted to. The project sounded awesome. But I knew that I was supposed to be writing for teens. Cool how your mission statement can keep you focused, huh?

Once you get your mission statement, print it out and post it in places that will be helpful to you. And you might want to revise your mission statement every few years, depending on how your life changes.

After having gone through this process, I thought it might also be fun to write a family mission statement together with my family. Maybe someday…

How about you? Do you have a mission statement? Do you think it would be helpful? Why or why not?