How to Write a Personal Mission Statement

There are many different ways to write a personal mission statement. Despite this there are also some commonalities and good guidelines you can follow when writing your own. Writing your own personal mission statement will give you a clear view of your goals, values, and relationships. Grab a pen and paper and let's get started.

1. Understand the benefits of writing your personal mission statement. Writing a personal mission statement can help you in many ways such as learning more about yourself, expressing your goals clearly, and becoming the person you want to be.

• Learn more about yourself. When you sit down to create your own mission statement it will force you to examine yourself in more detail than usual. You will need to learn just what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it.
• Express and understand your goals clearly. You might have a broad understanding of what you want to achieve in life, but it may be difficult to put that understanding into precise words. Examining your goals will allow you to focus them into clear and concise statements.
• Knowing your goals will help you to achieve them more easily.
• Relate your goals and how to achieve them to your values and beliefs.
• Make your statement a way of life. Creating a personal mission statement will allow you to start living your goals and values. After clarifying and focusing your ideals and life direction you will be able to work your mission statement into everything you do.
• Don't just settle for writing your statement on paper.
• Always strive to live in accordance with your values and beliefs.

2. Imagine who you want to be. The first main step in writing your personal mission statement will be to imagine exactly who you want to become. Examine the qualities you want to obtain, the relationships you want to have, and the way of life that you want to live.

• Find a person you admire. Examine that person that you most admire. Discover the qualities in them that you find so admirable. List those qualities and think about how you could best bring them into your own life.
• Try to make this list as detailed as you can.
• Start practicing these qualities from you list in your daily life.
• Imagine who you want to be. Try to picture exactly who it is you want to become. Envision the details of your accomplishments, your personality, or any future you may want to find yourself living in.
• For now, forget about how you will achieve this.
• Focus only on what you want to achieve.
• Think of the roles you play. Examine your relationships to friends, family, career, hobbies, or other areas of your life. Think about how you would want to be describe in these relationships.
• Understand your roles and what you want from them.

3. Start discovering yourself. Writing your personal mission statement isn't directly about laying out a path to your future. The main function of your statement will be to help you better know yourself. 

• The personal mission statement is focused on self discovery, rather than creation.
• Your mission statement should be written only to inspire you, not to impress another person.
• Knowing yourself will help you to relate to and engage with the world at large.

 culled from wikihow.com