Personal Mission Statement

 

What is a mission statement? Why do organization have it and why is it important?

Those are my questions before I was introduced to the Business Ethics course. Whenever I was asked of what my mission in life is, I simply tell people that I want to build a life I don’t need a vacation from. I have come to realize that personal mission statement should be better than that.

Mission statement should define who you are, what matters most to you, and how you intend to live your life. Some people confuse it with goals. While goals are specific and time-particular, a mission statement is what should lead you to achieving your goals. It wraps up all your values, your purpose and your intentions which creates a motivation that will help you feel more satisfied with life.

How do I craft my mission statement?

Writing a personal mission statement for me is the most challenging part of creating a life plan. I made sure to put the most time and effort into it because this is my basis of how I can improve myself personally and professionally. I know I must align my every value to my goals through my mission statement.

I realized that creating a mission statement is a set-by-step process so I listed down three things I should take into consideration before writing my personal mission statement:

1. What do I value the most?

In writing a mission statement, I started by considering who I am and who I want to be. These are the questions I asked myself:

What am I most passionate about?

·    What do I care most about?

·    What problems of the world do I want to address?

·    What work do I want to do each day?

·    What way do I want to live?

·    What do I want my relationships to be like?

·    What do I want my bank account to look like?

·    Where do I want to spend my days?

 

2. What are my biggest goals?

The next step is to write down my goals. Be it small or big, it doesn’t matter, as long as it aligns with my values in life.

 

3. What legacy do I want to leave?

Due to unfortunate events related to the pandemic, I have come to realize that it is imperative to consider the mark we leave the world. I realized that each individual influences every single person they meet in one way or another.

It made me ask myself how I want to significantly impact others and how I want to be remembered. This is because when two of my relatives passed away recently, one who lived a selfish and narcissistic life did not have any friends to empathize with them during her wake and burial but the other person who helped many people, including our family, had a wake filled with friends and family crying non-stop because of her sudden death. Even though the government imposed an Enhanced Community Quarantine, her friends and relatives found ways to attend her wake and burial. She lived her life helping others even though she doesn’t have enough for herself. She thinks about other people before herself and lived a selfless life. This is also how I want to be remembered. A person who lived a meaningful and selfless life.

With these three things in mind, I came up with my personal mission statement:

 

My mission is to live a life full of compassion for humanity and an unceasing passion for knowledge. I aim to soar as high as possible without leaving my feet on the ground and aligning everything I do with God’s mission.

 

My mission statement of aiming success may be far from where I am at right now or even seem to be unrealistic for now, but I know it will guide me to my path. As my life unfolds, it will gradually turn into reality.