Creating a Mission Statement

Regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve just created a Life Handbook. However, I ran into a bit of a road block – What on earth was my mission statement?

Well, Personal Excellence describe it as a life purpose. So all I had to do was define my very purpose for existence! Shesh, not hard at all.
But why do we even need one?

“As long as you wish to live a more meaningful and conscious life, a life purpose is for you.” - Source 

Oh right, that’s why. So I decided to persevere and come up with my own life purpose. It didn’t matter if it was pretty lame, or that I ended up hating it a few months down the line. I really felt I just needed one so I could tick that item off of my Be Authentic to-do list.


An example of a life purpose is,
“To inspire and unleash creativity in every individual, one person at a time.” - Source

That’s deep. And I really wasn’t sure I could come up with something like that myself.

Thankfully, Personal Excellence had a number of helpful exercises to help you find your life purpose. (See their page on finding your life purpose here)

Consult Your Inner Self
1. Equip yourself with a pen/paper or word processor. Do this when you’re by yourself.
Pen. Notebook. An innocent smoothie and some quiet.

2. Answer the question: “What is my life purpose?”

Are you serious? Just answer it like that? But it’s such a HUGE question.

3. Write all thoughts that pop in. All of them, including miscellaneous ones. For every thought that pops in, continue asking that same question.
Don’t filter and don’t think too much.
here’s what I wrote;
Make a difference
Create a change
Eliminate stigma
Impart happiness
Be the change
I started to hit some resistance here. I wasn’t getting anywhere. These phrases were so cliché. I took a pause for a few moments and read part four of the exercise.

4. Keep doing it until you finally reach the answer that makes you cry.

I didn’t cry. But I did come away with an answer that wasn’t a cheesy catchphrase or a borrowed vision for a cause. I wrote it down and immediately knew this was it. I had my purpose.

To create something that surpasses my own lifetime.

I felt like it fit me, who I was and what I wanted to achieve. But it’s also vague enough that it could work.
Mission accomplished. My very own Mission Statement.