Creating a Personal Mission Statement

I confess, the idea of creating a mission statement for myself or my family seemed like a "touchy-feely" getting to know you kind of concept. I know what I believe, I know what is important to me in my life, why do I need to formalize it in writing? However, my husband has encouraged me to do just that, and with his prompting and my reading 7 Habits last year (I am still slogging through the family version - so much to digest), I became convinced of the advantages. I will say, it was not an easy thing to do. How do you boil down who you are and what your "mission" is in a focused way? After much thought and jotting down of ideas over several weeks, I came to the conclusion that the structure of my mission statement would be based on the 5 P's from Mother's Rule of Life. Those five areas encompass everything I wanted to define in my life, so I took each one and wrote a paragraph stating who I am and what I am striving for within each of those realms. While I realize that I will fall short of this daily, it is a good reminder of that which I am striving to attain, and a good check for myself in evaluating what activities to pursue. So, I want to encourage you if you are at a point where you feel lost, directionless or overwhelmed (hee hee, that probably describes us all right!), then take time to create a mission statement. It can be very revealing, and it certainly can help to focus your priorities. If you are not sure how to go about it, pick up one of the 7 Habits books, there are ideas there as well as examples of others' mission statements.