How to Develop Your Personal Mission Statement

by Stephen R. Covey

This idea—this principle—of beginning with the end in mind is based upon the concept that all things are created twice: first in the mind, as a thought or intellectual creation; and second in reality as a physical creation.

So as you look at your mission statement, you’ll need to work basically on two things: vision—your sense of the future—and the principles that you want to live by. Your vision is the end, the destination. Principles are the means, like the flight plan. Vision is who you really are and what you could become. Principles are those unalterable truths you feel so strongly about that you are willing to accept them as your own set of values.

“Nothing gives so much direction to a person’s life as a sound set of principles.”

So as you decide what your mission statement is about, ask yourself, “Am I prepared to act this way privately and publicly?”

“The thing I learned is that you don’t invent your mission, you detect it. You uncover it, as it were.”

When you live out of your memory, you focus on the past. When you live out of your imagination, you focus on the future. What lies behind us is nothing compared to what lies within us and ahead of us.

you don’t start writing a mission statement without first preparing to write it. Maybe you have been preparing for a long time. Maybe you’ve done a lot of this deep inner work and now you’re really prepared for your mission statement work.

Everyone, however, is in a different place, so if you’re working with others, make sure everyone comes prepared. Then you can tap into this collective sense of vision and mission.

When you live out of your memory, you focus on the past. When you live out of your imaginatio...

When you prepare for your own mission statement, ask the deeper questions. What are your unique gifts? Listen to those who see the potential in you. Listen and sense their affirmation of you. Study the lives of people who’ve inspired you—your heroes and what it is that you admire about them—so you can get a sense of the principles on which you want to build. You want to write a mission statement that is timeless, that will not change. It may in fact change, but you want to write it as if it will never change. You want to act upon it by exercising your...

The principles you live by create the world you live in.

If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you give your life to? If you knew you didn’t have to work for a living, what would you give your life to?

The focus of your life you detect by looking on the inside.

First, go around and pick up the most inspirational book in your house, or a recording, a podcast, an audiobook—whatever you find inspirational, that challenges your thinking, and is positive and something you like. Sit down for ten minutes and read/listen. You don’t have to be listening for anything in particular or underline something; just relax, enjoy it, and read or listen for the next ten minutes. After you’ve done that, take a blank piece of paper and write down what would likely end up in your mission statement, if you were really going to write one right now.

Does it give you a sense of purpose? Does it bring out some of the best stuff that’s in you?

A mission statement is at its core an expression of your desired center.

What tends to move you in key decisions? What do you tend to rely on for influence? What are the sources of your sense of personal identity?

I find tremendous error in shaping a mission statement to be a massive list of lifetime goals.

It doesn’t release potential and freedom within a person. A mission statement should reflect a deeper level.

Identity and happiness comes from a deeper place.

Happiness in the Aristotelian sense

Another big error that I find when people say that their mission statement hasn’t really worked for them is that their statements are often selfish, self-focused, inwardly narcissistic lists of what they want. “I want to have this…, I want to be like this…, I want to do this…,”—all “I” statements.

The history of the world teaches that the power of joy in people doesn’t come in getting, it always comes in giving, contributing, adding more. The more you give, the more you live. If you’re about ...

The most effective centers—the ones that last, are meaningful, and give stability and peace—come from...

The concept is this—you keep coming back to the flight path. That perfect flight path that will take you to your destination.

“What would you like as your epitaph, or as a sentence that would describe your life?”

“If we work upon marble, it will perish. If we work upon brass, time will efface it. But if we work upon immortal minds, and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.”

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