Crafting a Mission Statement

Posted 7 months, 1 week ago at 10:00 am. 1 comment

During this past week, I’ve been working on how I can transform this site into a more informative, creative place where people can come to get unique insights in the personal development / self-help world. Because of the aspiration I have for this blog, I decided creating a mission statement solely for this blog would be a great idea. A mission statement that includes my purpose would give me focus, clarity, and the ability to know exactly why and for whom I’m writing my articles for.

Now, I realize some of you don’t have a mission statement (for whatever purpose - life or business), so I thought writing an article that detailed how I created my purpose statement would be extremely helpful to you. There are a lot of resources out there that can guide you through the creative process, but I found many of the guides to be bulky, annoying, and not very useful. Hopefully, my version is a bit more straightforward and useful than what you might find elsewhere!

(I use purpose and mission statement interchangeably here. Your mission statement is generally a condensed version of your purpose.)

Creating Your Mission Statement

Writing your mission statement not hard. In fact, if you really work at it, it only takes about an hour of your time (maybe less!) and you’ll have it for as long as you want to keep it. The steps I used are as follows:

1. Figure out what you’re writing the mission statement for. Are you writing your mission statement as a personal manifesto of what you want to become? Or is it for an online business, such as a blog? Personal mission statements tend to be broader, more value based; business mission statements often are more sharply worded with a purpose in mind.
2. Figure out what you want to convey in the mission statement. Are you trying to aim for a grand expectation that’s hard to reach? Or do you have a specific goal in mind? Think about what you want to convey in your mission statement.
3. Figure out the purpose of what you’re trying to achieve. Mission statements are all about purpose.  Don’t have a purpose? You probably won’t be needing a mission statement. “Why do I aspire to be this kind of person?” or “What kind of goals does this business have?” are good questions to ask if you are stuck.
4. Brainstorm ideas. Brainstorm out different phases that you would like to include in your mission statement. Things like values (”generosity”) or aspirations (”be the best”) or goals (”reach 1,000 people”) are all things you can include. Take about 15 minutes - I know, that’s a long time, but do it anyway! - and get all of your ideas on paper. The more ideas, the better.
5. Write it out! After brainstorming your ideas out, take the best phrases that relate directly towards your purpose, and write out a mission statement. This may only take you several minutes; it took me about 15 minutes as I kept throwing out different ideas and editing what I wrote.

Ta-da! Mission statement written! If you did it correctly, you’re probably looking at your mission statement and saying to yourself “Wow, that’s exactly what I was going for!”

Examples are always useful, so here’s Path to Your Destiny’s mission statement:

Path to Your Destiny’s purpose is to encourage people to examine their lives through different perspectives and to educate people on methods they can use to create their perfect life journey.

And guiding you through each of the five steps I used:

1. What was I writing the mission statement for? I was writing it to get a clear sense of purpose for this blog. I had a vague, lofty idea of why I was writing this blog, but I wanted to write a purpose that was crystal clear so I knew the exact reasons for writing posts, doing advertising work, and so on.
2. What did I want to convey in the mission statement? Since I knew the mission statement was going to be used as a clarity point, I wanted to convey my aspirations for the blog.
3. What’s the purpose I’m trying to achieve? Obviously, because I was writing the mission statement for my blog, I had to look at the blog’s purpose to know what I wanted to include in the mission statement. I wanted to challenge people’s beliefs in a constructive way, inform them of methods I use to make my life easier, and introduce them to viewpoints they wouldn’t get anywhere else.
4. Brainstorm ideas. After knowing the purpose, I started brainstorming values and phrases that went along with that purpose. I took about 15~20 minutes and just listed everything I could to clear everything out from my mind.
5. Sort through the brainstormed ideas, write out the statement! And after all of the brainstorming was said and done, I sifted through the ideas I came up with, and started to write out basic statements. It took about 25 revisions before I came to my end result.

Am I happy with my mission statement? Absolutely! It’s perfect, it’s concise, and it’s going to be a focal point in my blog. I know all of my activities I do for this blog - writing articles, tweaking the layout, advertising - it’s all going to revolve around my purpose. “Why am I doing X activity?” It’s because I want to encourage people to examine their lives through different perspectives, and educate people on methods they can use to create their perfect life journey.

If you don’t have a mission statement right now, I highly encourage you to set aside a block of time and create one. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it’ll provide you with direction when you’re unsure of where you are headed.