How to Write a Personal Mission Statement, With 26 Examples

A personal mission statement is one or two sentences that name the purpose behind what you do and who it is for. It is the sentence you check a yes or a no against. Stephen Covey, who made the idea popular in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, called it a "personal constitution."⁷

Want to skip ahead? The free mission statement builder walks you through the three steps below on screen, one at a time, and emails you what you wrote.

Why create a personal mission statement?

Purpose, or mission, is the drive behind what we do: our accomplishments, talents, strengths, and the unique qualities we contribute to the world. Mission directs, guides, and motivates us. It also reflects what we naturally do best.

Life purpose is not about a job or even a vocation. Mission is the round-the-clock, every-day-of-your-life expression of who you are when you are reaching your full potential.

Some people are aware of their purpose, and that awareness gives meaning to everything they do. When people are "on purpose" they are contributing rather than primarily consuming, making a difference, and everything they do works toward that mission. Others are not yet aware of theirs and live maintaining the status quo, following the waves of popular opinion, and end up feeling disconnected, unfulfilled, and as though nothing they build lasts.

Viktor Frankl built an entire psychology on this observation: the people who endured the worst were the ones who had a why.¹

Does it have to be permanent?

Perhaps you're intimidated to start. A mission statement can sound daunting, as if what you write is lifelong. I assure you, it is not set in concrete. Hopefully you change, grow, and learn as you move toward your goals, and as you gain a wider view of the road ahead, you're free to adjust.

Consider your mission statement a living, breathing document that grows as you do. As your circumstances, abilities, and aspirations change, review it at different points through your life.

A living, breathing document that grows as you do.

What does it give you?

• Clarity and focus. Clearly defined goals and purposeful decisions aligned with your values.
• Resilience. A way to stay grounded through life's challenges.
• Satisfaction. Aligning action with mission is one of the most reliable sources of a meaningful life.¹

Follow the three steps below. Honor the process; give yourself time to do a deep work of meaning.

Step one: reflect on your values

Start with the values language bank in the guide (10 to 15 minutes; the guide is on the Resources page). It holds hundreds of words, and the best way in is by elimination.

• Underline or highlight every word that resonates.
• Narrow to 25 to 30.
• Look for overlap. Combine words that mean nearly the same thing; drop words another word already covers.
• Cut to about 10, then all the way down to 4 or 5.

Step two: write it

• Use the remaining four or five words, or their meaning, to write at least a paragraph that helps you understand yourself and why these values matter to you (10 to 15 minutes).
• Narrow the paragraph to a simple sentence or statement, which may include some of your values. As Pascal wrote, "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."²

Step three: review and revise

Identify areas of your life, past and present, where you have not walked in your mission and values. What has that cost you? What are the top few things you would like to re-align with your mission?

What does one look like?

Two examples from coaches I've worked alongside:

• "Inspiring people to live fully alive; mind, body, and soul."
• "As humans, we innately want to feel connection, love, and belonging. Yet we can find ourselves isolated and struggling with our relationships and behaviors. My mission is to take a holistic approach, working together toward self-discovery, healing, and growth."

What the great mission statements have in common

Companies have been writing mission statements for a century, and the ones that lasted share a few traits worth stealing for a personal one. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras studied companies that outlived their founders and found that the strongest purpose statements read less like a business plan and more like a reason to exist.³

• They name a purpose, not a product. Collins and Porras put Walt Disney's purpose in four words: "To make people happy." Not films, not parks. Merck's was "To preserve and improve human life." 3M's: "To solve unsolved problems innovatively."³
• They can never be finished. A good purpose works like a guiding star: you keep moving toward it and never arrive. Collins and Porras suggest it should hold for at least a hundred years.³ A goal you can complete is a goal, not a mission.
• Plain words beat clever ones. Patagonia once had a three-part mission about building the best product and causing no unnecessary harm. It replaced it with seven words: "We're in business to save our home planet."⁵
• They are big enough to grow into. Microsoft's, since 2015: "to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more."⁶ Google's founders set out "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Neither describes what the company was when the words were written.
• They come from asking why. Collins and Porras start with what you do and ask "Why does that matter?" about five times, until the answer stops changing.³ Try it on your own paragraph from step two.

Research on purpose points the same way for people. Psychologist William Damon and colleagues define a purpose as an intention that is meaningful to you and at the same time reaches beyond you into the world.⁴ The statements that hold up tend to have both halves.

Famous personal mission statements, and what they teach

Most well-known people never wrote a personal mission statement down, and many of the ones passed around online cannot be traced to the person they are credited to. The ones below can. One is a true personal mission statement. The rest are a sentence the person said in public that did the same job, or the mission of the thing they built. Each has something worth borrowing.

• Denise Morrison, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company. One of the few executives to publish hers: "To serve as a leader, live a balanced life, and apply ethical principles to make a significant difference."⁸ Borrow the way it holds work and life in one sentence, so neither gets to swallow the other.
• Steve Jobs. He never published a personal mission statement. At Stanford in 2005 he told graduates, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life," and said that after Apple fired him, the only thing that kept him going was that he loved what he did.⁹ Borrow the test: if your statement could belong to someone else, keep writing.
• Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike. Nike's mission is "Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world," with a footnote that does the heavy lifting: "If you have a body, you are an athlete."¹⁰ In his memoir Shoe Dog, his own advice is plainer: "Let everyone else call your idea crazy... just keep going. Don't stop."¹¹ Borrow the footnote. One line that defines who you serve can make a statement far bigger without making it longer.
• Lou Gerstner, who turned IBM around. Shortly after taking over a struggling IBM in 1993, he was asked about his vision and answered, "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision."¹² He meant the company first had to stay afloat. The purpose came out of the work. Borrow the permission: if the sentence will not come, start with how you want to spend next Tuesday and let the statement catch up.
• John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach. His teams won 10 national championships in 12 years, seven of them in a row.¹⁹ Every season, his first practice started with socks. He showed players how to pull them on and smooth out the wrinkles around the heel, then how to lace their shoes properly, because a wrinkle becomes a blister and a blister keeps a player off the floor.¹⁸ For recruits who had been high school stars, it was a strange way to begin. For Wooden, it was the whole philosophy in miniature: the big result is built from small things done right, every day. It came from home. His father wrote out a creed of seven things to do and handed it to him with the words "Son, try and live up to these things." One of the seven: "Make each day your masterpiece."²⁰ Borrow the starting place. Your mission can begin with how you lace your shoes tomorrow morning.
• Fred Rogers. Testifying before the US Senate in 1969 to keep public television funded, he described his work in one line: "I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique."¹³ Borrow the "every day." A mission you can practice on an ordinary afternoon outlasts one you can only honor on big occasions.
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Asked at Harvard in 2015 what advice she had, she said: "Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."¹⁴ Borrow the second half. It says how she meant to carry what she cared about, which most statements leave out.
• Jackie Robinson. His gravestone in Brooklyn carries the line he is remembered by: "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."¹⁶ Borrow the measure. It tells you exactly where to look when you ask whether a day counted.
• Paul Newman. In 1982 he and the writer A. E. Hotchner started a food company with his homemade salad dressing and declared that 100% of the profits would go to charity. It has since given away hundreds of millions of dollars.¹⁷ Borrow the proof. He never needed to publish the sentence. The policy said it every year.
• Malala Yousafzai. Malala Fund "is working for a world where every girl can learn and choose her own future."¹⁵ Borrow "working for a world where." It admits the work is not finished, which is exactly what a mission is.

None of these are polished, and none would survive a branding committee. Each one sounds like the person who said it. That is the bar for yours.

A personal mission statement template

If the blank page is the hard part, start from one of these and rewrite it until it sounds like you. Keep your four or five values from step one beside you while you do.

• "I [what you do] for [who] so that [what changes for them]."
• "To [verb] [who or what], by [how you do it]."
• "My life is for [the thing you would keep doing if no one paid you or noticed]."

Then cut every word a stranger could have written.

Personal mission statement examples for your career

• A first-time manager: "Make my team better at their jobs than I was at mine."
• Someone changing careers at forty: "Do work I would be proud to explain to my kids, for people who need it most."
• A salesperson: "Only sell what I would buy, and leave every client better informed than I found them."
• A graduate student: "Learn enough to be useful, and stay curious enough to keep learning after it stops being required."

More personal mission statement examples

Here is how that sounds in very different lives, from people with very different drives. Some are plain, some are a promise, some fit in five words. Borrow the shape, not the words.

• A founder who is driven to build: "Build things that outlast me. Hire people better than me. Leave every room with more options than it had."
• An executive who leads through people: "I want the people I lead to feel seen on a Tuesday, not just at the annual review."
• A former athlete who still loves to compete: "Compete like it matters, win clean, and leave whoever I am up against better for the fight."
• A painter who guards her freedom: "I answer to the work. I make what scares me, sell what I am proud of, and say no to the rest."
• A father who grew up in chaos: "My kids will always know where I am and that I am coming back. Everything else I do is built on that."
• A nurse turned founder, moved by justice: "To make sure the people the system forgets are remembered, by name, every time."
• A woman rebuilding after a divorce: "To become someone my own life can trust again, and to hold the door for the next woman walking through."
• A retired engineer who stays curious: "Learn something hard every year, and teach it to someone younger before I forget why it mattered."
• A comedian who knows what laughter is for: "Make people laugh at the thing they have been carrying alone. Then help them put it down."
• The shortest kind, from a restaurant owner: "Make every stranger feel expected."

Notice what none of them say: a job title. Roles change. The sentence underneath them is what you carry from one to the next. And yours does not have to sound like any of these. It has to sound like you on your best day.

Closing

The full guide, with the values language bank and three exercises, is on the Resources page. If you would rather work through it on screen, the mission statement builder walks you through it one step at a time. Take the time. The sentence you end up with will steer more decisions than you expect.