I don’t get surprised by the confused reactions of people when I ask them whether they would want me to help them writing down the mission statement for their life. Most of the time people say ‘who writes a mission statement for life?’. A lot of others think that it is only for celebrities and businessmen. There are others who think only companies or organizations have mission statements.
The fact of the matter is that a personal mission statement helps you in many ways and sometimes perhaps nothing would be as helpful as having a mission statement to guide you in certain situations. Everyone can have his or her mission statement for life and there are plenty of good reasons why you should think of writing yours too. Here are a top 5 reasons according to me though there are much more.
- It clears clutter in your mind
So many poets and philosophers have written about the complexity of human mind and scientists have studied our brains and agreed on most of those opinions if not all.
Our mind is an ocean of thoughts ranging from smallest of small ideas to the unimaginable concepts. It keeps wandering all the time.
It is believed that a human brain has 70,000 thoughts per day. That’s the capacity of mind and brain. So, in order to stay clear of what exactly you want to concentrate on it is highly advisable that you write a mission statement, a life goal for yourself and train your mind to stay away from the clutter and concentrate on the priority set for yourself.
Think of any successful leader, entrepreneur or reformer and you will notice that one biggest reason behind their success was clarity of mission.
- Strengthens decision making
Your mission statement makes your decision making stronger because once you know what you want to do you will not delay a decision. You don’t have to think long and hard because the end goal is in front you. A player in a soccer match knows only one thing: ‘put the ball in the goal post’. None of the players waste time thinking on the ground they run as fast as they can advance towards the goal. Can you imagine soccer without goal post? Without the purpose, the energy levels of the players will drop and it will be a boring game to the players themselves leave alone the audience.
- It becomes your driving force
We need a reason and a purpose behind everything we do. Remember all your questions you used to ask your parents every time they asked you to do somethings. Every task became easier once the purpose behind it was made clear. Our elders have actually taught us to find purpose in everything we did as we were growing up but yet we don’t seem to understand it’s effect when applied in life as a whole.
Once you have mission statement written for yourself it will become a driving force for you. You will live for that purpose. You sleep, eat and drink it. Everything you do will be around it. It becomes the center of your living.
- You will never see yourself doing what is not important to you
Do you struggle a lot when it comes to saying no at times? We all have gone through this struggle but you are prone to stay in it if you do not have a clear idea of what to say no to. We see people doing all sorts of things that come their way and at the end of the day, they feel unsatisfied. This is because they do not have a set goal. They are doing random things. Creating your own personal mission statement gives you an ability to what differentiate between what is important and not so important for you.
- Helps save and manage time effectively
It is no hidden fact that when we do not have a goal we end up wasting a lot of our time. A study says that an average person spends about 9 years of his life watching TV. We spend 70% of our waking life in front of digital media.
The moment you have your mission or your goal of life written down you will start setting time aside to fulfill that mission and cut down on all the parasites.
Anil Parkhe
Brand Consultant