One of the better pieces of advice I’ve read is to write a personal mission statement. This came from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
I know it sounds hokey, and that’s because it is. But it’s important to be purposeful about your plans and choices in life or else you’re bound to go through the motions of life without making progress towards what is important to you.
I published mine here. I wrote it a few years ago and I’ve made edits over time. It’s specific to me… I’m not proposing it for anyone else, and I don’t think my values are better or more important than yours. They’re my values.
But the exercise of writing this down has helped me to understand what’s important to me, and that’s helped me make decisions and prompted me to be proactive in my own life.
Give it a try, take a half hour and write a few lines. Put it in Google docs, or write a blog page like I did. But put it somewhere you can go back to it and edit it. You may be surprised how useful this process can be.