Your Life Mission: Why you need a mission in life to be truly happy

Do you ever find yourself coasting through life, seemingly without an aim? Do you find yourself unable to make decisions about what you should do in certain situations, feeling the pull between option A, option B, option C, etc? Or do you ever wonder why you are on this planet? If that sounds like you, your issue could be due to you having no clear and defined life mission.

What is a Life Mission?

A life mission is a, ultimately, your driving force in life. It is the thing that guides you whenever you need to make a decision, whenever you act, or whenever you face a challenging situation.

Your mission in life is different from a goal and different from a purpose. A goal is something that can be attained, that, once attained, is then complete, ready for another goal to be put in its place. A purpose, although similar to a mission, is also different. A purpose leans more to WHY you are here, WHY you are living, whereas a mission is more an encapsulation of everything ranging from why you are here, to who you are, to what you stand for, to what you want to give to the world.

Your life mission can really be summed up in a statement, a short paragraph about what you want for your life and what drives you.

By way of summary, your life mission is, as stated above, your driving force.

Why it’s important to have a mission in life

It’s important to have a mission in life because, without one, you risk going through life without a guide of where you should go or what you should do. When you face decisions, big or small, you risk not really knowing why you’re making them. You risk making decisions that take you away from where you want to go. You risk doing things that are, ultimately, not in line with what you really want to do.

Ultimately, without a life mission, you can feel directionless and be at risk of wasting time in life.

On top of this, without a life mission, you are unlikely to live to your full potential. If you don’t really know why you’re here and what you want to do in life, or who you want to be, you run the risk of running aimlessly around, then getting to the end of your life and questioning what it was all for. You may have a bunch of experiences, but what will the purpose of them have been?

Your life mission guides you through your life. It helps you in every way, it clears your head and helps you to focus on being the person you want to be and on going where you want to go.

Think about it this way – you may trek through a jungle or go skiing miles off-piste without a guide, but if you have a guide you will be less likely to go the wrong way or end up in trouble. You may feel more constrained or have less freedom in where you go, but you are more likely to enjoy the experience without having to worry if you are making a wrong turn, and knowing that your guide will take you to where you want to go in the end.

Here are some of the best reasons you should take some time to think about what your life purpose is:-

Your life mission is part of your personal identity

When you think about who you are and what you stand for, part of that is, inevitably, going to be your life mission. Your personal identity and your life mission are linked together, almost inseperable.

But why is this so important? Well, your personal identity is how you hold yourself in the world. It’s what you stand for. It’s who you are to yourself and others.

When you know your personal identity, you know who you are to the core of your being. Like Tony Robbins says, you will act in accordance with your personal identity more than anything else.

With a strong, established personal identity, you will have no questions about how to act in life, because you will naturally act in accordance with it.

But you can’t really know your personal identity without knowing your mission in life.

Your mission in life is a guiding force – it helps you to make decisions

Your mission in life is your ultimate guiding force when you make a decision about what to do or what not to do. When you know your mission in life and then have a decision to make about how to act or a decision to make about what to do (such as a career choice, moral choice, etc), you will have no problem in making that decision because you can compare it to what your mission is.

You can ask yourself if a route moves you towards your mission in life or away from your mission in life. Then, when you know the answer, you know whether that route is going to work for you.

Your life mission guides you towards the positive and away from the negative.

This means no more deliberating over what to do or what not to do. Decisions become much easier, and feeling good about your decision is a certainty because you are clear and confident in why you made that decision.

Knowing your Personal Mission gives you confidence

Want to be more confident in your life? Get a life mission. Know what it is. When you have a mission in life, you have total confidence. Confidence in who you are, confidence in where you are going and what you’re doing, confidence in the decisions you make, confidence to go out in the world and go after your dreams, goals and ambitions.

When you don’t have a stated life mission, you naturally will be less confident. You won’t have as strong a reason to make the decisions that you do, you run the risk of being affected by other people’s opinions, by the sway of others. People are more likely to be able to convince you to do something that you don’t really want to do, and you likely will feel generally less certain in anything you do.

Confidence is such a crucial determinant of how successful you will be in life, and how happy you will be in yourself. So do yourself a favour and get a life mission so you can have, or at least start to develop, total confidence in yourself, what you stand for, and where you’re going in life!

Your personal mission gives you drive and courage

Jumping on the confidence noted above, knowing your personal mission will give you drive and courage. It’s one thing having confidence, but sometimes you need to take that confidence further, especially when going after a big or challenging goal. Sometimes you will need to take that confidence, couple it with some drive and courage and achieve big things that are far out of your comfort zone.

Say you want to go make a movie, start a business, or move to the other side of the world to fight poverty. Well, that will likely take large amounts of courage and drive. Knowing your personal mission will help you to have this drive, to have this courage. When you know your mission in life you can focus on it and move towards your big goals knowing that you are doing the right thing.

That courage, that drive, that ambition is priceless. Help yourself have it by determining your life mission.

Knowing your mission in life inspires others

Do you ever look at people around you and get jealous that they seem to be incredibly confident or have a laser focus that drives them? Do you often feel inspired by these people? That’s a good thing, because you can replicate what they have.

It’s likely that these confident, focused, determined, courageous people have a life mission. They may not have articulated it, but you can be sure that if you quiz them on it, they will be able to tell you what it is.

If you want to be like the people that inspire you and make you feel good, get in touch with what drives YOU and who YOU want to be. Figure out what your life mission is, and then keep it in mind every day. Focus on it. Know it. Have confidence in it and what it means to you.

Having a mission statement keeps you focused

Do you ever find that you set targets and goals for things, but then find yourself pulled in various different directions by other things? Soon enough, you realise months have gone by and you haven’t gotten anywhere closer to your goals? That’s because of a lack of focus on what is important to you.

If you have a stated mission in life, then soon all these potential distractions will fall aside as you focus on what is really important to you. Instead of being pulled in different directions by various things, you will be pulled towards you mission and doing things that keep you acting in line with it.

Your life mission gives you something to aim for

Simply stated, having no mission in life could lead to you feeling bored or like you don’t really have a purpose. If you know your life mission, then you constantly have something to be aiming for, to be striving for, to be giving you drive and inspiration.

If we humans don’t constantly try and grow, we get bored, and we emotionally die inside. Having a life mission to aim to constantly be working towards will keep you feeling alive and feeling like you are growing.

How to find your Life Mission

Finding your life mission does not have to be challenging, but it will require some inner thinking. It does require you to know who you are and what drives you, what you get excited by and who you want to be in the future.

If you currently feel like you don’t have a life mission, think about the things that really mean something to you in life. Do you love helping others? Do you get a kick out of making people smile? Do you like to entertain people? Do you get great joy out of creating things? Do you want to have an influence one a particular area of society?

What is the kind of person you want to be? How do you want other people to think of you or talk about you? What would you want people to say about you at your funeral? (Sorry! Morbid!) What would you like to be able to say about yourself in the future?

Is there anything in particular that you want to achieve? Do certian things give you drive and make you feel alive? Do you want to do things in those areas?

Essentially, all you need to do is really think about what motivates you in life, what makes you feel alive, what means a lot to you, and what you really want for your life going forwards. These thoughts and feelings will guide you towards your life mission.

Writing your Mission Statement for Life

Once you have had a think about the topics above, it’s time to write down what these look like in a mission statement for your life. Mission statements for life can be as succinct or as long as you want or need them to be, but I would suggest a couple of sentences so that it is as focused as possible and can be easily remembered.

I thoroughly recommend writing down your life mission statement because then you can keep it in your view more easily, for example, by sticking it up in your office. Further, there is something that happens when we write something down that causes us to hold on to those things we write more. It’s just not the same keeping it in your head or typing it on a computer or phone.

Try not to get too worried about writing clearly or poetically, especially at first. You just want to get your mission statement for life down and then you can refine it later. Perhaps you start with 6 or 7 sentences, and when you go back, you narrow it down more succinctly to 2 or 3.

The point is not to get caught up and not write your life mission statement at all because you are too worried about how it sounds or it being perfect.

Personal Mission Statement Examples

If you are struggling to come up with your personal mission statement or you would like to see what it could look like, the following examples of personal mission statements could help you to frame yours in a way that works for you.

Check out these personal mission statement examples below and see if any resonate with you:-

• Personal mission statement example 1.
  • My mission in life is to do as much good as I can in my community and help as many people enjoy their lives as possible.
• Personal mission statement example 2.
  • My mission in life is to inspire other people to live their lives to the full by living my life to the full.
• Personal mission statement example 3.
  • My mission in life is to ensure that my family and friends lead happy and secure lives.
• Personal mission statement example 4.
  • My mission in life is to learn as much as I can, to achieve as much as I can, to push myself as hard as I can, to become someone that I would be proud of, that God would be proud of, that others would be proud of.
• Personal mission statement example 5.
  • My mission in life is to enable people all around the world to come together, create a loving, giving world community, and help people to feel connected to others all over the globe.

You can see that your personal mission statement for life can pretty much cover whatever topic you want. Whether it’s based around business, personal success, helping others, living your life to the full, living in a way that you or your creator would be proud of, taking care of your family, being a role model, moving society forwards, or anything else, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what is important to you.

You will likely find, though, that your mission statement will, on some level, end up including something about other people -how it relates to them how it affects them, and so on. I think that’s just part of the nature of being human – we want to affect other people in positive ways and know we were helpful to others. But see what works for you!

‘My Mission in Life’ – Conclusion

I hope you can see through reading that how much a life mission can help you to focus and steer you towards where you want to go in life.

Writing a mission statement for life can really help you to clarify what is important to you, and writing it down helps to solidify it in your mind so that you spend time focusing on what is important to you in life, so that you make decisions that steer your towards your life mission, and so that, ultimately, you live a life you are happy with, proud of and excited by.

So take the time to work out what you want in life, what you are driven by, what makes you excited, what makes you happy, and the impact you want to have, and then get writing your life mission in the form of a personal mission statement for life!

Let me know in the comments what your life mission is, and maybe it will inspire others and help them to come up with theirs!

Further Reading

If, while trying to figure out your life mission, you are left thinking “what is my aim in life?“, then check out this post on how to figure out your aim in life.

Thinking “I don’t know what to do with my life” is a very common problem when working out your life mission. So if you don’t know what to do with your life, then check out that post as a good place to start figuring it out.

This process of coming up with your life mission will require you to think about who you are and what you stand for. I thoroughly recommend checking out this post on why you must define yourself if you want to be successful in life. It walks you through why this should be a priority for you, and how it can affect you in everything you do.

Just to add a layer of urgency to this process, check out this post on the famous Solomon Grundy poem, and how the meaning behind it can change your life.

If you would like some more tips on how to stay focused on your goals, check out this article by Goodbye Self Help.