A Personal Mission Statement

Well I just finished up my second full week of school and I love it!  I'm thinking seriously about going full time or at least 3/4 time after this semester.  One of my classes for the first 7.5 weeks is called FYE or First Year Experience.  It is a great class and the lectures are awesome.  One of the topics this week was writing a personal mission statement.  There were two videos that we could watch.  One was just a random one of young girl writing her personal statement.  The other was the scene from Jerry Maquire where he writes a 25 page personal mission statement.  After reading the text and watching one of the videos, and i didn't watch Tom Cruise, I started thinking about my personal mission statement. 

Writing a personal mission statement is actually a daily tool to be used to keep you focused and on tract to obtain your short and long term goals, as well as keeping what is important in your life, and knowing who and what you want to be.  Using past life experiences and what you see yourself doing in the future are part of writing a mission statement.  So after all week long thinking about what was important, the reason I was doing what I was doing, and who I want to be and where I want to be in the next 1 to 4 years, I wrote a first draft of my personal mission statement.  It is in no way finished or close to where I want it to be, but it did get some of the preliminary things on paper. 

I have been a dreamer all my life, and I guess that is why I like to write.  Writing and dreaming gives me the opportunity to be someone I'm not.  Some of my goals have changed over the years but one thing that has never changed is my goal to be a published writer.  Some of you might wonder than why I'm not going after a degree in journalism or media.  Well writers don't really make that much money to start out with, especially if you don't make it on the best sellers list.  I have to be practical and I can still be a dreamer.  The practical side of me knows that I need to work for us to be able to survive, unless of course we win the lottery.  The dreamer side of me can still strive to be that published writer. 

As a person, I want to be someone that people trust, that is honest, that cares and that wants to help people, but also have family and friends in their life.  My husband and my child are the utmost of importance to me.  God is first in my life, but they come in second, then family, then work.  These are all things we need to consider.  I guess the bottom line here is this, writing this personal mission statement will help me to define short term, long term goals, and the map on how to achieve those. 

What are your long term and short term goals?  ARe you only living day to day with no thought of where you want to be in one, two or four years from now?  I'm 48 years old about to be 49, this has become majorily important to me, to achieve, accomplish and complete this before I'm too old to reap the benefits.

Have a blessed day!