Habit 2: Begin With The End in Mind Roles and Goals

Now that you have a rough draft of your Personal Mission Statement in progress, it’s important to consider the roles and goals in your life and how they relate to your mission statement. Roles and goals give structure and organized direction to your personal mission. We’ll tackle roles first. Roles You live your life in terms of roles—not in the sense of role-playing, but in the sense of authentic relationships and responsibilities you’ve committed to. You may have important roles in your family, in the community, at work, or in other areas of your life. Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.

You may define your family role as simply “family member.” Or you may choose to divide it into roles such as “partner” and “parent.” Your profession or work life may contain several roles. For example, you may have one role in administration and another in marketing. It’s up to you to define your roles in a way that works for you.

Write your roles. Don’t be too concerned about getting them “right” the first time. Just write the ones that feel right for you. Try to limit the number of roles on your list to seven or fewer. If you have more than seven, combine some functions to get down to seven or less. Next to the role, write a description of what optimal performance in that role would look like for you.

Or you can create a spreadsheet to do this.