This week, I had the privilege of speaking with a unique group about creating a personal mission statement.  The group were inmates at the women’s penitentiary West of Salt Lake City near the shores of the Great Salt Lake.  While some had mere days before release, others understood they would spend most if not the rest of their lives behind bars, where concepts like freedom, goals, growth and happiness are hard to envision.

Despite the circumstances, I spoke to the women about creating a person mission statement. First, I asked them to write down what they value, what matters to them now and in the future.  Then I asked them to write an aspirational mission statement that reflects who they want to be, what they want to do, and how they want to be seen by others because of the qualities they were to portray in the future. 

In talking about their future selves, I asked them to write a bucket list.  Those bucket list items were to be actions that—even in small ways—that will bring them closer to the person they aspired to be. 

I can imagine as you sit in a cell that it is difficult to think in aspirational terms.  When you have made some terrible decisions in your life, it must be difficult to think of yourself in positive terms and think that you have any value.  The world around you tells you how bad you are.  For probably many of these inmates, even their families have abandoned them, cast them off for dead.  And if they get out of prison, society trusts them with little, expects next to nothing but trouble from them.  Even those people who are in their corner may not always respond to their actions and desires positively because of a track record or just human frailty.  The deck is stacked against them. 

I asked them to go ahead and write a personal mission statement that envisions them as good people because they can be those good people.  I ask them to set wild goals—some of which they may fail at—because they need those defined movements forward to show themselves that they are worth it and capable. 

These inmates’ goals—and goals of all of us—must point us to that future version of ourselves.  When we demonstrate value to certain things by setting and acting on goals that give priority to those values, we move incrementally closer to that person.

Writing a personal mission statement is a way to place value on yourself when no one else will.  My faith tells me that God is always in my corner, regardless of how stupid I may be, but assertively putting myself in my own corner with a mission statement and goal-focused actions helps me (and even inmates) believe that we have value and are capable of more than where we currently sit. 

Whether inmates or executives, the world is going to limit us and our ability to move forward.  Governments, companies and families will put ‘handcuffs’ on our ability to become who we want to be.  A personal mission statement—one focused on character traits instead of financial or titular status—allows us to see personal progress and envision who we really are regardless of those constraints. 

18 September 2024