What is a family mission statement?

It is a variation on the mission statements that were designed for businesses. Companies drafted a document to clarify what they stood for, what their intentions were and how they planned to operate their business to achieve these goals. Many families today recognise the value in slowing down their lives and moving forward with intention and direction rather than letting life unfold and reacting to what comes. One tool to set the intention is to literally spell it out in writing. Taking it beyond discussion clarifies it further and creates an anchor point for all family members to refer to. It can become a living document, one that grows with your family as you change and go through life stages, but brings you back to those core values every time.

Note – if you do not have children at home you can create a personal mission statement using the first person or if you have a partner you can create a family/personal mission statement however works for you. The intentions are the same – who are you and where do you want to be going and how do you want to live your life.

How do you create a mission statement?

Now this is where it can get complicated. Just like core values, my intention here is to break it down, keep it as simple as possible,. You can go off and do more investigating (and I provide a few additional references below), but if you want to just move forward I hope what I include will suffice.

To create a statement a chat is in order – it is up to you (and depends on the age of your children) how you go about this. You can have an adult only conversation or include your children or a combination. Even little children can answer some of the questions about family life and my suggestion would be to make this a family activity. It was a challenge at times for us with 6 and 8 year olds and I have put a (*) next to the questions that gave us the most information from our kids. Older kids will obviously have more clear input.

1. Review your values from week 2 and in preparation for this chat have your partner do the values exercise too if they have not yet done so.

2. Print out and/or re-read your week one post / notes about what went right for the past year. In those reflections you brought to light the things that worked for your family, things that energised you and things you were grateful for. Look for clues – how can you bring more of that into your life or clarify it as part of your stated purpose?

3. Discuss some or all of the following questions – as many as you feel you need to get to the heart of what your family is about and what you all want for your future. (Note: You do not need to blog your answers to these questions – questions in the challenges are just prompts and guides not a requirement.)

*What are some adjectives you would use to describe yourself? each other family member?*

What is important to us? What do we value?

What kind of relationships do we want to have – with each other? with our friends and neighbours? with the wider world / community?

How do we act with each other?- how do we speak? treat each other? react to others?

*Are there things we currently do that we wish to change?*

Are there things we see other families do or how they behave that we would like to have in our home life?

*If people talked about our family how would we want them to describe us?*

*As a family we are at our best when we ______ (and worst when we_____).*

If you could create a perfect day what would it include?

We are most happy when ________.

What kind of family do you want to be? (Visualise how you want your future family and home life to be and figure out what steps you need to follow to take you there.)