Life's Mission Statement; Do YOU have one?

 

LIFE’S MISSION STATEMENT

Do YOU have one?
By Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, November 14, 2026

WHAT IS YOUR
LIFE'S MISSION STATEMENT?

It was in the early 1990s when Joe Tye, author, speaker, friend, and mentor, asked me if I had a Life's Mission Statement. I did not! In fact, I had never heard anyone talk about having a Life's Mission Statement.

In the early 1990s, I did not have the luxury of asking ChatGPT or GROK to explain what a Life's Mission Statement was, as I can today. I asked ChatGPT, and this is the answer I received:

A life's mission statement is a personal declaration of purpose that defines what you believe your life is about, what you want to accomplish, what values guide your decisions, and what kind of legacy you want to leave behind.

In simpler terms, it is a statement that explains WHY you are here, WHAT you stand for, and WHAT you intend to do with the time you have been given.

The four components of a life's mission statement are:

1. Purpose: Why do you believe you are here? What gives your life meaning?
2. Values: What principles and beliefs guide your behavior and decisions? What are the things you will not compromise?
3. Contribution: What do you want to contribute to others, your family, your community, or society?
4. Legacy: When your time on this earth is over, how would you like people to remember you? What do you want to leave behind?

Example of a life's mission statement:

"My mission in life is to continually learn, grow, and share the knowledge and experiences I have acquired with others. I will strive to make a positive difference in the lives of those I encounter, stand firm in my principles, take responsibility for my actions, and leave this world a little better than I found it. I want my legacy to be measured not by what I accumulated, but by what I contributed."

Why is a life's mission statement important?

Think of it as your personal compass.

• It helps you determine what deserves your time and attention.
• It provides direction when making difficult decisions.
• It helps you distinguish between what you WANT to do and what you SHOULD do.
• It gives you a standard against which to measure your accomplishments.
• It helps ensure that your daily activities are consistent with your long-term purpose.

One thought worth remembering:

You do not necessarily need to know exactly where life will take you, but you should have some idea of what direction you want to travel.

A life's mission statement is not necessarily about what you want to GET out of life. It is about what you intend to GIVE to life.

The most important question to ask yourself is:

When all is said and done, will the world be a better place because I was here?

MY LIFE'S MISSION STATEMENT

I spent several weeks working on my own Life's Mission Statement, without the benefit of the ChatGPT guide listed above. I wanted to create a statement using as few words as possible. Why? Because I wanted it to be easy to remember and, even more importantly, easy to apply to my everyday life.

This is what I produced:

"To help people to do what they do, to do it better!"

Those twelve words have helped me immeasurably since the early 1990s. They became my "North Star," helping me stay true to what I wanted to accomplish in life.

I knew as far back as the early 1970s that I enjoyed being a teacher. The U. S. Coast Guard had selected me to teach a skill-based curriculum designed to prepare Coast Guard men and women to become proficient in specific ratings they would use throughout their careers. Teaching classes of up to thirty young men and women planted a seed within me. I knew I wanted to continue teaching after my Coast Guard career ended and I entered the civilian world.

Before I said or did anything that others might see, hear, or learn from, I would ask myself one question:

"Is what I am about to say, do, or write about in keeping with my desire 'to help people to do what they do, to do it better?'"

If the answer was YES, I would proceed. If the answer was NO, I would stop and reevaluate what I might have thought was a good idea at the time.

There were challenges, of course! The biggest challenge was that people might not want to hear what I had to say.

Keep in mind that I primarily used this process in situations involving my career as a real estate broker, manager, team leader, and, more importantly, trainer.

I wrote one- to two-hour courses covering every topic a real estate agent would need to know to advance their career to heights they might never have thought possible.

The problem? TIME!

Very few real estate agents felt they had the TIME to attend a two-hour course. As I mentioned, there were plenty of courses to choose from.

Then there were agents who felt they already knew everything there was to know about a particular real estate topic. Why would they want to waste their TIME attending a one- or two-hour course?

As a result, most of the agents who voluntarily attended my courses were new to the real estate business.

That is what gave me the idea for Nuggets for the Noggin!

I would take just one small aspect of a course I had prepared and turn it into a one- to three-page Nugget for the Noggin. I would make copies and place one in each agent's mailbox.

Remember, this was the 1990s!

Eventually, the process evolved into distributing the Nuggets by email, as email was just beginning to make its way into everyday business communications.

Ideas have a way of spinning off into even more productive solutions as time and technology advance. That is exactly what happened with the Nuggets for the Noggin idea.

The Nuggets became popular with other Keller Williams Realty Market Centers, and they requested to they be added to my email distribution list. That was not a problem at all!

At one point, I was sending Nuggets to nine hundred locations throughout the country, including individual agents and real estate offices.

Within the Keller Williams network, other Team Leaders told me they were using the content of the Nuggets during their weekly sales meetings. I was truly honored that they thought that much of them!

Then, as technology sometimes has a way of doing, it threw me a curveball.

I suffered a major computer virus crash. Unfortunately, I had been backing up my computer using discs, and the virus had transferred itself from the computer's hard drive onto the backup discs as well.

The result? I lost everything I had created up to that point, including the remainder of the 1990s. ALL GONE!

One of my agents suggested I check out an online program called Blogger.com, which I did. There, I could set up a FREE blog and called it Nuggets for the Noggin.

Unfortunately, the website address (URL) assigned to me was something nobody would ever remember. I purchased the domain name www.NuggetsfortheNoggin.com and configured it so that whenever someone typed in that address, they would be automatically and invisibly redirected to the URL assigned by Blogger.com.

It worked perfectly, and it still works today, November 2026!

That was the first obstacle I overcame with a little help from others. The next obstacle was more difficult to overcome. It was ME!

I was putting myself and my ideas out there for everyone to see, accept, or criticize.

It was that last possibility, CRITICISM, which was the hardest to overcome.

Nobody likes being criticized. I certainly did not. I was concerned that people might not like what I had to say or might find fault with the way I expressed an idea in writing.

Then I came across a quote from speaker Terry Cole-Whittaker that changed my thinking:

"What you think of me is none of my business!"

I took that quote to heart and realized something important: You cannot please everyone, all the time!

I eventually developed my own attitude about criticism. If I could reach just ONE person with an idea that might help them improve their career or their life in general, it would all have been worth it!

THAT'S when my Life's Mission Statement really kicked in!

"Is what I am about to do going to help someone do what they do, to do it better?"

That question became increasingly important to me. I knew that what I routinely wrote about could not only help at least one person, if could help more people than I could imagine.

I simply assumed that if someone did not like what I had written, they might or might not tell me. Either way, it did not matter. My purpose was not to please everyone. My purpose was to reach out and help someone do what they do, to do it better.

I was perfectly okay with that, even if it helped only ONE person!

I was also able to keep track of how many people accessed each newly posted Nugget on my blog. I typically wrote only three or four Nuggets a month. This allowed each Nugget to remain on the blog long enough to gain some attention and popularity before I posted another one.

What did I write about?

I have been an avid reader since the early 1990s, when I established a personal goal of reading three books every month.

Most of what I read was nonfiction, covering all aspects of the real estate industry. If a book contained information worth sharing, I would write a book review about it.

Other Nugget topics were triggered by something that happened in the real estate business, something involving one of my agents, or simply something that crossed my desk.

I did not have to look very hard or very long to find a subject worth writing about!

I kept the subject matter strictly business-related until I retired in December 2012. Since then, I have written about anything and everything that comes to mind.

NO SUBJECT IS OFF LIMITS!

By then, I was writing primarily because I enjoyed writing. Whether anyone liked what I wrote or agreed with my opinions was no longer the driving force behind it.

Over the years, I am sure I have written more than nine hundred Nuggets for the Noggin. Unfortunately, because of that major computer failure in the 1990s, I currently have access to only hundreds of them. The others were lost forever.

Recently, I have posted a couple of book reviews, and according to the website's hit tracker, some were opened by as many as 10,000 people!

I am confident that if thousands of people are accessing the blog, at least ONE of them is taking something positive away from what I have written. And, hopefully, they are using that information to help them do what they do, to do it better!

BINGO!

That, folks, is how having a Life's Mission Statement can work for YOU while simultaneously benefiting the people within your sphere of influence.

Before I wrote this Nugget about the value of having a Life's Mission Statement, I asked myself the same question I have asked for decades:

"Is writing and posting this going to help someone do what they do, to do it better?"

My answer?

Not just YES! I would say HELL YES!

And that is what having a Life's Mission Statement is all about!

Remember, YOU…can READ for a change (the first time in years). Or YOU can read for a CHANGE (changing the way you conduct yourself and your business). Choose wisely!

Gymbeaux