You don’t need a New Year’s resolution or five big goals for the next year. Instead, you need a mission statement for the year to help you focus on the projects and activities that will support your mission.

Anyone who has ever read anything about New Year’s resolutions knows they fail. Almost always. We start out strong and then lose steam and focus. The infamously crowded gym in January always seems to give way to the empty gym in February and canceled gym memberships in March. It’s a merry-go-round of failure that most folks who set New Year’s resolutions never get off of.

Meanwhile, some folks who are really into productivity will set SMART  goals, develop charts and checklists, and journal on how they are proceeding toward their goals. Unfortunately, many of those folks also fall short. Believe me, I’m one of those people. I always start the year strong, checking off a bunch of minor or insignificant goals for the year, coming close to achieving others, and forgetting or scraping some others due to changing life circumstances. Ultimately, though, I find myself at the end of the year feeling like I haven’t been able to really move the needle on where I want to be in life. Some of that can be chalked up to not achieving the big goals that were meant to be life-changing (lose 25 lbs, take up that new hobby, make a big career move, etc.), and some due to the goals not really holding up their importance as I moved through the year so it was easy to ignore them on my list.

If you want to approach the rest of 2025 differently, there is a different path. This path will help you be clear about WHY you want to make changes in your life or accomplish big things. Resolutions and goals are not enough because they don’t focus me on the WHY (overall priority or purpose). One way to ensure you stay focused on your WHY is to develop a personal mission statement for the year. I know this sounds like some new age/ business success guru/total BS. If you can get beyond this skepticism (I’m honestly still working on this myself), you can find the value in this for living your best life in 2025 and moving the needle on achieving your dreams.

Why is the WHY important?

“It is not logic or facts but our hopes and dreams, our hearts and our guts, that drive us to try new things.” Simon Sinek

In his bestselling book Start with Why and popular TED talk  on the same subject, Simon Sinek discusses how understanding your company’s central purpose, its WHY, needs to come before the HOW (process) and the WHAT (product) to inspire your employees to achieve great things, do amazing work, and be creative, while also behaving in an ethical manner. Sounds great, right? Well, why wouldn’t we also want that for ourselves? If you are reading this, I think it’s safe to assume that you also want to achieve great things, do amazing work, and be creative. I also think that if you have your WHY guiding you, you will be better at making ethical decisions (assuming that your overall purpose in life is ethical, to begin with).

The Personal Mission Statement

The personal mission statement is a way for you to articulate your WHY. If you’re just getting started with this, I suggest that you start with a mission statement for the year. This will be your idea of how you want to live, work, and play, how you want your relationships to be, how you want others, and more importantly yourself, to perceive you and who you want to be this year.

Your personal mission statement is the same as the kind of mission statement that organizations have. Its purpose is to articulate clearly the goals and purpose of its existence, how those are achieved, and who they serve. In essence,  it’s a way to communicate what’s important to you and how you approach being successful at those things.

How to write a personal mission statement

First, you need to determine what in your life you want to focus on as a priority. This focus could be things like your health, family, business, position or role, or a combination of these or many others. Then, you want to determine what you will do to prioritize these (it’s OK to paint with a broad brush here; we’ll save the specifics for our smaller projects). Finally, you’ll want to find a way to make it inspirational. You do this by thinking big and imagining the positive impact you will have.

Using your personal mission statement to guide your plan for success in 2025.

Creating projects to support your mission statement.

Because your mission statement is meant to be more inspirational than functional, you will want to develop projects that will help you fulfill it.

Using the mission statement to evaluate opportunities.

When you have a personal mission statement, you know what matters to you. In developing it, you have made choices about what your life will look like and what you will spend your time on.

Revisiting and Checking in on progress regularly 

Your personal mission statement needs to be your compass on the road of life. For it to be useful, you need to regularly pull it out to help you determine your direction in life, just like a compass would in any journey. The personal mission statement will help you decide if you should make huge life shifts like taking that new job, moving to another city, or even simple things like joining a gym or volunteering in a local food drive. Your personal mission statement helps you understand your priorities, and you can use it to evaluate opportunities that may or may not align with your mission. If you are going to be successful, this means keeping your personal mission statement at the forefront of your mind. It should guide how you live your daily life; to do that, it’s not a once-a-year activity. My suggestion is to incorporate it into your Weekly Review. A Weekly Review is when you can check in to see what you have done and are planning to do to move the needle on fully living out this personal mission.

Some questions to ask yourself in your Weekly Review:

• Did I spend time during the last week on activities that helped fulfill my mission? Did I do anything that contradicts or distracts me from my mission? For example, if part of your mission is to lead a healthy lifestyle, did you eat fast food for any meals this week? Did you go to the gym or sit on the couch and binge-watch shows on Netflix?
• Do I have things on my calendar for the next week that will help me fulfill my mission? Do I plan to do anything that runs contrary to my mission, or do I have some that may distract me from my mission? Do you have options to change this? Can you make advanced plans on how to still live your mission? For example, is part of your mission to have an amazing and connected relationship with your children? If so, what may distract you from this in the coming week? You may have a work trip on Wednesday. How can you ensure you spend quality time with the kids on the days leading up to the trip and when you return? Do you want to be more of a positive leader in your job? Do you have a Division-wide meeting this week where you know that a difficult or contentious topic will be addressed? How can you prepare for that so you go into the meeting ready to make a positive influence?
• In the next month, how will you make time to do the things that matter? Can you block off a couple of hours here and there to move the needle on the things that really matter to you? Reviewing your personal mission statement can help you generate ideas on how to best spend this time so you aren’t wandering aimlessly or running toward whatever is the latest and loudest or shiny and sexy that will never lead to you living the life you envision in your personal mission statement.

The personal mission statement can be a powerful tool for charting a course for a more purposeful and meaningful life—a life where you can not only achieve great things but also live in congruence with the ideals that are most important to you. Working with a coach can help you discover your personal mission and determine how to live in accordance with that mission. For more information, check out Go Long’s Coaching Services.

This blog post originally appeared on the SA Manager Blog and has been updated for content and clarity.