Dr. John A. King explains why a purpose statement matters more than vision or mission statements. A purpose statement is a single sentence that answers why you exist, and King shares his own four-word example of how it creates fulfillment independent of circumstances.
This is one area that made a big personal impact in my own life. Lots of talk about vision statements, lots of talk about mission statements, and sometimes those terms are interchangeable. They were really fuzzy defined for me. I think we were comfortable in coming out of the '90s, particularly when people started to talk about it, business into the 2000s, start of the new century, still really not defining what they were. They were interchangeable terms, and they lose their potency with that. But there's a third term, purpose statement, which was never discussed, and I think it's the most important one. A purpose statement is the underlying reason for your being, the thing that you're put on— believe you're put on God's good earth to do and achieve. Now, when writing a purpose statement, you need to understand it's not a slogan. It's not a byline. It's that sentence that will guide you. It's that thing that you go, yeah, yeah, that's my thing. It's the thing that when you're doing it, you're in that— it's like you're in that sweet spot. You've just chipped it perfectly. You've hit it perfectly. You've punched it. You just know that it's going to connect. That's a purpose statement. Now with writing it, you've got to take time on it. You're going to start, you're going to get iterations of it, you're going to show it to a few confidants, you're going to talk it around a little bit, and in the process you're going to distill it all the time. And it needs to really come down to a single sentence. My purpose statement is, is probably 5 words long. 4 words long actually is what I've got it down to. And it's that thing I know that when I'm engaged in doing it, I am totally fulfilled. Totally fulfilled, regardless of what's happening in life. So take your time. Understand that whatever you start with, over time it's going to distill, but you've got to pursue it. Get it down. It's vitally important to making sure that your internal compass is going in the right direction.
