Making Mission Practical

A mission statement gives daily guidance for how you accomplish your vision. It helps set the underlying behaviors that shape your family.

Translating it into action and staying consistent is often the challenge for many families, so let’s review a guide for how you can integrate your mission statement into your family’s life.

Annual

• Have a meeting to assess how your family practiced the mission statement through the year. Identify things you want to continue to do or things that need to change. Celebrate highlights and favorite moments from the year related to your mission.
• Set annual goals that will help give you focus and something to achieve. Find our guide on setting family goals here.

Monthly

• On a monthly basis, hold a family meeting to check in on the annual goals, discuss plans, and to stay in alignment with your mission.
• As the family leader, hold time for personal reflection to stay attuned to the family’s needs and where growth is needed. Create a list of questions you would use to guide your reflection.

Weekly 

• Set an intention of one practice you will do related to your mission statement so it stays present. For example, if “be generous to everyone” is part of the mission, then maybe on a weekly basis, your family finds ways to do that, whether through being generous with words of encouragement, or even finding larger ways to give from time or treasure.
• Use a quick weekly check in of “How did we live out our mission?” to keep people accountable. It helps your family become better at identifying the ways they are acting out the mission.

Daily

• Set the daily habit of asking “How does this align with our mission?” even when it comes to small behaviors. Teach your family to use that question as a default when they are unsure of what to do or evaluating a decision.
• Practice regular affirmations that acknowledge the positive behaviors tied to your mission.

Through all of these practices, the goal is to help your family begin to identify the habits and behaviors that help you all most closely align with and live out your mission statement.

The frequency of these practices might look different based off the season of life your family is in, so treat these as ideas to jumpstart your own plan. Maybe with younger kids, you’ll meet more frequently as a family. Or with adult children, you might not daily recognize actions, but you’ll choose to meet and share updates when you are all together.

Ready to set up your own plan? Download our printable resource here where you can add your own annual, monthly, weekly, and daily practices.