Write Your Family’s Mission Statement

Hi there, it's Sam. Writing a family mission statement is a collaborative process. In this first part, you'll identify your own values and then you can share the activity with family members and write out your collective family values together. But let's just start by identifying what's most important to you. Values are principles that guide our daily decisions and what we pay the most attention to. Some common values include integrity, courage, loyalty, kindness, fun, and patience, just to name a few. As you practice this exercise, you may wanna download a list of values from the internet so that you can choose three to five that are most important to you. This will also help other members of your family to identify their own values. And then you can choose a list of five to 10 values that incorporates everyone's values collectively. We choose only a few values, because it helps us to prioritize the ones that are the most important to us. You may wanna begin this exercise by starting a dialogue about values in general. You can ask family members to talk about what's most important to them and why. Then you can ask them to talk about your positive qualities as a family, such as, we like to have fun, we apologize to each other, or we're helpful often. Give family members an opportunity to draw pictures next to the values, and then feel free to make your mission statement into a collage, a story, or even a poem or a play. Then you can talk about ways that your actions reflect your values. For example, if one family value is kindness, you may talk about ways that you wanna volunteer, and ways of showing kindness to friends at school and at work. Identifying specific actions allows family members to practice the values and then feel good about themselves and as a family. So here are some other conversation prompts to get your children thinking and talking about values. What makes a good friend? What's most important to you? When do you feel at your best? What do you think are some of our family's superpowers? And take your time to answer these. If you need to replay this audio or want more time, feel free to pause. Once you've created your family mission statement, I recommend posting it somewhere that everyone can see it. I've even framed mine and I refer to it often. Your family mission statement offers a path and a north star to return to when you start to feel off track. You can also update your mission statement by adding or modifying values as a family as you grow and evolve. It may even become a family tradition during the holidays or other certain times of the year. Okay, so you've spent some time discussing your family values and crafting a mission statement, now let's assess the current emotion culture of your home in our next lesson. And be sure...