Create an environment where each of us can find support and encouragement in achieving our life's goals.

Respect and accept each person's unique personality and talents.

Promote a loving, kind, and happy atmosphere.

Support family endeavors that better society.

Maintain patience through understanding.

Always resolve conflicts with each other rather than harboring anger.

Promote the realization of life's treasures.

Our family mission: To love each other . . .

To help each other . . .

To believe in each other . . .

To wisely use our time, talents, and resources to bless others . . .

To worship together . . .

Forever.

Our home will be a place where our family, friends, and guests find joy, comfort, peace, and happiness. We will seek to create a clean and orderly environment that is livable and comfortable. We will exercise wisdom in what we choose to eat, read, see, and do at home. We want to teach our children to love, learn, laugh, and to work and develop their unique talents.

Our family is happy and has fun together.

We all feel secure and feel a sense of belonging.

We support each other fully in our seen and unseen potential.

We show unconditional love in our family and inspiration for each other.

We are a family where we can continually grow in mental, physical, social/emotional, and spiritual ways.

We discuss and discover all aspects of life.

We nurture all life forms and protect the environment.

We are a family that serves each other and the community.

We are a family of cleanliness and order.

We believe that diversity of race and culture is a gift.

We appreciate the grace of God.

We hope to leave a legacy of the strength and importance of families.

Keep in mind that a mission statement doesn't have to be some big, formal document. It can even be a word or a phrase, or something creative and entirely different such as an image or a symbol. I know of some families who have written a family song that embodies what matters most to them. Others have captured a sense of vision through poetry and art. I have known of families who have structured their mission statement by building phrases around each letter of their last name. There's even one family I know of that gets a powerful sense of vision from a four-foot stick! This stick goes straight for some distance and then suddenly corkscrews and gnarls at the end. This serves as a reminder to this family that "when you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other." In other words, the choices you make have consequences, so make your choices carefully.

So you see, it doesn't have to be some magnificent verbal expression. The only real criterion is that it represent everyone in the family and inspire you and bring you together. And whether your mission statement is a word, a page, or a document, whether it's written in poetry or prose, music or art, if it captures and gives cohesion to what is in the hearts and minds of family members, it will inspire, energize, and unify your family in ways that are so marvelous, you have to experience them in order to believe.

Step Three: Use It to Stay on Track

A mission statement is not some "to do" to check off your list. It's meant to be the literal constitution of your family life. And just as the United States Constitution has survived for more than two hundred sometimes turbulent years, your family constitution can be the foundational document that will unify and hold your family together for decades-even generations-to come.

We'll talk more about how to turn your mission statement into a constitution in Habit 3. But for now I just want to mention this step and to summarize all the steps by showing you how one father from a blended family applied this three-step process. He said: We created our family mission statement over a period of several weeks.

The first week we called the four children together and said, "Look, if we're all going in different directions and we're always fighting with one another, things aren't going to go very smoothly." We told them that things would be much easier if we all shared the same value system. So we gave everyone five three-by-five cards and said, "Just write down one word on each card that you would use to describe this family."

When we sorted through the cards and eliminated the duplications, that left us with twenty-eight different words. So the next week we had everybody define what those words meant so that we could understand what they really had in mind. For example, our eight-year-old daughter had written the word "cool" on one of her cards. She wanted to have a "cool" family. So we encouraged her to explain to us what a "cool" family would be like. Eventually everyone's definitions were clarified, so there was deep understanding.

The next week we put all the words on a big flip chart and gave everyone ten votes. They could use up to three votes per item if they wished, but they could not spend more than ten votes in total. After the vote, we were left with about ten items that were important to everyone.

The following week we voted again on the ten items, and we got the list down to six. Then we broke up into three groups, and each group wrote one or two phrases about two of the words, defining what they meant. We came back together and read our phrases to the others.

The next week we discussed the phrases. We clarified them. We made sure they said what we wanted to say. We made them grammatically correct. And we turned them into our mission statement: Our family mission: To always be kind, respectful, and supportive of each other, To be honest and open with each other, To keep a spiritual feeling in the home, To love each other unconditionally, To be responsible to live a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life, To make this house a place we want to come home to.

It was really great because from start to finish we had involvement. The mission statement was their words and their sentences, and they could see that.

We put the statement in a beautiful frame and hung it over the fireplace. We said, "Okay, now anyone who can memorize this statement gets the big candy bar of their choice."

Every week we have somebody share what one of those words or sentences means to him or her. It only takes two or three minutes, but it makes the mission statement come alive. We're also setting goals around the mission statement, making it a central part of our lives.

This mission statement process has been tremendously helpful to us. In a normal family you tend to assume certain behaviors. But when you're blending a family, you're coming in with two sets of ideas about how to raise children in the first place. Our mission statement has really given us some structure, some common values and a common focus on where we're going.

Two of the most powerful psychological forces that imprint the brain are writing and visualizing, both of which are involved in this mission statement process. When these activities are consciously done, the content rapidly translates itself into the subconscious mind and to the deeper parts of the heart, helping you to stay on track.

Both processes cause people to crystallize their thinking. And if all the senses are employed in the processes, this crystallization becomes laserlike. It literally imprints the brain or etches into the brain the content and feeling embodied in the writing or the visualizing. And this enables you to translate the mission to the moments of daily living.*

The Power of a Family Mission Statement

Many families talk about how, over time, the mission statement has a profound impact on children-particularly when they feel their input is welcome and genuinely affects the direction the family will take.

And it has a profound impact on parents as well. With proper involvement in the process of creating a mission statement, you'll find that it will overcome the fear of parenting, of being decisive. You won't fall into the trap of trying to win a popularity contest with your kids. You also won't take rebellion or rejection personally simply because you're emotionally dependent on your children's acceptance. You won't get into the state of collusion that many parents do wherein they feel validated by the weaknesses of their children and look about for friendly, sympathetic allies who will agree with them and massage their hearts and make them feel that they're okay and it's their "bratty kids" who aren't.

With a clear sense of shared vision and values, you can be very demanding when it comes to standards. You can have the courage to hold your children accountable and to let them experience the consequences of their actions. Ironically, you will also become more loving and empathic as you respect the individuality of each child and allow your children to be self-regulating, to make their own decisions within the scope of their experience and wisdom.

In addition, a mission statement will create a powerful bonding between parents and children, between husbands and wives, that simply does not exist when there's no sense of shared vision and values. It's like the difference between a diamond and a piece of graphite. They are both made of the same material, but a diamond is the hardest of all substances while graphite can be split apart. The difference lies in the depth of bonding in the atoms.

A father shared this experience: Some time ago I was thinking about my role as a father and envisioning how I wanted to be remembered by my kids. So when we planned our vacation that summer, I decided to apply the principle of vision to the family. We came up with a sort of family mission statement for the event. We called it the "Smith Team." It described for us the perspective we wanted to take when we went off together on our trip.

We each took a particular role that would help contribute to building the Smith Team. My six-year-old daughter chose the role of family cheerleader. Her goal was to be an influence to dispel any contention in the family, particularly while we were traveling together in the car. She made up several cheers, and whenever there was a problem, she would break into one of them: "Smiths! Smiths! Driving down the street! When we stick together, we can't be beat!" Whether or not we felt like it, we'd all have to join in, and it was very helpful in dispelling the bad feeling that might have been there.

We also had matching T-shirts. At one point we went into a service station, and the attendant wasn't paying much attention. But when he looked up and we were all standing there with our matching shirts, he did a double take and said, "Hey, you guys look like a team!" That just kind of cemented it. We looked at one another and felt an incredible high. We got back in the car and took off, windows down, radio cranked up, ice cream melting in the backseat. We were a family!

About three months after we got back from our vacation, our three-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia. This threw our family into months of challenge. The interesting thing was that whenever we took our son to the hospital for his chemotherapy treatments, he would always ask if he could wear his shirt. Maybe it was his way of connecting with the team and feeling the support and the memories he had around the experiences of being together on that family vacation.

After his sixth treatment he caught a serious infection that put him in intensive care for two weeks. We came very close to losing him, but he pulled through. He wore that T-shirt almost nonstop through those days, and it was covered with stains of vomit, blood, and tears. When he finally did pull through and we brought him home, we all wore our family T-shirts in his honor. We all wanted to connect to that family mission feeling we had created on our vacation.

That vision of the Smith Team helped us through what was the greatest challenge our family had ever faced.

A divorced mother of four shared this experience: Twenty years ago my husband moved out, and I was left with four children-ages four, six, eight, and ten. For a while I absolutely lost it. I was devastated. For several days I just lay in bed and cried all day. The pain was so deep. And I was so frightened of what lay ahead for us. I didn't know how I was going to do it. There were times I would just go from one hour to the next and think, "Well, I didn't cry in this hour. Let's see if I can not cry the next hour." And this was very hard on the children because their dad had just moved out of the house and for a while they thought their mom was "gone," too.

It was the children that finally gave me the strength to pull through. I realized that if I didn't get my act together, not only was I going down the tubes but I would be taking four precious people with me. And so they were my real motivation, the reason for my conscious choice.

I began to realize that I needed a new vision. We were no longer a "traditional" family. And since our family no longer "looked" the same-it no longer looked like the family we had been and had thought we were always going to be-I needed to change the "look."

So we talked together about this new family structure. We made some fundamental decisions. It was okay if we went to church meetings or to school plays. We were missing an integral part-there was no denying that-but that was okay. We could still do the good things. We could still have the values, the principles, the happy things in life almost as well.

I had to come to a place with my own personal feelings about the children's dad where I could value his goodness and still allow those things I didn't agree with. I didn't want to forgive him. I didn't want to allow the children to go with him and do things with him. But my higher conscience, my better self, told me that that kind of attitude wasn't going to work out in the end. I knew that my hatred and anger would eat away at me and destroy my family. And so I prayed for courage. I prayed for the desire to want to do what was right, because if I could at least want to do it, then it wouldn't be so hard.

It wasn't easy. There were times when I was so angry I actually wanted to kill the man-especially when his choices kept hurting the children. But over the years I was able to work through my anger, and I finally reached the point where I could care for this man almost like a brother. I began to look at him not as my former husband, not as the father of my children, but as a man who made some really tragic mistakes.

Now each of the children has had crises with their dad, and each has come to the point of letting go of having the dad he or she had always wanted and envisioned. They've all come to the point where they can value the goodness and still allow him to have his imperfections that are so painful. They know now that they have to deal with their dad as he is, not how they wish he would be, because he's not that person-not now, maybe never.

What helped us most was in coming up with a new end in mind. We created a new vision of what our family would be.

In both of these situations, notice the power this sense of shared vision and values had in keeping the family focused and together-even in the midst of challenge. That's the power of a family mission statement. It literally becomes the DNA of family life. It's like the chromosomal structure inside each cell of the body that represents the blueprint for the operation of the entire body. Because of this DNA, every cell is, in a sense, a hologram of the entire body. And the DNA defines not only the function of that cell but also how it relates to every other cell as well.

Creating shared vision creates deep bonding, a sense of unity in purpose, a deep, burning "yes!" that is so powerful, so cohesive, so motivating that it literally pulls people together with a purpose strong enough to transcend the obstacles, the challenges of daily living, the negative scripting of the past, and even the accumulated baggage of the present.

"Love" Is a Commitment

Now why does a family mission statement have that kind of power? A forty-three-year-old woman who married for the first time said this: To me the family mission statement gives a practical, concrete, and doable aspect to what love really is. Love is certainly the roses and the dinners out and the romantic vacations. But it's also the hugs and the bathrobes and getting the morning paper for each other or making the coffee or feeding the guinea pigs. It's in the details as well as the symphony.

I think the mission statement is a way of making that commitment real. And I think the process of doing it can be as valuable as the ultimate product, because it's the working together to create that vision and make it real that defines and refines and grows love.

A wife and mother in a blended family shared this: I think the difference in having a family mission statement is that you have a set of rules or principles that commit you, that don't make it easy for you to cop out. Had I had this kind of grounding, I probably would have dealt with my first relationship differently. There just wasn't a sense of shared vision and commitment that I could put my arms around and say, "Why should I stay in this marriage? What can I do to make it work?" Instead it was, "I've had it. I'm done. I'm out of here." And it was over. There was never that sense of real commitment to a common vision.

But things are different now. Take my relationship with Bonnie, for example. She's not my "stepdaughter," she's my daughter. The only "steps" we have in our family are out the back door and up to the second floor. We made an agreement: "There are no steps in this family. We are all one. We were all created equal. We all have equal say in this family. Whether you are here full-time or part-time is insignificant."

With our personalities and our working styles, I think it would be very easy for a family like ours to disintegrate, to become dysfunctional. But this sense of shared vision has given us the strength and commitment to stay together as a family, to act like a family, to be a family.

Again, remember: Love is a verb. It's also a commitment. A family mission statement makes explicit what that commitment means.

As we observed in Habit 1, the most fundamental promises we make to other human beings are those we make to the members of our family-in our marriage vows, in our implicit promises to care for and nurture our children. Through a family mission statement you can let your children know that you are totally committed to them, that you have been from the very moment of their birth or adoption, that the bond has never been broken and never will be broken, and that nothing can happen that will ever break it. You can say to them, "My commitment is not a function of your behavior or attitude or commitment to me. It is total and complete. My love will always be there. You will always be in my heart. I will never betray you. I will never leave you. I will always be true to you no matter what you do. This is something I want you to know, and I will continue to tell you this through both my words and my actions. My commitment is total, and my love is unconditional."

When children feel this level of commitment-and when it's communicated consistently through words and actions-they are then willing to live with limits, to accept responsibility and be accountable for their actions. But when the price has not been paid in making the deep decisions that are contained in these mission statements, parents can easily be uprooted by the social forces and by the pressures they will continually get against taking the responsible course, moving toward interdependency, maintaining standards in the home, and carrying out agreed upon consequences.

Creating a family mission statement enables you and your family to examine, clarify, and renew those promises-and to keep them constantly before you so that those commitments become written in your mind and your heart, and affect the way you live your life every day.

Strengthening the Extended Family

As you can tell from the stories we've shared, family mission statements provide strength and direction for families of every configuration: two-parent families, single-parent families, blended families, and so on. They can also provide purpose and strength to relationships in the extended and intergenerational family as well. One husband and father said this: As I worked on a personal mission statement, one important thing that emerged was how I felt about my extended family-about my brother and my sisters and their children. I remember as a child watching some of the major wars between my mom and dad. There were times when my dad broke everything in the house-just threw everything he could find, shattering things against walls. It seemed that there were hundreds of nights that my mom would stand at the window crying. And that really left some impressions on me.

I don't know exactly what influence that had in my sisters' lives, but they've married either very dominant or very passive men-no middle-of-the-road, regular-type men-and some of the marriages haven't worked out.

So as I thought about my mission statement, I felt a real sense of responsibility concerning their children and a great desire to give them a good role model. And every week when I review my mission statement, I think very seriously about what I could be doing for a nephew or a niece.

His wife added: This has helped him become a real transition person in his family. Not only has he stopped a culture of alcoholism and emotional abuse, but he has also set a really high standard of education and contribution for his nieces and nephews. He will go to them and say, "Okay, you don't have the grades you need to get into college, so what are you going to do about it?"

We try to have nieces and nephews over often, and they notice what we do in our family. We don't watch TV at night. School is really important. We have our kids in music and sports. They see us working toward long-range goals, and it has an effect.

Notice how this man's sense of vision and values enabled him to take a positive, proactive role in his extended family. He has become an agent of change. He's working from the inside out. And what kind of difference is this going to make in the lives of his nephews and nieces?

There's no end to the good you can do in your family when you have a clear vision of your destination, your role, and your opportunity. Just think about the opportunity for grandparents, for example. Grandparents can take a vital and active role in unifying their children and grandchildren. My brother John and his wife Jane were both parents and grandparents when they developed their mission statement. They had married children living in different parts of the country as well as some children living at home. They spent eighteen months communicating with them in various ways, and they finally came up with this single phrase that embodies the essence of all they were thinking and feeling: "No empty chairs."

Those three simple words have profound meaning to them. They are code words. Behind them are many deep discussions and interactions concerning the spirit of unconditional love and commitment that family members have for one another. "We're going to help each other. We're not going to let anyone fail. We're going to pray for each other. We're going to serve each other. We're going to forgive each other. We're not going to hold grudges. We're not going to be offended."

Just think of the power of that kind of commitment in the intergenerational family! Think of the impact those words are going to have on aunts, uncles, and cousins as the family continues to grow.

But you don't have to be a parent or a grandparent to initiate an intergenerational family mission statement. Grown-up siblings can also become agents of change.

One man shared this: Some time ago my dad called and suggested that our entire family get together and take a vacation. My parents were in Virginia, one sister and her husband were in Ohio, and another sister and brother were in Utah, so we were pretty spread out.

At that time I was deep into the 7 Habits material and thought it would be great if we could write an extended family mission statement. So before the vacation, I wrote to everyone. I explained what a mission statement was and included some material on how to write one. I asked each of them to come with a draft in hand.

One of the things I was really excited about in writing this mission statement was to redefine our relationships with each other. I was convinced that we had assigned labels to everyone that were not valid anymore. "Oh, Johnny-he's the happy-go-lucky guy. He's really nice, but you can't always depend on him. Jenny is the complainer. She's always going to be whining about this or that. David's going to whine, but he'll do whatever it is he's whining about." On and on it went with everyone in the family. These labels may have been true when we were twelve or thirteen, but they didn't fit anymore. And so the first night we were together, we talked about it.

It was an incredible night. We made copies of everyone's mission statement drafts and distributed them. As each person read his or her draft, we marked our favorite lines. It was really amazing how different the approaches were. My brother had written his as a beautiful poem. My father's was a paragraph. Mine was three pages. Every one was unique.

Out of the twelve drafts we came up with a family motto and had it printed on T-shirts. We didn't complete the mission statement at that point, but we did make significant progress.

Probably the most amazing thing about the whole experience was the impact of the process itself. One of the most immediate benefits came later during that vacation when the beautiful, luxurious-looking motel Mom had picked out from a brochure turned out to be a "dive." Before, this would have sent everyone into a tailspin of silent misery. But the mission statement experience allowed us to communicate openly, and in a matter of thirty minutes we saved the vacation. I'm convinced it was a result of the family togetherness we felt.

Also, as a result of that mission statement work, several families ended up moving back to be close to Mom and Dad. We decided that family was more important than money or location. In fact, we even decided that we would love to run a business together. We realized there are a lot of challenges that come along with that, but we felt it would give us the chance to know one another better. So we packed up our things and moved hundreds of miles to be together.

Before this mission statement experience, it was like "Hey, we'll see you at Christmas!" But now we realize we want our kids to grow up close to one another. We want them to know their grandparents. It's begun a new era in our family.