Create a Life Mission Statement
How to find purpose for a lifetime (probably).
“Sarah has something to show you,” Denise said to me as I looked down at her daughter, who had her tiny arms wrapped around her mother’s leg.
Sarah, only three and a half years old, was holding a frizzy-haired Barbie doll, which was in the condition you would expect a three-and-a-half-year-old would keep a Barbie doll in.
“I don’t know why, but she really wanted to show you her doll. She wouldn’t leave the house this morning without it. Come on honey, show Coach John.”
I knelt down to get on Sarah’s level as she slowly outstretched her beat up Barbie doll towards me.
“Look at that! She is so beautiful,” I say to Sarah, feigning a deep admiration for her toy.
Sarah looked at me in the eyes briefly, then looked away. She petted her doll on the head in front of me.
“I absolutely love your doll. Are you ready to play today?” I said to Sarah. She didn’t respond, just kept petting her doll.
“All right honey, practice is about to start. Why don’t you put your doll away and get out on the field with the other kids,” Denise said to her daughter, who was still latched to her mother’s side.
Sarah reached her doll above her head to give it to her mother. She turned to me, and I gently guided her by the shoulder in the direction of the soccer field, where I had two lines of children practicing shooting. She ran over to one of the lines and joined the other kids.
“Kids are hilarious,” I said to Denise.
“They really are,” she said to me.
I turned away and headed towards the field to watch my team practice. Soccer practice for three- and four-year-olds amounts to lightly kicking the ball in a semi-organized fashion somewhat towards the goal, some crying for what seems to be no reason, and a lot of tripping over their own feet. And I found all of it to be an enlightening experience.
That was seven years ago. I was twenty-one. Now I’m twenty-eight. At the time I didn’t think I wanted to be a father. I was going to be some big, change-the-world business guy. I had countless ideas in my head. Most of them, by my rough calculations, would net me about a billion dollars. And everyone would know my name. And I would do all this before I was thirty-five.
But coaching those tiny little humans kicking a soccer ball changed my life. I realized how incredible kids were. And how much joy being around them brought me. Within a few weeks, I realized I needed to be a father.
My dreams of being a hot-shot business tycoon didn’t fade. I would just be a hot-shot tycoon with kids. Easy.
Elon Musk seems to have a very clear vision for his life. In a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, he said that “The reason [he] founded SpaceX was to make life multiplanetary.” (Rolling Stone).
Although this is a mission statement for his company, it also feels personal. This is his life mission. In a 2012 interview with Wired magazine, he was quoted as saying "I think it's important for humanity to become a multiplanet species and explore the stars. That’s what makes me passionate about the future,” (Wired).
If you look at what he is building, you can connect all the dots back to this mission.
Tesla, to develop sustainable means of transport so we don’t burn through all our resources before we get to the stars.
Neuralink, to help all humans be more capable, improving the net output per human.
StarLink, to help get more humans connected to the internet, improving our knowledge output.
DOGE, to help the greatest and most technologically capable country on Earth not impede its own prosperity.
X, to protect the right of free speech and save humans from tyranny.
Although many of these things may seem orthogonal to the mission, if you think this, you aren’t seeing the full picture. Tyranny, a lack of resources, a lack of knowledge, and a lack of human capability, are all detrimental to getting to the stars. And if we fix the transparency of the internet, allow everyone to participate in it, make it sustainable to be a human, break the regulatory state, and build rocket ships, we will get off this planet. That’s what Elon is doing.
Although Elon is firing on all cylinders with his life mission, he is failing, or, at least, underperforming in other regards. He has twelve children with three different women. He doesn’t seem to have entirely stable relationships with all of them. And he clearly doesn’t have stable relationships with all the mothers of his children either. At the expense of his life mission, his personal life is shaky, at best.
Elon is the most extreme example of how you can be great at something, but not everything. But I think that beyond that, him having such a clear mission for his life allows him to be so great at the things in his life that serve the mission. Life’s a balancing act. And you’ll have to compromise performance in one area to have maximum output in another.
Shortly after my brief tenure as a tiny-person soccer coach, I graduated college and listened to a podcast by Naval Ravikant called “How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky.” In the podcast, Naval discusses how, to get rich, you need to find the intersection of what you love to do, what you’re naturally great at, and what the world needs that it will pay you for. This podcast paralleled a common Japanese concept called “Ikigai,” which is a similar philosophy on how to approach life.
https://www.allaboutlean.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Ikigai.png
I thought deeply over the next few years about how I was going to apply this concept to my life to maximize my financial outcome. I was pretty good at art and knew a lot about exercise science, so I decided to create “Tiny Whiteboard Workouts,” an Instagram page dedicated to workout programs drawn on smaller-than-average whiteboards. I made about $50 over the course of a year and a half with that. Then I realized I’m pretty good at language and exercise creation, so I created the WEN System, a standardized system to revolutionize the way exercises are created and named. I didn’t even release the hundred pages of documentation that my friends and I developed for it. Then I created Fitteo, an online marketplace for workout programs. I did this because I realized that I’m good with technology and had a deep understanding of the content creation environment from Tiny Whiteboard Workouts. This cost my dad about $20k.
And then I bought a gym because I realized that’s probably what I’m going to be pretty good at. It’s simple, I know what it takes, and I have the prerequisite skillset. But guess what? Nobody is changing the world by owning some gyms. And being pretty good at something isn’t enough to be the best. My future as a business tycoon is fading in front of me. Goodbye yachts, supermodel girlfriends, and dinners with international leaders. It was nice knowing you (in my dreams).
But let’s be honest, my goal of being a business tycoon and a dad on the side wasn’t very clear. I wasn’t working towards anything specific. I just wanted to do anything that would make me lots of money with the knowledge and skills I already had and could build upon. Clearly, that’s not enough to optimize the focus in your life. You need a problem to solve. Elon wants to save us from an extinction level event. So, his life mission is to make life multiplanetary.
I was recently on a call with one of my best friends. He is one of the smartest people I know. I built Fitteo with him (it failed because of me, not him, trust me). And at twenty-two, I’m confident he will be a very wealthy guy in the future. On this call with him, he was talking about all these ideas he had for new businesses and products to create. He seemed hell-bent on solving any problem he could with code and a basic understanding of the landscape the problem was in. I didn’t understand his disjointed desire to create such random projects. To gain clarity, I asked him “when you’re eighty, and you’re on your deathbed, what will you be proud that you created?”
He didn’t have an answer. He said he was very happy with his life now. And he doesn’t have any regrets. I told him I thought this was great. But I also told him that he is one of the smartest people I know, and he should focus on why he is here. He has built a lot of companies and products. All of which comes with a mission statement. He has gone through the mission-statement creating process many times. It’s time to create one for his own life.
When Fitteo failed, I realized that being a business tycoon wasn’t my destiny. I simply am not smart, hardworking, and risk-tolerant enough for it. It takes a next-level mind with incredible resolve and little fear to build the next Google. And I’m not him. I’m not even close.
I haven’t given up on my desire to maximize the outcome of my life. To solve a big problem that humanity struggles with. To leave a legacy. Maybe people won’t know my name. But my hope is that they will feel the impact I’ve had for generations to come. I know my own mission statement. I created it shortly after Fitteo failed and I bought Galaxy Fit Lab, my gym.
The fun part of my life is that I get to talk to smart, hard-working people all day. I own a gym and am the only trainer. So, I end up training people for about eight to ten hours daily. My gym is also expensive. Only wealthy, successful people can afford it. And I’ve been training for so long that I can get people to move very well with little effort and few words.
With the rest of the time, I make conversation. I ask people about their lives. What makes them tick. What they’re passionate about. What makes their relationships work. How they raised their children. How their children are doing in the world. How they made their money. What life lessons have they learned. Are they happy.
When you do this every day, all day, with hundreds of people, you see patterns. You see how people made their money (spoiler alert: you must work hard for a long time). You see why people are happy. You see why people are in a good relationship. You see why people are sad. You see why they get divorced. You see why their sons are still living with them. You see why their daughters are still single. You see their successes. You see their failures. You see why they happen. And you see how to recreate their successes. And you see how to avoid their failures.
But what you don’t see is one thing. You never see anyone with a clear vision for what they want out of life. Almost nobody has a mission statement. Even the happiest, richest people with the most successful children retire, play lots of golf, and seem unfulfilled. Or, if they are still working, plan on retiring soon, playing lots of golf, and being confused about what they will do next, if anything at all. They spend a lot of time with their contractors, hairdressers, and doctors. And playing golf.
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, outlined a life philosophy in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 1989, stating "I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience, I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being." (Nobel Prize) This may explain his fight for the liberation of Tibet from China.
Steve Jobs once said "We're here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?" (Business Insider). If this is his life mission statement, it would explain his obsession with making the best consumer technology products with Apple the world has ever seen.
Maybe Warren Buffet has a mission statement, and it goes something like “create lasting value.” This would explain his career in investing. And explain why he keeps going at age 307.
The common theme here is that when people simplify their purpose to a few brief words, they have a lasting impact on the world. It’s not a prerequisite, probably, but it seems like it helps.
When you have a life mission statement, it helps you make decisions faster. It helps guide you on what you should work on. It helps you say no to opportunities. It helps you say yes to others. It helps you deal with short-term suffering, because you know the suffering serves the mission. It helps you choose who to spend time with and who not to. It makes you happier by giving your life meaning. It helps you build community by finding like-minded people to surround yourself with and bond over your shared purpose. It keeps you from wanting to retire, because your purpose is so grand your mission will never be complete.
And most importantly, it keeps you from playing golf, which is a waste of time and beautiful landscaping.