Scripting · “You Assign the Meaning”
The Personal Mission Statement
To clarify the values and ‘end’ you are living toward and write them into a personal constitution that guides daily decisions.
In 4 lines: Imagine your own funeral and four people — family, friend, colleague, community — speaking about you. Write down what you longed to hear them say; those are your values. Turn them into a short personal “constitution” of who you want to be and what you want to contribute. Revisit it, and run your real decisions through it.
What it is
This is the second habit of Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012): to “begin with the end in mind.” His principle is that “all things are created twice” — first a mental creation, then a physical one — and that effective people deliberately author the first creation rather than letting circumstances or other people write it for them.
The flagship exercise is a vivid visualization of your own funeral: you imagine sitting at the service and listening to four people — a family member, a friend, a colleague, and someone from your community or church — speak about the kind of person you were.
What you want them to say reveals what you most deeply value. From that clarity Covey has you write a personal mission statement: a “personal constitution,” a written declaration of your values and the ends you are living toward, against which daily decisions can be measured.
It operationalizes the truths that identity precedes circumstance (The Inner Creates the Outer) and that imagination is a faculty of creation, not idle fantasy (The Inner Creates the Outer).
The Method
A faithful rendering of Habit 2:
- Do the funeral visualization. Picture yourself going to a funeral — and realize the person in the casket is you, three years from now. Settle into the scene: the flowers, the faces, the music.
- Hear the four eulogies. Imagine four speakers in turn — a member of your family, a close friend, an associate from your work or profession, and someone from your community or faith group. Ask of each: What would I want this person to say about my character, my contributions, my life?
- Write down what you heard. Capture the qualities and contributions you longed to hear named. These are your values surfacing.
- Draft the mission statement. Turn those values into a written statement of what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements), and the principles on which they rest. Covey calls this your personal constitution.
- Revisit and revise. Treat it as a living document. Covey reread and refined his own over years; you are meant to return to it, especially at decision points.
- Run decisions through it. When choices arise, weigh them against the statement: does this move me toward the “end” I declared, or away from it? (Sourcing note: the quoted phrases — “begin with the end in mind,” “all things are created twice,” “personal constitution” — are Covey’s published phrasings, attributed; the protocol is faithfully described, not reproduced in full.)
Source & Lineage
Stephen R. Covey framed Habit 2 as the bridge between the character ethic he championed and daily action: principles become operative only when written into a personal “end.” The funeral exercise is his signature device for accessing values via imagery and the “right brain.” It descends from older practices of memento mori and life-review and runs forward into values-clarification, “core values” coaching, and the legacy/eulogy exercises common in modern self-help.
Common refinements
Writing goals instead of values. A mission statement is about who you are being, not a task list. Keep it at the level of character and contribution.
- Demanding perfection on the first pass. Covey expected it to evolve; a clumsy first draft you actually revisit beats a polished one you file away.
- Skipping the visualization. The funeral exercise is what makes the values felt rather than generic. Don’t jump straight to bullet points.
- Refinement: organize the statement by the roles you live (parent, partner, professional, citizen) so it stays concrete and usable.