Creating Your Personal Manifesto: A Guide to Aligning Life's Purpose, Goals, and Intentions

Craig 00:01 

Imagine that you’re living a life of deep meaning and personal fulfillment. You live according to your virtues, values and beliefs. You are committed to living a life driven by your purpose. How do you pull this off? Well, you've got a secret. You’ve developed a document that provides clarity around all of these critical aspects of living a flourishing life. You can turn to this document at any time to make sure that you’re being true to who you are and the purpose you seek. In the process of developing this magical document, you gained knowledge of yourself that few can match. At the end of each day, you reflect on how you’re living your best life, not in some shallow, materialist way. No, you’re flourishing in the truest sense of the word. What's this magical document that can lead you to this amazing life? It’s a personal manifesto. Stay tuned to discover the transformative impact of developing your very own personal manifesto.

Craig 01:14 

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

A manifesto is a written declaration of a set of values, beliefs, and intentions. Most well-known manifestos are related to politics, but there are many examples from all aspects of life. You can even have a personal manifesto. In fact, I believe that the process of developing a personal manifesto can give you rare insights into your own values, beliefs, virtues, purpose, and intentions. At its core, a personal manifesto is a document of who you are and who you want to be. The process of developing a personal manifesto will help you understand who you are in a way that is rarely found.

Craig 02:15 

But the value of a manifesto goes beyond the process, it’s a living document that gives you a guide for living a life of meaning and excellence, not in some generic way, but in a highly personal way that’s based on a foundation that’s uniquely YOU … what you believe … how you find meaning … what you value. It’s a declaration and a touchstone for living a truly excellent life.

Let’s back up and define a personal manifesto. A personal manifesto is a written declaration of your core values, beliefs, virtues, purpose, intentions and goals, along with the principles that guide your life. In other words, it’s a document that lays out who you are and what you seek in life. Public manifestos are aimed at trying to inspire collective action; your personal manifesto is, in essence, a contract with yourself. It’s a guide and an agreement that can help you live an excellent life. A personal manifesto helps you live by choice, not by chance.

Craig 03:21 

Maybe the best way to start to understand all of this is to look at what makes up a personal manifesto. So, let’s talk about its components.

To make things a little easier to understand I’m going to break the components into two groups, internal and external. Internal components are about how you view yourself, external components concern how you view the world and your relationship with it.

Internal components include your values and beliefs, along with the principles that guide your life and the virtues you seek. Let’s talk about each of these and why they’re important.

Your values serve as the foundation of your personal manifesto. They’re the “why” that drives your life. They’re a reflection of what you believe about what is desirable, important, and morally correct. Your values are deep set and enduring. Some examples of values are honesty, loyalty, and respect. For most of us, our values were ingrained really early in life, then shaped by factors such as family, culture, and life experiences. Although values are enduring, they can change as we grow and learn.

Craig 04:34 

Your beliefs are convictions that certain things are true. Examples include a belief that most people are fundamentally good, or that you have the ability to control your reactions to events. Although beliefs start developing early in life like values, they're less stable than values. Beliefs are subject to personal experience and empirical evidence. When our experiences start to indicate that a belief might not be true, we adjust that belief accordingly. So, if you see that people constantly treat each other poorly, you might revisit your belief that people are fundamentally good. Beliefs and values are closely related; values drive many of your beliefs.

Craig 05:19 

Virtues are the qualities that you want to embody … they’re the core of who you are … of who you want to be. They are the guiding light of your essence. Every act and aspect of your life can be judged against your virtues. If you skipped out on a promise to a friend, you didn’t live according to the virtue of loyalty. If you got up on stage and gave a talk even though you were terrified, you lived according to courage. Your values reflect what’s important to you. Your beliefs shape your understanding of the world. But, your virtues reflect who you want to be. The distinction between values and virtues is sometimes murky (at least it is for me). So maybe this will help. Values are guiding beliefs about what’s important, virtues are more about character traits and qualities, who you are.

Craig 06:14 

Principles put all of this into action. They’re the rules that guide your behaviors. Much like practical wisdom, principles are what make your values, beliefs and virtues more than just theoretical navel gazing. Principles let you apply your values, beliefs and virtues in specific situations. If you value honesty for example, the guiding principle might be “Tell the truth.” If you want to exhibit the virtue of kindness, a guiding principle could be “Always consider the other person.” Principles sometimes take the form of maxims, little sayings that help us remember principles. For example, one of my beliefs is that there are always possibilities for growth and progress, regardless of the situation. This belief spawned one of my core maxims, “See your possibilities, not your limitations.” (By the way, I did an episode about this maxim. You can check it out at livewellandflourish.com/45.)

Craig 07:15 

Before moving to the external components of a personal manifesto, I want to note that it’s critical for your values, beliefs, virtues, and principles to align with each other. When they don’t, you’ll experience some pretty uncomfortable cognitive dissonance until you make adjustments. For example, if you value honesty and want to be an honest person, but believe that it’s OK to lie, you’ve got a problem and you need to make some adjustments.

Alright, let’s move on to the external components of a personal manifesto.

External components describe how you view and relate to the world around you. There are four of these: purpose, goals, intentions, and worldview.

Craig 07:57 

As I’ve said repeatedly, understanding your purpose in life is critical to flourishing. If you want to live a life of meaning and fulfillment, you need to understand and live according to your purpose. Your purpose should be the driving force in your life. Although your purpose is intensely personal, it’s about your place in the world. So, I view it as an external component, although it really doesn’t matter which category you put it in (put it wherever you want). In episodes 23 and 59, I talked at length about the importance of purpose and how to start uncovering your purpose, so today I’ll just leave it at this. Your goals and your intentions in life should be driven by your purpose. Without that purpose, it’s hard to have a cohesive, intentional, flourishing life.

Craig 08:47  

Speaking of goals and intentions, they should flow from your purpose and from the internal components of your manifesto. In the context of a personal manifesto, intentions are about the mindset and attitudes you want to adopt. For example, you might want to maintain a positive mindset or to be an empathetic person. Intentions are process-oriented; they focus on the journey rather than the outcome. You might act in alignment with an intention, but you never really achieve an intention. They’re more like commitments to cultivate certain qualities or states of being. So, in many respects intentions are how you … well, intend to live according to those internal components we just discussed.

Craig 09:33 

Goals are more outcome oriented. You can achieve a goal. For example, if you have the intention to be a kind person, your goal might be to do something nice for someone five times each day. Goals can also be achievement-oriented, especially if they relate to carrying out your purpose in a particular way. Maybe you want to help immigrant children. A good goal might be to learn to speak Spanish (or some other relevant language). Be careful about goals though. They need to be realistic and largely under your control or they can be a source of huge frustration. Sure, being a billionaire might help me live my purpose of helping others lead successful, meaningful lives, but I’m not likely to achieve that goal. Starting a podcast on flourishing, well that's a more realistic goal that’s under my control, at least mostly. Also, it’s good to have a mix of short-term and long-term goals. Achieving short-term goals can give you the confidence you need for pursuing longer term goals. Check out episode 25 to learn more about how you can build on small wins to achieve big things in your life.

Craig 10:43 

Remember, an excellent life is a life of purpose and virtue. So, focus on goals and intentions that relate to these critical aspects of your life. It’s fine to have other goals and intentions, but in your manifesto focus on the goals and intentions that support your purpose and the virtues you seek.

Also keep in mind, once again, all of these components need to align with each other. When they don’t, your life is kind of like a car with a misaligned front end. Until you fix your alignment, you’re in for a shaky ride.

Your worldview is the lens through which you perceive and interpret the world around you. It’s driven by the internal components we discussed earlier, particularly your beliefs and values. Your worldview shapes how you understand your place in the world. Here’s the thing about worldviews. We all have one, but few people can articulate what their worldview is. Knowing your worldview well enough to articulate it is a long process that involves deep introspection and reflection. But the return on the effort can be enormous. One last note on worldviews, they evolve. As you learn and grow, your worldview may change.

Craig 12:00 

I’m working on my worldview statement. If you’re interested, I’m happy to share it, even though it's a work in progress. Just email me at livewellandflourish@pm.me.

Alright, let’s move on to three things you can do this week to put some of the ideas from this episode into action. First though, I want to ask you to consider signing up for my email list, if you haven’t already. There are some big plans for the first of the year, and I wouldn’t want you to miss out. To sign up, just go to livewellandflourish.com and fill out the form. I would truly appreciate it!

This week’s three things segment takes a little different approach. Instead of doing all three, I think it's better if you just pick one to try this week, and then if you want you can move on to the others.

Craig 12:50 

If you haven’t already thought about your values, I suggest identifying six core values that are important to you. Examples might include integrity, compassion, gratitude and respect. You might also consider values like maintaining a balance among different aspects of your life. For each value, write down your definition of that value, what it means to you, then describe why it’s important to you. If gratitude is a core value, it might be because you believe that gratitude is important for helping you focus on what’s good in your life rather than focusing on negative aspects.

If you already have a good handle on your core values, try a fun little exercise (at least I think it's fun). Write down five principles. Then create a maxim for each principle. A maxim is just a short, memorable saying that reinforces a principle. A few episodes ago, I talked about a principle from Stoicism -- some things are under your control and some things are not. The associated maxim is “You can’t control the cards, but you can control how you play them.” Here’s one more, and this one is mine. The principle is “failure is a temporary condition, not part of who you are” and the maxim is “Failure is a state, not a trait.”

Craig 14:10  

Here’s my last suggestion. Write a draft of your worldview. This is a tough one, I think, but it can be quite insightful. In your worldview statement, try to articulate three areas, your ideological beliefs, your perceptions of how you should interact with other people, and your basic views on right and wrong. There’s a lot more to developing a comprehensive worldview and understanding it, but taking on these three areas will give you a really good start.

Well, that’s it for this time. I think we’ve covered a lot of ground and only scratched the surface. Hopefully, I’ve piqued your curiosity about having a personal manifesto. Developing yours is a lot of work, but it’s a fantastic investment in your flourishing. Our closing quote comes from me, although I’m sure it’s a mashup of the thoughts of others. “To understand life, first understand yourself.”

Until next time, keep pondering my friends.

I produce Live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourish.com

Until next time.