Feeling Lost? Redirect Your Life With a Personal Manifesto

You may have heard of businesses and organizations having manifestos or mission statements, but what about your very own personal manifesto? It might sound silly at first to think about coming up with your own personal manifesto, but if you're feeling lost, having one can help you strengthen your core values, streamline your life, and be authentic. It can really come in handy in your personal life! A personal manifesto is a great tool that you can easily reference whenever you need it.

A personal manifesto can serve as a personal mission statement for how you go about living your life and an outline for the kind of person that you want to be day to day. It can range from one sentence to more of a paragraph – whatever resonates with you. Everyone’s different, so everyone’s personal manifesto will be different.

Your personal manifesto can help you:

• Be your best self and be authentic
• Make important decisions in your professional and personal life
• Stay in line with your core values and beliefs 
• Find your way back to yourself when you feel like you’ve lost yourself

Sounds pretty helpful, right? So if you’re on board, follow along. The first step to creating your personal manifesto is to identify your core values.

What are Core Values?

Core values are basically the principles that you base your life decisions and actions around. They help make up your moral compass, which guides you through life. These core values may affect the way you go about your relationships, the career path you choose, how you treat yourself, how you treat others, and so on. 

Grab a paper and pen (or, fine, your Notes app) and jot down some of your core values. These are what will serve as the basis for your personal manifesto. There are no right or wrong answers here. If you're feeling lost, this is all about what is most important to you. You can ask yourself: What or who is most important to me in my life? How do I want to be remembered? How do I want to make my mark on the world? How do I want to treat others, whether they are strangers or close loved ones?

Some of my core values are:

• Loving myself and others
• Being curious
• Sharing my unique knowledge
• Surrendering to the universe
• Giving my best effort
• Being kind

It might take some time for you to figure out what your core values are. Don’t rush it. Journaling about the aspects of life that are most important to you might help you uncover your core values and find your true purpose. 

Writing a Personal Manifesto

Now, you’ll want to use your core values to create your personal manifesto. Use those words or phrases that you came up with in the previous step, and take them a step further to craft a few sentences or points that will make up your personal manifesto. Nothing should feel forced, and everything you put in your personal manifesto should sound and feel like you. Remember to incorporate things that apply to both yourself and how you interact with others so that your personal manifesto can be all-encompassing. 

Here’s what I created using those few words and values from the previous step:

1. Love yourself first, then share that love with everyone in your path.

2. Stay forever curious, and share your unique gifts and knowledge with the world.

3. Surrender to the universe and flow of life, while always putting forth your best effort. 

4. Be kind. Always. 

Your personal manifesto can be short and sweet like this, or even shorter if you’d like. Alternatively, you can make it longer. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to do this. You want to write it in a way that will resonate and stick with you. 

Keep your personal manifesto somewhere you can see it or reference it often – whether that’s your phone background, a piece of paper on your nightstand, a Post-It on your bathroom mirror, you name it. You can even share it on social media so that others can hold you accountable, and you might even inspire others to create their very own personal manifesto.

Streamline Your Life with Values

So, now that you’ve got a personal manifesto, what are you supposed to do with it? Well, you can use it to streamline your life, which is what we’re talking about when we say that your personal manifesto can help you be authentic, make important decisions, set boundaries, and stay in line with your core values.

When you’re faced with a challenge, reference your personal manifesto. This can provide you with guidance, peace of mind, and a sense of self. When you really have a solid understanding of who you are and what you believe in, you will notice it’s easy to streamline your life whether you’re dealing with your personal life, love life, professional life, or anything in between. 

Always let your core values guide you. 

How to Be Authentic

Your personal manifesto is a reflection of your core values – and staying true to them will help you to be authentic.  This is why it’s so important to choose values that are unique to you when you create your personal manifesto. You want it to reflect the things that you actually really care about, the way that you act, and the person you want to be. 

You won’t have the same core values as everyone else and everyone else won’t have the same core values as you. 

Of course, you should want to be a good person and treat others well, right? But how you personally go about doing that will be unique to you. 

By referencing your core values and personal manifesto, it will be easy to streamline your life and be authentic. 

So what are you waiting for? Do some soul searching and get writing! And if you’d like to stop feeling lost, augment your personal manifesto and really boost your wellbeing, check out our e-book. It will help you learn to feel happy, balanced, and present.