My 2019 Personal Manifesto

I created my Personal Manifesto based on an assignment from a great accountability program called In Power. There were many aspects of the assignment, but the key words that drew the most attention to me were:

Core values and beliefs
Statement of personal principles
What words do you want to live by
A call to action

This is a worthy assignment no matter where you are in life and I found tremendous value in it. I encourage everybody to take the time to create one.

You can find what I created below and I’ll breakdown how I approached each section to provide a little more context. Everybody from the In Power Accountability Group had a different approach. I say that because there is no right or wrong way to make your personal manifesto. The goal is to go through the process and CREATE one!

My version is longer than most because I wanted an all-encompassing doc that drew from other areas I had worked on. If you haven’t read any of my other posts, you’ll notice that I also drew inspiration from the BYLR program.

Core Values

I spent a lot of time on this. My goal was to only have three core values, but I found it incredibly challenging. I was hoping keep this list low and choose values that applied to multiple areas of my life. This is an area that I’ll probably review quarterly and continue to refine.

Each core value has:

A statement of intention to use that core value
How that core value applies to my life
One to three quotes that speak to that core value

Purpose: What is your why?

What is your purpose in life? Why do you exist? These are incredibly scary questions. I opted for a relatively simple answer to that question. I didn’t want to overthink it.

I know which activities generate the most excitement in my life and easily get me into a state of mental flow. I know what drives me. I combined those two items to create my answer.

Is that the right approach? Who knows? I’m happy with the result for now.

Core Beliefs/ Affirmations

I pulled these directly from my 2019 goals. I treat my core beliefs as my affirmations that I use during my morning routine.They cover the three primary areas of my life for goal setting including: Personal, Business, and Side Hustle.

I’ll do another blog post on this at some point, but I treat my goals the way a business does. The basic framework is:

Goals
Objectives
Milestones
Habits/ KPIs/ Tasks

Milestones & Habits

These were late additions based on learnings from Jesse Itzler’s Build Your LIfe Resume program. Jesse has a great system for creating an exceptional life through accomplishment, creating life moments/ memories, and having a growth mindset through good habits.

Misogi

What is the one thing that will define 2019? What’s the one thing that you will accomplish and feel the benefits for the other 364 days of the year?

Note: I cheated and chose two things.

Kevin’s Rule

Every eight weeks add something to your calendar that you have never done or wouldn’t normally do. This allows you to create 6 to 7 NEW experiences and memories every year!

Winning Habits

I really like Jessie’s approach for this. A lot of times we want to tackle endless habits that we want to our life. Going to the gym, saving money, reading a book, the list could go on and on.

The objective is to add ONE new habit every month that helps you become a better person and accomplish your goals. There are two key benefits to this approach.

It requires you to drill down what you really want to accomplish in your life. When narrowing down to one habit, what you are saying “no” to is just as important as what you’re saying “yes” to. It’s a great process for helping you better define your priorities.
It allows you to really develop that one habit. You don’t have an excuse that you’re trying to do X, Y, and Z. You’re only tackling that one habit making it easier to accomplish and creating momentum.

My personal approach to this is adding ONE primary new habit every month. I may have a secondary habit that I’m also tackling, but the primary one takes precedent when I’m limited on time/ resources.

Your Turn

I hope this post has helped you start to think about how you can make a Personal Manifesto and inspired you to create your own. While I did provide a framework for how I created mine, I encourage you to follow your own path and find an approach that best fits you.

I pulled inspiration from Daring to Life Fully’s post titled How to Write a Personal Manifesto. Please let me know if you create your own or if you have any tips for creating a Personal Manifesto in the comments!

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