I personally use a statement of purpose to guide everything I do.  It filters out all of the non-essentials in my life.  When asked to do things if it doesn’t line up with my statement of purpose I won’t even consider it. 

You’ll notice that a few of them start off with “I exist to serve by…”  I really like this type of purpose statement because it starts off with the right motive, which is serving others. 

Here are some examples of Personal Purpose Statements I found of people on the internet:

“I will redesign our world helping people discover their purpose and empowering them to become as great as they were created to be”

“I exist to serve by living on-purpose”

“I am the singing songwriting dynamo of my generation” 

“I exist to serve by building legacy.”

“My purpose is to create a life where my unique ability to connect potential solutions can be joined by my tenacious nature thereby affecting the lives of other people”

“I exist to serve by restoring story”

Here are some examples of Company Purpose Statements:

“Google Inc. was founded to make it easier to find high-quality information on the web.” (1998, archive.org copy of google.com)

“Google is a privately held and profitable company focused on search services.” (2001, archive.org copy of google.com)

“Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” (2006, http://www.google.com/).

“GE people worldwide are dedicated to turning imaginative ideas into leading products and services that help solve some of the world's toughest problems.” (2006, http://www.ge.com/)

“The Internet Archive was founded to build an ‘Internet library,’ with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.” (2006, http://www.archive.org/)

Click on the following link to work through a process to write your own personal purpose statement.