For example, your ultimate goal may be to make an Olympic weightlifting team. You may have a number of sub-goals along the way, including winning two national championships, setting several American Records and winning the Olympic tryouts. However, your mission might really be to compete with the best in the world at the biggest event in the world. Membership on the Olympic Team might be your means to accomplish this mission, but your real mission is to be on the platform with the best, to warm up with them, to give them some competition and to gain their respect as a member of their elite club. Consequently, if you made the team because some other athletes were injured and your own level of ability was not sufficient to be really competitive with the rest of the world, merely making the team might not fulfill your true mission, while a chance to compete with distinction at a particularly difficult World Championship might bring you closer to the accomplishment of your more fundamental goal.
Personal missions are as different as people.
Others merely like to pursue certain ends irrespective of what others think. The exact nature of what such a person might choose as ultimate achievement is secondary to the satisfaction he or she will derive from striving to achieve, and ultimately achieving, a challenging goal. Once a person has identified his or her core values and basic mission, he or she is ready to establish goals that are really likely to generate excitement over the long term and to help that person become the best that he or she can be. Although the perceived desirability of a particular achievement is the spark that can ignite a burning desire to succeed, it is not by itself enough to motivate a person to action. Many people spend much of their lives dreaming about a desired state of being.