Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey (44 page)

Another of those difficult times had to do with what I perceived to be a "hang up" Sandra had which had bothered me for years. She seemed to have an obsession about Frigidaire appliances which I was at an absolute loss to understand. She would not even consider buying another brand of appliance.

Even when we were just starting out and on a very tight budget, she insisted that we drive the fifty miles to the "big city" where Frigidaire appliances were sold, simply because no dealer in our small university town carried them at that time.

This was a matter of considerable agitation to me. Fortunately, the situation came up only when we purchased an appliance. But when it did come up, it was like a stimulus that triggered off a hot button response. This single issue seemed to be symbolic of all irrational thinking, and it generated a whole range of negative feelings within me.

I usually resorted to my dysfunctional private behavior. I suppose I figured that the only way I could deal with it was not to deal with it; otherwise, I felt I would lose control and say things I shouldn't say. There were times when I did slip and say something negative, and I had to go back and apologize.

What bothered me the most was not that she liked Frigidaire, but that she persisted in making what I considered utterly illogical and indefensible statements to defend Frigidaire which had no basis in fact whatsoever. If she had only agreed that her response was irrational and purely emotional, I think I could have handled it. But her justification was upsetting.

It was sometime in early spring when the Frigidaire issue came up. All our prior communication had prepared us. The ground rules had been deeply established -- not to probe and to leave it alone if it got to be too painful for either or both.

I will never forget the day we talked it through. We didn't end up on the beach that day; we just continued to ride through the canefields, perhaps because we didn't want to look each other in the eye.

There had been so much psychic history and so many bad feelings associated with the issue, and it had been submerged for so long. It had never been so critical as to rupture the relationship, but when you're trying to cultivate a beautiful unified relationship, any divisive issue is important.

Sandra and I were amazed at what we learned through the interaction. It was truly synergistic. It was as if Sandra were learning, almost for the first time herself, the reason for her so-called hang-up.

She started to talk about her father, about how he had worked as a high school history teacher and coach for years, and how, to help make ends meet, he had gone into the appliance business. During an economic downturn, he had experienced serious financial difficulties, and the only thing that enabled him to stay in business during that time was the fact that Frigidaire would finance his inventory.

Sandra had an unusually deep and sweet relationship with her father. When he returned home at the end of a very tiring day, he would lie on the couch, and Sandra would rub his feet and sing to him.

It was a beautiful time they enjoyed together almost daily for years. He would also open up and talk through his worries and concerns about the business, and he shared with Sandra his deep appreciation for Frigidaire financing his inventory so that he could make it through the difficult times.

This communication between father and daughter had taken place in a spontaneous way during very natural time, when the most powerful kind of scripting takes place. During those relaxed times guards are down and all kinds of images and thoughts are planted deep in the subconscious mind.

Perhaps Sandra had forgotten about all of this until the safety of that year of communication when it could come out also in very natural and spontaneous ways.

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Sandra gained tremendous insight into herself and into the emotional root of her feelings about Frigidaire. I also gained insight and a whole new level of respect. I came to realize that Sandra wasn't talking about appliances; she was talking about her father, and about loyalty -- about loyalty to his needs.

I remember both of us becoming tearful on that day, not so much because of the insights, but because of the increased sense of reverence we had for each other. We discovered that even seemingly trivial things often have roots in deep emotional experiences. To deal only with the superficial trivia without seeing the deeper, more tender issues is to trample on the sacred ground of another's heart.

There were many rich fruits of those months. Our communication became so powerful that we could almost instantly connect with each other's thoughts. When we left Hawaii, we resolved to continue the practice. During the many years since, we have continued to go regularly on our Honda trail cycle, or in the car if the weather's bad, just to talk. We feel the key to staying in love is to talk, particularly about feelings. We try to communicate with each other several times every day, even when I'm traveling. It's like touching in to home base, which accesses all the happiness, security, and values it represents.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again -- if your home is a treasured relationship, a precious companionship.

As Sandra and I discovered that wonderful year, the ability to use wisely the gap between stimulus and response, to exercise the four unique endowments of our human nature, empowered us from the Inside-Out.

We had tried the outside-in approach. We loved each other, and we had attempted to work through our differences by controlling our attitudes and our behaviors, by practicing useful techniques of human interaction. But our band-aids and aspirin only lasted so long. Until we worked and communicated on the level of our essential paradigms, the chronic underlying problems were still there.

When we began to work from the Inside-Out, we were able to build a relationship of trust and openness and to resolve dysfunctional differences in a deep and lasting way that never could have come by working from the outside in. The delicious fruits -- a rich win-win relationship, a deep understanding of each other, and a marvelous synergy -- grew out of the roots we nurtured as we examined our programs, rescripted ourselves, and managed our lives so that we could create time for the important Quadrant II activity of communicating deeply with each other.

And there were other fruits. We were able to see on a much deeper level that, just as powerfully as our own lives had been affected by our parents, the lives of our children were being influenced and shaped by us, often in ways we didn't even begin to realize. Understanding the power of scripting in our own lives, we felt a renewed desire to do everything we could to make certain that what we passed on to future generations, by both precept and example, was based on correct principles.

I have drawn particular attention in this book to those scripts we have been given which we proactively want to change. But as we examine our scripting carefully, many of us will also begin to see beautiful scripts, positive scripts that have been passed down to us which we have blindly taken for granted. Real self-awareness helps us to appreciate those scripts and to appreciate those who have gone before us and nurtured us in principle-based living, mirroring back to us not only what we are, but what we can become.

There is transcendent power in a strong intergenerational family. An effectively interdependent family of children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins can be a powerful force in helping people have a sense of who they are and where they came from and what they stand for.

It's great for children to be able to identify themselves with the "tribe," to feel that many people
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know them and care about them, even though they're spread all over the country. And that can be a tremendous benefit as you nurture your family. If one of your children is having difficulty and doesn't really relate with you at a particular time in his life, maybe he can relate to your brother or sister who can become a surrogate father or mother, a mentor, or a hero for a period of time.

Grandparents who show a great interest in their grandchildren are among the most precious people on this earth. What a marvelous positive social mirror they can be! My mother is like that. Even now, in her late 80s, she takes a deep personal interest in every one of her descendants. She writes us love letters. I was reading one the other day on a plane with tears streaming down my cheeks. I could call her up tonight and I know she'd say, "Stephen, I want you to know how much I love you and how wonderful I think you are." She's constantly reaffirming.

A strong intergenerational family is potentially one of the most fruitful, rewarding, and satisfying interdependent relationships. And many people feel the importance of that relationship. Look at the fascination we all had with Roots some years ago. Each of us has roots and the ability to trace those roots, to identify our ancestors.

The highest and most powerful motivation in doing that is not for ourselves only, but for our posterity, for the posterity of all mankind. As someone once observed, "There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children -- one is roots, the other wings."

Among other things, I believe that giving "wings" to our children and to others means empowering them with the freedom to rise above negative scripting that had been passed down to us. I believe it means becoming what my friend and associate, Dr. Terry Warner, calls a "transition" person. Instead of transferring those scripts to the next generation, we can change them. And we can do it in a way that will build relationships in the process

If your parents abused you as a child, that does not mean that you have to abuse your own children.

Yet there's plenty of evidence to indicate that you will tend to live out that script. But because you're proactive, you can rewrite the script. You can choose not only not to abuse your children, but to affirm them, to script them in positive ways.

You can write it in your personal mission statement and into your mind and heart. You can visualize yourself living in harmony with that mission statement in your Daily Private Victory. You can take steps to love and forgive your own parents, and if they are still living, to build a positive relationship with them by seeking to understand.

A tendency that's run through your family for generations can stop with you. You're a transition person -- a link between the past and the future. And your own change can affect many, many lives downstream.

One powerful transition person of the twentieth century, Anwar Sadat, left us as part of his legacy a profound understanding of the nature of change. Sadat stood between a past that had created a "huge wall of suspicion, fear, hate and misunderstanding" between Arabs and Israelis, and a future in which increased conflict and isolation seemed inevitable. Efforts at negotiation had been met with objections on every scale -- even to formalities and procedural points, to an insignificant comma or period in the text of proposed agreements.

While others attempted to resolve the tense situation by hacking at the leaves, Sadat drew upon his earlier centering experience in a lonely prison cell and went to work on the root. And in doing so, he changed the course of history for millions of people.

He records in his autobiography:

It was then that I drew, almost unconsciously, on the inner strength I had developed in Cell 54 of Cairo Central Prison -- a strength, call it a talent or capacity, for change. I found that I faced a highly
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complex situation, and that I couldn't hope to change it until I had armed myself with the necessary psychological and intellectual capacity. My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place had taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.

Change -- real change -- comes from the Inside-Out. It doesn't come from hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior with quick-fix personality ethic techniques. It comes from striking at the root --

the fabric of our thought, the fundamental, essential paradigms, which give definition to our character and create the lens through which we see the world. In the words of Amiel: Moral truth can be conceived in thought. One can have feelings about it. One can will to live it.

But moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness there is our being itself -- our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which have entered into this last region, which have become ourselves, become spontaneous and involuntary as well as voluntary, unconscious as well as conscious, are really our life -- that is to say, something more than property. So long as we are able to distinguish any space whatever between Truth and us we remain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire or the consciousness of life may not be quite life. To become divine is then the aim of life. Then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of loss. It is no longer outside us, nor in a sense even in us, but we are it, and it is we.

Achieving unity -- oneness -- with ourselves, with our loved ones, with our friends and working associates, is the highest and best and most delicious fruit of the Seven Habits. Most of us have tasted this fruit of true unity from time to time in the past, as we have also tasted the bitter, lonely fruit of disunity -- and we know how precious and fragile unity is.