Organizing Around Roles
Instead of just selecting activities, Sandra and I have found that one of the best ways to put the big rocks in first in our lives is to organize around our most important roles—including our family roles—and to set goals in each of these roles each week. Some weeks, one or two goals will be so consuming that we make the decision not to set goals in other roles. For example, when Sandra spends a week helping one of our daughters with a new baby, that means she chooses not to do any public speaking, community service, or extra projects around the home that week. But it’s a consciously made decision, and she feels peaceful knowing that the following week she will look at each of her roles and set goals again. We’ve found that by using “roles and goals,” our lives are much more balanced. Each role is attended to, and we’re less likely to get overwhelmed by the urgency of all the day-to-day pressures.*
A Quick Look Back and Ahead
Now before we move on, let’s take a moment to look back and think in a larger sense about Habits 1, 2, and 3.
Habit 1—Be proactive—is the most fundamental decision of all. It determines whether you’re going to be responsible or a victim.
If you make the decision to be responsible—to take initiative, to be the creative force of your life—then the most primary decision facing you is what is your life about. This is Habit 2—Begin with the end in mind—which is creating your family mission statement. This is what is called a strategic decision because every other decision will be governed by it.
Habit 3, then—Put first things first—becomes secondary or tactical. It deals with how to make those first things happen. We have primarily focused on two main structural interventions in a world where “outside in” fails: the weekly family time and one-on-one bonding experiences between members of the family. When outside-in worked, such structures weren’t as necessary because they were happening naturally all the time. But the more society is extracted from nature, the more we see the globalization of technology and markets that change the whole economic picture, the more we see the secularization of the culture away from principles, the more we see the erosion of laws and the social will driving the political will to where elections become more and more popularity contests based on sound bites and camera opportunities—the more we must be strong and decisive in creating and using new structures to keep us on track.
As you think about implementing these habits in your family, I want to remind you again that you are the expert on your family, and you alone know your situation.
During a recent visit to Argentina, I talked with parents who had gathered from all over Latin America to attend a conference. I asked them for feedback on the ideas in this book. The feedback was very positive and supportive, but these parents didn’t relate to the formalizing of a weekly family time and one-on-ones. They live in a very family-oriented culture, and for them almost every night is “family time” and one-on-ones are a natural part of daily life.
But with other families, the idea of developing a family mission statement and creating new structures of a weekly family time and planned one-on-one bonding experiences is totally off their screen. They don’t want any form or structure in their lives. Perhaps they are angry and rebelling against the structures they already have in their lives—structures that they feel have suppressed the full sense of freedom and individuality they value. Those structures may be so filled with negative energy and judgments that any other structure is guilty by association. There’s just too much social and psychic baggage.
If this is your situation, you may still want to prioritize your family. You may recognize some value in a family mission statement and some of these structures but feel that doing some of these things is just going too far for now. That’s okay. Start where you are. Don’t lay a big guilt trip on yourself about the necessity of all this interdependence if you’re not ready to move in this direction.
You may want to start by simply applying some of these ideas in your own life. Perhaps all you feel you can do is make some promise and keep it, or select some simple goal and go for it. This may be sufficient structure for you at this time. Later, you may come to feel that you can take on another, little larger task or goal and then go for that. Eventually, by making and keeping promises, your sense of honor will become greater than your moods or any baggage you may carry with you. Then you will find you can move out into entirely new arenas—including working toward these interdependent activities such as creating a family mission statement, holding weekly home evenings, and having special one-on-one bonding experiences.
The key is to recognize where you are and to start where you are. You can’t do calculus until you understand algebra. You can’t run before you can walk. Some things of necessity come ahead of other things. Be patient with yourself. Even be patient with your own impatience.
Now, you may be saying, “But my situation is different! It’s just too difficult, too challenging. There is no way I can do these things!” If so, I encourage you to think about the experience of Admiral James B. Stockdale as related in his book A Vietnam Experience. A prisoner in Vietnam for several years, Admiral Stockdale tells of how American POWs living in solitary confinement and completely isolated from one another for long periods were able to develop a social will that was powerful enough to enable them to create their own culture with their own rules and norms and communication process. Without interacting verbally, they were able to establish communication with one another by tapping on walls and using wires. They were even able to teach this communication to new prisoners who were brought in and didn’t know the code.
Admiral Stockdale wrote:
The Communist Regime put each of us in solitary confinement in an attempt to sever our ties with one another and with our cultural heritage. This hits hard after a few months—particularly a few months of intermittent torture and extortion. In fits of depression, a man starts seeing the bottom of the barrel and realizes that unless he gets some structure, some ritual, some poetry into his life he is going to become an animal.
In these conditions, clandestine encrypted tap and flash codes get improvised and start linking lives and dreams together. Then comes the need for common practice and united resistance, and in due course if things are working right, codified law commences to emanate from the senior prisoner’s cell. The communication network strengthens the bonds of comradeship as over the months and years a body politic of common customs, common loyalties, common values take shape.26
Just think about it: They hardly even saw one another. Yet through the brilliant use of their four gifts, these prisoners built a civilization—a powerful culture of unbelievable social will. They created a sense of social responsibility and accountability so that they were able to encourage and help one another through incredibly difficult times.
There is so much truth to the expression, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!”
Though less dramatic, consider how you could use family times and one-on-one times to create the same kind of powerful bonding and social will in the family.
Catherine (daughter):
My mother loved the arts, and she enjoyed planning trips to the ballet, the symphony, the opera, or any other play or performance in town. Tickets for these events were usually top priority, and came well before money was spent on movies, junk food, or just plain goofing off. At times, I remember complaining that all this culture wasn’t doing any good. But as I look back on those experiences, I realize how wrong I was.
I’ll never forget one experience I had with my mother that changed my life forever. We had a Shakespearean festival near our community, and one day my mother announced that she had bought us all tickets to see Macbeth. At the time, this meant nothing to me, because I was only eleven and completely unacquainted with Shakespeare.
On the night of the play, we all piled into our car and headed toward the theater. I distinctly remember the snide remarks that were made that night about how we were all too tired to pay attention. We asked, “Couldn’t we just go to a movie?”
But my mother only smiled as she patiently drove on, knowing secretly that the incredible talent of “the Bard” would do her full justice. And it did! I can’t ever remember a time when the emotions of the universe all seemed so vividly clear to me as they did that night. The dark secrets of Macbeth and his wife haunted me throughout the play as the innocence of my youth slipped away. Yet in its place, an understanding and an epiphany that only Shakespeare could have penned opened my heart and spoke to me. I immediately knew that my life would never be the same, for I had discovered something that touched me so deeply that I knew I could not reverse its effects even if I had wanted to.