As we drove home from the theater that night, we were all silently bonded in a way I can never explain. My mother’s love for the beautiful things of the world has been passed on to me and my children, and I can never thank her enough for this beautiful gift.
Just think of the power of this bonding, this creation of the social will, this spirit of “we” in the family! How to further develop that spirit of “we” in the family will be our focus as we move into Habits 4, 5, and 6.
SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH ADULTS AND TEENS
Prioritize the Family
Ask family members: How important is family to us? How much time did we spend last week doing family activities? How do we feel about it? Are we making family a priority in our lives?
Review the material in “When the Infrastructure Shifts, Everything Rumbles.” Discuss together: What are the forces in society that tend to destroy the family? How can we overcome these forces?
Discuss the idea of family time and one-on-ones. Ask: How could a weekly family time be helpful to our family? How could it promote planning? Teaching? Problem-solving? Having fun together? Discuss making the commitment to hold a weekly family time. Work together to generate a variety of ideas for family time activities.
Talk about one-on-one bonding times. Encourage individuals to share special one-on-one times they’ve had with other family members. Consider: What bonding time would you like to plan for in your marriage? With your children?
Review the “big rocks” demonstration and try this experiment with your family. Discuss what the “big rocks” are for each individual and for the family as a whole.
For Further Thought
Discuss this idea: “This is perhaps the greatest role of parenting: helping children connect with their own gifts—particularly conscience.” How can you help your child connect with his or her four unique human gifts?
SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH CHILDREN
Some Fun Activities
Sit down with your family and schedule family activities for the next month or two. Plan things such as visits to family members, holiday activities, one-on-ones with family members, sports events or performances you want to watch together, and trips to the park. Make sure the children contribute their ideas.
Visit a relative and point out the importance of valuing each member of your extended family. On the way to this relative’s house, share stories of fun and interesting moments you enjoyed with your family as you grew up.
Have the children help you make a visual chart to remind them of their chores and also the fun things you will do each week.
Conduct the big rock demonstration and ask each child to identify his or her big rocks—the most important things he or she has to do this week. This might include activities such as soccer practice, piano lessons, swimming, attending a friend’s birthday party, and doing homework. You can use walnuts or marshmallows for big rocks and jelly beans for small pebbles, or the children can bring real rocks they have found, painted, or decorated.
Make a collection of family pictures.
Make the commitment to hold family times, planning meetings, or activity days. Children will feel greater joy and pride in their family as you review weekly the accomplishments and activities that have taken place and plan for the next week.
Teach children who can write how to keep track of their activities in a planner of some kind. Also have them schedule times to do special kinds of activities and services to strengthen relationships. Remind them to always bring their planner to family meetings.
Identify what type of one-on-one activities each family member would enjoy. Schedule one-on-one time with one of your children each week. You could call it “Susan’s special day” or whatever you feel would make it unique.
Share the story of the “Phantom family” and decide how you could serve your neighbors and friends in a clever and original way.
HABIT 4
THINK “WIN-WIN”
As we begin this chapter, I’d like to give you an overview of Habits 4, 5, and 6. You may ask yourself, “Why are we getting into Habits 5 and 6 when we’re just beginning Habit 4?” It’s because these three habits are highly interwoven, and together they create a process that will be immensely helpful to you in accomplishing all the things we’ve talked about so far. In fact, I often teach these habits first because once you grasp the essence of this process, you have the key to working together effectively to solve any problem or accomplish any goal.
To illustrate how helpful this process is, let me share with you a demonstration I often use in teaching these habits. I typically select a man from the audience who is young, tall, strong, and obviously fit. I invite him to the stage and then challenge him to an arm wrestling contest. As he’s coming up, I tell him that I have never lost and don’t intend to start now. I tell him he’s going to lose and to get ready to lose. When he gets up to the stage, I stick my face right in his face and tell him the same things all over again. I get rather pushy, aggressive, and obnoxious. Obviously exaggerating a little, I let him know that in a few seconds he’s going to be lying flat out on the ground. I look at his belt and tell him that I have a black one and that his brown one is an entire order of magnitude different. I tell him that even though he’s twice my size, I will put him down. Almost inevitably this type of confrontation stirs the man up and steels his resolve to best me.
Then I ask the people in the front row if they will fund this operation so that if I put him down, I get a dime, and if he puts me down, he gets a dime. They always agree. I ask another audience member to keep track throughout the contest, because each time one of us puts the other down, that person gets another dime. I ask them to time us for thirty seconds and tell us when to start. Then I grab the man’s right hand, stand up right next to him, and give a grimacing, intimidating stare as we clasp hands and wait for the signal to go.
By this time the other person almost always is steeled to the task. The signal is given, and I immediately make my arm go limp. He puts me down. He usually tries to hold me there. Sometimes, feeling confused, he lets me up a little and then starts pushing to get me down again, which I quickly let him do. Then I struggle to get back up, and again the resistance starts. When we get to the top, he pushes me back down again.
This usually goes on for a few seconds, and then I say to the person, “Look, why don’t we both win?” Usually the other person gets the message and allows me to put him down once. But there is still tension and strain. Then I go limp and let him put me down again. It takes only a few more seconds before the two of us are working together—almost effortlessly—moving back and forth rapidly, putting each other’s arms down.
Then I look over to the front row and say, “Okay, how much do you owe us?” Everyone sees the point and begins to laugh.
Can you see the tremendous difference in what is happening at the beginning and the end of this demonstration? At first the feeling is completely adversarial. It’s “win-lose”: “I win; you lose.” There’s no effort to understand, to cooperate. There’s no seeking of a solution that’s good for both of us. There’s just a feeling of competition and the desire to win, to put the other down. Can you see how the tension of this “win-lose” approach translates into typical family squabbles—into arguments between marriage partners, between parents and children, between extended family members?
But by the end of the demonstration there’s been a significant shift in thinking. It’s no longer “I win; you lose.” It’s “Hey, we can both win—and win big! By understanding and cooperating creatively together, we can do something totally different that benefits us both far more than if either of us had ‘won’ in the other sense.” Can you sense something of the freedom, the creativity, the feeling of unity and shared accomplishment that comes when this is the typical approach to solving family problems?
To some extent we all have family interaction that resembles the beginning, but the more we can move toward the kind of creative and synergistic interaction where everyone wins, the more “beautiful,” the more effective, our family culture will be.
I often like to think of these three habits in terms of the root, the route, and the fruit.