One wife described living these habits in these words:
With Habits 4, 5, and 6, my husband and I are constantly seeking each other’s exploration. It’s like a ballet or dance of two dolphins—a very natural moving together. It has to do with mutual respect and trust, and the way these habits play out in day-to-day decisions—whether it’s huge decisions, like whose house we lived in after we were married, or what we should have for dinner. These habits themselves have become a habit between us.
The Family Immune System
This kind of synergy is the ultimate expression of a beautiful family culture—one that’s creative and fun, one that’s filled with variety and humor, one that has deep respect for every person and every person’s varied interests and approaches.
Synergy unleashes tremendous capacity. It gives birth to new ideas. It brings you together in new multidimensional ways, making huge deposits in the Emotional Bank Account because creating something new with someone else is enormously bonding.
It also helps you create a culture in which you can successfully deal with any family challenge you might face. In fact, you could compare the culture created by Habits 4, 5, and 6 to a healthy immune system in the body. It determines the family’s ability to handle whatever challenges are thrown at it. It protects family members so that when mistakes are made or when you get blindsided by some totally unexpected physical, financial, or social challenge, the family doesn’t get overcome by it. The family has the capacity to accommodate it and rise above it, to adapt—to deal with whatever life throws at it and to use it, learn from it, run with it, optimize it, and make the family stronger.
With this kind of immune system, you actually see “problems” differently. A problem becomes something of a vaccination. It triggers the immune system to produce antibodies so that you never get the full-blown disease. So you can take any problem in your family life—a problem in your marriage, a struggle with one of your teenage children, a layoff, an estranged relationship with an older brother or sister—and look at it as a potential vaccination. Undoubtedly it will cause some pain and perhaps a little scarring, but it can also trigger an immune response, the development of the capacity to fight.
Then, no matter what difficulties come along, the immune system can wrap its arms around that difficulty—that setback, that disappointment, that deep fatigue or whatever it may be that threatens family health—and turn it into a growth experience that makes the family more creative, more synergistic, more capable of solving problems and of dealing with any kind of challenge you may confront. So problems don’t discourage you; they encourage you to develop new levels of effectiveness and immunity.
Seeing problems as vaccinations gives new perspective to the way you see even the challenge of dealing with your most difficult child. It will build strength in you and in the entire culture as well. In fact, the key to your family culture is how you treat the child that tests you the most. When you can show unconditional love to your most difficult child, others know that your love for them is also unconditional. And that knowledge builds trust. So strive to be grateful for the most difficult child, knowing that the very challenge can build strength in you and in the culture as well.
When we come to understand the family immune system, we come to look upon small problems as reinoculations of the family body. They cause the immune system to kick in, and by properly communicating and synergizing around them, the family builds greater immunity so that other small problems are not blown out of proportion.
The reason AIDS is such a horrific disease is that it destroys the immune system. People don’t die of AIDS; they die of the other diseases that take over because they have a compromised immune system. Families do not die from a particular setback; they die because they have a compromised immune system. They have overdrawn Emotional Bank Accounts and no organizing processes to institutionalize—or build into the day-to-day processes and patterns of family life—the principles or the natural laws on which family is based.
A healthy immune system fortifies you against four “cancers” that are deadly to family life: criticizing, complaining, comparing, and competing. These cancers are the opposite of a beautiful family culture, and without a healthy family immune system, they can metastasize and spread their negative consuming energy throughout the family.
“You See It Differently. Good! Help Me Understand.”
Another way to look at this Habits 4, 5, and 6 culture is through the airplane metaphor. We said at the outset that we’re going to be off track 90 percent of the time, but we can read the feedback and get back on course.
“Family” is about learning the lessons of life, and feedback is a natural part of that learning. Problems and challenges give you feedback. Once you realize that each problem is asking for a response instead of just triggering a reaction, you start to learn. You become a learning family. You welcome challenges that test your capacity to synergize and to respond with higher levels of character and competence. You have differences, and you say, “You see it differently. Good! Help me understand.” You also draw upon the collective conscience, the moral or ethical nature of everyone in the family.
But in order to do this, you have to get beyond the blaming and accusing. You have to get beyond the criticizing, complaining, comparing, and competing. You have to think win-win, seek to understand and be understood, and synergize. If you don’t, at best you’ll end up satisfying, not optimizing; cooperating, not creating; compromising, not synergizing; and, at worst, fighting or flighting.
You also have to live Habit 1. As one man said, “This process is magic! All it takes is character.” And so it does. It takes character to think win-win when you and your spouse feel differently about buying a car, when your two-year-old wants to wear pink pants and an orange shirt to the grocery store, when your teenager wants to come home at 3 A.M., when your mother-in-law wants to rearrange your house. It takes character to seek first to understand when you think you really know what someone’s thinking (you usually don’t), when you’re sure you have the perfect answer to the problem (you usually don’t), and when you have an important appointment you have to be at in five minutes. It takes character to celebrate differences, to look for third-alternative solutions, to work with the members of your family to create this sense of synergy in the culture.
That’s why proactivity is foundational. Only as you develop the capacity to act based on principles instead of reacting to emotion or circumstance and only as you recognize the priority of family and organize around it will you be able to pay the price that’s necessary to create this powerful synergy.
One father shared this experience:
As I thought about Habits 4, 5, and 6 and worked to develop them in our family, I came to feel that I needed to work on my relationship with my seven-year-old daughter, Debbie. She often reacted very emotionally, and when things didn’t go her way, she tended to run to her room and cry. It seemed that no matter what my wife and I did, it put her in a tailspin.
And her frustration led to our frustration. We found ourselves reacting to her and constantly getting on her. “Settle down! Stop crying! Go into your room until you’re under control!” And this negative feedback caused her to act up even more.
But one day as I was thinking about her, an insight came. My heart was touched as I realized that her emotional nature was a very special gift that would be a great source of strength to her in life. I had often seen her show unusual compassion for her young friends. She was always one to make sure that everyone’s needs were met, that no one was left out. She had a great heart and a wonderful ability to express love. And when she wasn’t in one of her emotional tailspins, her cheeriness was like tangible sunshine in our home.
I realized that her “gift” was a vital competency that could bless her whole life. And if I kept up this negative, critical approach, I was likely to snuff out what could become her greatest strength. The problem was that she didn’t know how to deal with all her emotions. What she needed was someone to hang in there with her, to believe in her, to help her work it out.
So the next time she lost it, I didn’t react. And when her inner storm had spent itself, we sat down together and talked about what it really takes to solve problems, to find alternatives that everyone feels good about. I realized that in order for her to be willing to remain in the process, she needed a few victories, so I consciously helped provide her with experiences where synergy really worked. And this enabled her to develop the courage and belief that if she pushed her own pause button and hung in there with us, it would pay off.