Sandra and I feel a tremendous obligation toward each one of our nine children and their spouses and our (so far) twenty-seven grandchildren. We look forward to continuing a sense of stewardship and responsibility toward more grandchildren and toward the fourth generation, the great-grandchildren. We hope we’ll even be around long enough to help raise the great-great-grandchildren.
The first line of defense must always be the family—the nuclear family, the intergenerational family, and the extended family. So we must never think our modeling, mentoring, organizing, and teaching is done.
The Trim Tab Factor
This journey from survival to significance can seem overwhelming at times. It may seem as though there’s too much to do. The gap between the real and the ideal may seem huge. And you’re only one person. Just how much can one person really do?
I’d like to suggest a single, powerful image for the transition person to keep in mind.
Airplanes and ships have a small surface often called the trim tab. When this trim tab is moved, it moves a larger surface that acts as a rudder and affects the direction of the ship or plane. While it takes a long period of time to turn a big ocean liner 180 degrees, a plane can be turned quite rapidly. But in both cases it takes that small trim tab to make it happen.
One of the most helpful images to have of yourself in your family is that of a trim tab—the small rudder that moves the big rudder and eventually changes the entire direction of the plane.
If you are a parent, you are obviously a trim tab. In you lies the power to choose, to commit. Commitment is the gear that connects vision to action. If commitment is not there, actions will be governed by circumstance instead of vision. So the first and most fundamental requirement out of which everything else emerges is to make a total commitment to yourself and to your family, including a commitment to live the 7 Habits. Interestingly, this total leadership commitment, or TLC, also stands for “tender, loving care.”
Though parents play the primary leadership role, we have also seen many others—sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and foster parents-represent the trim tab in their families. They have brought about fundamental change and improvement in the family culture. Many have been the real transition figures. They have stopped the transmission of negative tendencies from one generation to another. They have transcended genes, programming, conditioning, and environmental pressures to begin anew.
One man who came from a background of welfare and abuse said this:
All through high school I had this desire to go to college. But Mom would say, “You can’t do that. You’re not smart enough. You’re going to have to be like everyone else and go on welfare.” It was so discouraging.
But then I’d spend the weekend with my sister, and through her I was able to see that there was more to life than just living on welfare and receiving food stamps. She was able to show me that by the way she lived.
She was married. Her husband had a nice job. She worked part-time when she wanted to—she never had to. They lived in a nice neighborhood. And it was through her that I was able to see the world. I’d go on camping trips with their family. We did a lot of things together. Through her I got the thirst for a good life. I thought, This is what I want to do. This is how I want to be able to live. And I can’t do that on welfare.
She’s had a profound influence on my life over the years. Because of her I had the courage to move out west, to go to school, to make something more of my life. Even now we travel back and forth to see each other once a year. We do a lot of talking, a lot of confiding in each other, a lot of sharing of dreams, aspirations, and goals in life. Having and being able to renew that relationship has been a really great thing in my life.
Another husband and father who became an agent of change himself reflected on the agent of change in his life:
When I was nine years old, my parents divorced. My dad left my mom with seven children from seventeen down to one and a half. He was an alcoholic and was not supportive emotionally or financially to the family. He never paid alimony or child support. The year after my dad left, my brother left for the Navy. So I was there at home with five sisters and a mom. I guess that is why I’m kind of crazy. I can hang wallpaper better than I can work on an engine. At any rate, I didn’t have much of a father’s influence in my life.
When I married Cherlynn, I was exposed to a completely different family situation. Her dad was a very strong role model. He was very involved with his children. He devoted tremendous time and energy to them. He encouraged them to set educational and other important goals. He planned family vacations. He called everyone together for family prayer. When there were problems, he hung in there and resolved them in true win-win ways.
This man was such a strong, active participant in the family’s rearing that it left an indelible impression on me. Here was a family that was turning out really well, and I recognized that this father had a big influence on that. So I became something of a sponge—just watching everything, observing, and being very impressed. Without question, Cherlynn’s father has been the largest role model in my life.
Can you see the influence these transition people—these agents of change, these “trim tab” people—have had? Even when there’s no need to overcome a negative past but just to build a positive future, trim tab people can make a profound difference.
The truth is that each of us belongs to a family, and each has the power and the capacity to make a tremendous difference. As author Marianne Williamson has said:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.4
This truly represents the fullness of the human condition and nature-to see in ourselves such capacity that we can transcend our own history and provide leadership for our families, that we can lead our families into becoming catalysts who provide leadership in society as well.
Letting Go
I will never forget the first experience I had rappelling down a mountain. The cliff was probably 120 feet high. I watched as several others were trained to rappel and then did it. I saw them reach the safety of waiting arms and receive the cheers of the people at the bottom.
But when it came to my turn, all my intellectualization went into my stomach, and I experienced sheer terror. I was supposed to walk backward off the cliff. I knew there was a safety rope around me in case I should black out. In my mind I could see the other people who had done it successfully. I had an intellectual understanding of the whole situation and an intellectual sense of security. I was even one of the instructors—not dealing with the technical side but with the social, emotional, and spiritual sides. And forty students were looking to me for leadership and guidance. Nevertheless, I was terrified. That first step off the cliff was the moment of truth, the paradigm shift from faith in my comfort zone to an intellectual, physical system of ideas and ropes. As terrifying as it was, I did it—as did others. I arrived safely at the bottom, invigorated by the success of meeting the challenge.
I can’t think of an experience that better describes the feeling of some who may struggle with the ideas in this book. Perhaps you may feel this way. The idea of a family mission statement and of having a weekly family time and regular one-on-one bonding experiences may be so far out of your comfort zone that you just can’t imagine how you could do it even though it makes intellectual sense to you and you really want to do it.