Imagine yourself at a funeral, the whole procession. What would you want your loved ones (family and friends) and coworkers to say about you during your eulogy?
Those will be your values and what you consider important.
When I tried that exercise, I wanted people to say some positive things that I'm not. One is "she's someone who honors commitments" but I tend to cancel social engagements.
Therefore, through this funeral exercise, I know I need to work on only making promises that I can truly keep and really following through, as one of my core principles.
The other interesting thing is that nowhere in the eulogy did I want someone to say that "she valued her freedom" because that sounds "bad". However, when I really looked deep into myself, choosing only three things I value most, they are: - Freedom
- Love
- Growth
The last two showed up in the eulogy, but my most valued, Freedom, did not. Even so, I find that I can't be authentic if I don't have freedom.
Therefore, do the eulogy, which is crucial, but in a separate list, find three things that make you happy.
A lot of us, in the happiness list, would put down being wealthy. As studies show, materialism doesn't lead to happiness, so being wealthy isn't your value.
Instead, write down why you want to be wealthy. What comes up mostly is you want money so you can travel, eat amazing foods, go to concerts and experience other unique activities and events.
Therefore, I would say that you value rich experiences, and that could be something you can work toward.
It's important to come up with your unique mission statement. It will change as you consider things more, as you get older, as you go through different milestones in life, and such. But at least you have a blue print as to what you're aiming for.
Do the funeral exercise - it can be rather eye-opening to see where your values really lie.
Next, with this "End in Mind", you want to focus on what you want to be (character), and to do (contributions and achievements), and put that in your life mission statement.
Since this funeral exercise is so open-ended, as well as mission statements being equally open-ended, and I struggle in pinning things down, the Franklin Covey mission statement builder was quite helpful.
I would do the funeral exercise, and then the mission statement builder.
Once armed with this knowledge, you have your own blueprint as to how you want to live your life, not how others perceive you.
You want to make sure that you follow your vision and values, which is your Circle of Influence, and the more you work, the more your Circle of Influence expands. That's where you want to focus your attention on.
You want a Principled Center. By focusing our lives on correct principles, we create a solid foundation, that doesn't fluctuate based on people or things that constantly change, and are quite fickle.
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| Alternative Centers |
Covey next lists alternative centers that we tend to have, rather than a Principled Center. These are spouse, family, money, work, possession, pleasure, friend/enemy, church/institution and self-centeredness.
Let's take work-centeredness as an example of why not having a Principled Center is problematic. When you're work-centered, your personal worth is determined by your occupation. You're only comfortable when you're working. You make your decisions based on the needs and expectations of work. You tend to be limited by your work role. You see your work as your life.
The other alternative centers are equally problematic. But having a principled center, you aren't being acted upon by other people or circumstances, rather you make your decision based on looking at the whole picture, factoring in work, family and other needs to come up with the best solution.
Covey gives a good example of an alternative center versus principled center approach. Your husband was looking forward to this concert for the past month or so. But at the night of the concert, your employer calls you to do some prep work for tomorrow's 9 AM meeting.
If you're spouse-centered, you go to the concert with your husband. Or you may feel you have to work instead, but very anxious about his response, justifying your decision and protecting yourself from his disappointment,
If you're money-centered, you'd call your husband to cancel the concert b/c this could lead to a potential raise.
Covey goes down the other alternative-centered options which we won't outline here, but the principled-centered option makes the most sense.
A possible outcome using the principle-centered approach is to communicate to your husband and boss, whom you both have a strong connection. You genuinely want to prepare for this meeting because you value your boss's effectiveness and you want to contribute to the team (proactive) rather than staying at work to get the edge on someone else (reactive).
You want to go to the concert with your husband because you both were committed to this for the past month or so, and this is your husband's favorite band growing up.
You chose what is ultimately most valuable to you in your mission statement, which happens to be your relationship with your husband, when you did your eulogy.
Therefore, you tell your boss that you'll come in early in the morning to prepare for the meeting because you care about the welfare of the team, and go to the concert with hubby.
Application suggestions:
- Record funeral impressions.
- Write down your roles.
- Begin work on your personal statement, this tool can help.
- Circle all the alternate centers that you tend to follow
- Start a collection of notes, quotes and ideas you may want to use as resource material for your mission statement
- Identify a project you'll face, and envision how to solve this using a principled center approach.
- Share the principles of Habit 2 to loved ones and/or work group, and suggest that together, being the process of a family and/or group mission statement.
HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
The answers to these questions will direct you during Habit 3.
Question 1: What one thing could you do (something you aren't doing now) that, if you did it regularly, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?
Question 2: What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?
For the first question, I came up with 3: going to bed and getting up at the same time, exercising, and eating more fruits and vegetables. For the second question, being more organized by using to-do lists.
Covey poses that Habit 3 is the practical fulfillment of Habits 1 and 2.
Habit 1 says, "You're in charge". It challenges you to realize, "that's an unhealthy program I've been given from my childhood, from my social mirror. I don't like that wrong script, I can change it".
Habit 2 shows us what's most important to us.
Habit 3 is the exercise that you do to become principle-centered, and how you carry out what's most important to you. Covey describes a time management matrix.
Quadrant 1 are important and urgent such as crises, pressing problems, deadlines.
Quadrant 2 is important but not urgent.
Quadrant 3 are non-important but urgent such as interruptions, some calls, some mail, some meetings.
Quadrant 4 are not important and not urgent such as trivia, time-wasters.
Write down all of your roles, such as personal, parent, spouse, employee and for each one, write down the essentials such for each of these roles - that will most likely be Quadrant 1, 2 and 3 concerns. Exercise would fall under your personal role, Quadrant 2.
If you, like most families, work multiple jobs, and you find that you don't have time to have dinner with your children (I would say this is a very basic Quadrant 2 issue), look again at your roles list. Delegate any Quadrant 3.
If still pinched for time, look at your roles again, weeding out the unimportant positions. If you see one as being PTA member, then I'd quit, since your values are with your children (Habit 2).
If work is getting in the way, then cut unnecessary expenses to reduce work hours. I often see families struggling to make ends meet (leading to multiple jobs). Come to find out I see their children (as young as 5-years old) with the latest, largest iPhone ($1,500), when all they really need is clamshell for emergencies ($30).
In other words, resist the urge to keep up with the Joneses. It's not worth working multiple jobs for all these unnecessary luxury items.
Here's an example that often comes up:
A mother brings in her daughter ("Jill") as she's severely depressed. Jill is concerned about her mother because she works too many hours, and her health is declining as a result. Further, they can't spend time together, which Jill says also makes her depressed. She spends her time alone in her room while her mother works. If that's not depressing, I don't know what is.
It was obvious that their relationship is their most-valued principle (Habit 2), so Quadrant II is working on their relationship.
When I asked the mother why she's working full-time and then Uber after work and on weekends, she reports that she has to pay bills (Quadrant 1 Urgent) and buy things for Jill to make her happy (allegedly Quadrant 2).
Jill then mentions that she doesn't even want these things, which include the mother paying for Jill and her friends to go out to eat, hair extensions, fancy manicures, smartphones, and so forth. We calculated that it comes to $1000/month. Uber = $8/hr, so that's 31.5 hours/week.
Since Jill convinced the mother that she'd rather spend the time with her, foregoing the luxuries, the mother agreed to quit Uber altogether and keep the full-time job.
Jill went even further and agreed to do almost all the chores (Quadrant III), so that they both can spend even more time together, which is their Quadrant II, most important values.
I saw them 2 weeks later and Jill was beaming with joy - so not only did her depression go away completely, but she's very happy having all these special moments with her mother.
In other words, cut out the crap and focus on what's meaningful to you.
Click here for Part II - Public Victories.
The How of Happiness Review
