Habit 2 - Exercises

This concluding segment on Habit 2 is where Covey invites us to think about our core values, what our roles in life are, and what our missions within these roles are.

Put yourself into a larger perspective, away from your daily concerns. Attend your own funeral. What would you like the eulogy to say? What would people say about your role as a worker, a neighbor, a spouse, a friend? How would you like them to describe your character? Doing this exercise can help give a sence of what you value, and what you want your life to be about.

Think about each of your roles in life. Take your professional life. What are you about in that area? What are the values that should guide you? What about your personal roles in your relatinships with others? What is important to you in those roles?

Think about your goals in each of these roles. You can break them in to lifelong, intermediate, and short term. A goal is the end you envision: how you want to end up in this particular role.

The key to an ability to change and adapt to circumstance is a deep core that is changeless. If is a sence of who you are, what your are about, and what you value that doesn’t change. This is integrity. It is knowing what ones mission is and acting proactively to move toward fulfilling that mission. This is why it important to develop a personal mission statement, and to consider each of our roles in doing this.

A mission statement has two elements: What is it I am about and what I value? The second part is goals. You need to have specific activities, or short term goals, that will enable you to reach your goals in each of your roles. All of which helps to fulfill the mission, and actualize the values within it.

If your actions are reactive, and not in alignment with these core values, there is an internal duplicity. This is what it means to have a lack of integrity.

Data about ourselves largely comes from those around us. We can get scripted by others. If you think about this, this is an opportunity to contribute greatly to others. If you can see the potential in another to live by the higher values that are within them, to affirm them, and hold that vision of them in your own mind rather than feeding their weakness, you are helping them. Imagine if holding the potential of others, and nurturing it, was part of your mission in life.

Habit 2 is thinking carefully though the process and having it vividly in mind. Visualizing it. How will you handle stress? Setbacks? Fatigue? Illness? Lack of cooperation? Will you behave reactively, lose your cool, and have your emotional life be controlled by the weaknesses of those around you and the world at large? How would you act instead if you were acting with integrity with respect you your deepest values, and in alignment with your mission?

It’s important to imagine these things. If you’re living out of your history and memories, you are limiting yourself to past patterns. If you are living out of your imagination, the vision you have created about the ends you have in mind, you are living out of your potential.

The next chapter in the audio book begins Habit 3. I will not have a blog entry tomorrow, but instead will spend the time I would normally use for that working on these questions.