Here is an excerpt from my blog post about working on Covey's 2nd Habit. I hope it will encourage others to take the time to really think about and work through the lessons in this book. I'm not sure I am a more confident or effective person as of yet, but it feels good to 'Be Proactive' (a la Habit #1) and feel like I'm working towards making progress. -- Evonne
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Begin with the End in Mind (Part 1)
I tried writing my obituary today. No, I haven't already decided to give up. It was an exercise suggested by the enduring classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's not a book about `confidence' per se. It is about being an effective and successful person. The philosophy Covey teaches to achieve this end is known as the Character Ethic. The Character Ethic attributes success to fundamental and underlying human characteristics such as integrity, honesty, courage, potential and growth. This is in contrast to the Personality Ethic which calls its followers to focus on personality traits, skills and maintaining a positive attitude among other things to be an effective person and according to Covey this latter approach been unduly popularized throughout the latter half of the 20th century. I don't know which ethic is more correct and I'm not sure that I believe there are only two ways to approach effectiveness. But I think we can all agree that feeling effective and successful are important to feeling in control and confident and I hope to explore both approaches (among many others) in this blog.
In Habit #2: Begin With The End In Mind, Covey suggests that you take a moment to think about what you would want a member of your social network, your family and a community organization that you're involved with to say about you at your funeral.
"Now think deeply," he writes, "What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? What difference would you like to have made in their lives?"
And now here's the real clencher... "Before you read further, take a few minutes to jot down your impressions. It will greatly increase your personal understanding of Habit 2." Damn't.. sigh.. and so I was stuck jotting ideas on a napkin..
(By the way, if you're wondering what happened to Habit #1: Be proactive a.k.a. "work inside your circle of influence" and "if you think the problem is out there, that's the problem". Well, you're looking at it.)
I had heard of this eulogy/obituary exercise before and to be honest it never really resonated with me. I understand that it should highlight what you truly value and help you work backwards to prioritize your life and work towards those goals. But in addition to being, well.. morbid, I also tend to think it gives too much weight to what you want people to think about you. While beginning to ponder the questions, it put me into a manipulative mindset, asking myself how I get my friends/family/etc to say what I want them to say about me. But perhaps this says more about me and my tendencies than it says about the merits of the exercise.
Here are my napkin jottings. Please read as if there is a question mark after every statement because that was the tone of the voice dictating each line in my head. And I apologize in advance for all the cringing you are about to experience...
She was happy. (Remember, read: "She was happy?") She felt lucky.She was surrounded by people she loved and who loved her. People wanted her in their lives. One of the most interesting people I've met. Never dull. You'd never know what she was going to say. She made life interesting. She was brilliant, but almost just as notably, she was curious. People wanted to be around her. She had a way of making people feel comfortable and wanted and accepted. She wanted to understand everything. She wanted to be involved in everything. She was a mathematician, a business woman, a chef and food critic, a planner, a writer, a thinker, a philanthropist, an anthropologist, a strategist, an explorer, an adventurer, a curiosity, a language prodigy, a wonderful friend and loving mother. She had no regrets.
Okay, so I took some liberties here, but be proud of me for actually uploading my unedited scribbles. It's actually (even more) embarassing because I don't think I would've written something much different in 3rd grade.. how far I've come. Don't worry, my ego is not actually this big (and misdirected/delusional) but the exercise instructions didn't say to limit by my actual level of intellect, skills, behavioral tendencies, etc so I ran with it.
While I feel it did point out quite a few of my insecurities and to some extent some of the things I want or think I want in life, again I didn't feel like I was getting to the core of it. I actually wanted to come up with a few things I could feel proud of and live by and work towards instead of taking a 5-minute stab in the dark with my pen and a napkin. But how do I do that? Keep in mind you're asking a 26 year old what she wants in life...
So here is my plan, to be tackled this week (and diligently written about next Sunday, of course). Instead of daydreaming and musing, I am going to take a more systematic approach. Obviously from my scribbles you can tell I have no real idea what a eulogy or an obituary might sound like. And given my limited life experience I haven't had exposure to the breadth of life experiences and character qualities that can be highlighted therein. And just generally I don't know what makes for a meaningful and interesting discussion of a person's life... I've never attended a funeral and if you can believe it, the obituaries are not my `flip-to' section of the NYT. In addition, I have no idea what I could write in a mock obituary for my future self that would feel uplifting and satisfying to my current self right now.
I know I've flipped past countless examples in the obituaries section of the NYT, The Economist, The Atlantic... so I've decided to go back and actually read them. While perusing the web editions of these publications, I found troves of obituaries that I can't wait to read: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Fischer, Laurence Urdang, Yves Saint Laurent, Mary Garber, Charlton Heston. Obviously these lives were selected by these journals because the people who led them were luminaries and pioneers in their time and I don't expect to hold myself to quite as high a standard. But I think this will provide some good fodder and am very interested to learn what will stand out to me, what I will and won't want people to say about me and to eventually help me realize at least a few ideas that I want to internalize and make my own.
Will report back shortly...
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