To Live Purposefully
To Love Unconditionally
To Learn Perpetually
To Laugh Frequently
My motivation to complete this task came from attending a three day training with my entire staff on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I know. I've always been dismissive of the 7 Habits as simplistic and commercialized. To be honest, my reaction to the story that Stephen Covey tells about chastising a father for not controlling his unruly children on the bus, only to learn that they are on their way home from the hospital after their mother has just died, is one of cynicism. Nevertheless, Amidst the trappings of melodrama and sentimentality and commercialism, I also found in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People profound principles that have helped me to focus on managing this bold new adventure called RETIREMENT that I have recently undertaken.
I admit, I struggled mightily to accept this revelation. As an old liberal skeptic, I've always had a tendency to to write off any idea or theory that comes with a sales pitch and smacks of sentimentality. I like for my insights to be pithy, to spring from authentic, intrinsically motivated sources, especially those associated with my own political and philosophical world view. Basically, I like to find my truth from the pulpits of open-minded churches, the Democratic Party, the great Southern storytellers, and the liberal media. You could call me narrow-mindedly liberal and snobbishly inclusive.
One of my Dad's core beliefs was John 8:32--"And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." A corollary to this belief, and one that was just as important to him, was that you'd better be ready to accept truth wherever you find it, because it will not always show up where you expect it or want it to be.
My dad was much more esoteric and erudite than I. For him, that led to exploring how the truths of New Age Theology and physics could be incorporated into his belief system. He sought new truths about the laws of the universe and the cosmos. I'm still trying to figure out how to live and grow with purpose on this planet.
That may be why the 7 Habits had a particularly truthful ring for me. As Stephen Covey himself explains, the habits are based on timeless and universal principles that govern how we grow successfully from dependence to independence to interdependence. He did not invent them. He was just smart enough to name them, package them, and market them to millions of eager consumers.
I'll admit it. I would have preferred to have gained my insight from a more acceptable source. But, there I was in August of 2010, standing in front of 65 disgruntled staff members whom I had persuaded to return to school 3 days early, welcoming them back and introducing them to the Franklin Covey facilitator who would teach us how to use the 7 Habits to help us work together to promote a culture of leadership among ourselves and our students. There, in the midst of my low expectations and the even lower expectations of of my staff, we found some pretty convincing truths that would inform not only our personal lives but our collective lives as a community of educators seeking to ignite a passion for learning in ourselves and our students.
Our facilitator, Lonnie Moore, an author and former middle school teacher, was engaging and funny, and had us all eating out of his hand by the end of the first day, with anecdotes about his attempt to implement a leadership culture in his own classroom by teaching and modeling the 7 habits for his students. I came away from the workshop with some very valuable tools for successful living, not the least of which was "To Begin with the End in Mind" by creating a personal mission statement.
The habit of beginning with the end in mind is the habit of vision. It enables us to live by design rather than by default. I like the quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland printed in the Covey manual:
"Would you tell me please
which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal
on where you want to get to,"
said the Cat.
"I don't much care where..."
said Alice.
"Then it doesn't much matter which
way you go," said the Cat.
That is how I became motivated to write a personal mission statement and how I found truth in a place that I did not expect it to be.
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