-Albert Schweitzer Now that we've been through each of the 7 Habits, I'd like to share with you the "bigger picture" of the power of this inside-out approach and how these habits work together to make it happen.

To begin with, I'd like to ask you to read a fascinating account of one woman's inside-out odyssey. Notice how this experience reveals a proactive, courageous soul becoming a force of nature in her own right. Notice the impact her approach has on her, on her family, and on society: By the time I was nineteen, I was divorced with a two-year-old child. We were in difficult circumstances, but I wanted to make the best possible life for my son. We had very little food. In fact, I reached the point where I would give food to my son but I wouldn't eat. I lost so much weight that a coworker asked me if I was sick, and I finally broke down and told her what had happened. She put me in touch with Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which made it possible for me to attend community college.

At that point I still had this vision in my mind that I'd had when I was seventeen and pregnant with my son-a vision that I would go to college. I had no idea how I was going to do it. At seventeen I didn't even have a high school diploma. But I just knew I was going to make a difference in the lives of others and be a light to others who faced the darkness I was facing. That vision was so strong that it got me through everything-including doing what was necessary to graduate from high school.

As I entered community college at nineteen, I still didn't see how my vision was going to be fulfilled. How was I going to help anybody when I was still pretty traumatized from going through it all myself? But I felt driven because of the vision and because of my son. I wanted him to have a good life. I wanted him to have food and clothes and a yard to play in and an education. And I couldn't provide those things for him without getting an education myself. So I kept rationalizing, "If I can just get a degree and make money, we will have a good life." And I went to school and worked really hard.

When I was twenty-two I got married for the second time-this time to a wonderful man. We had a beautiful little daughter. I quit school to be with my children while they were small. We managed to make it okay financially, but I was still obsessed with fighting that monster called hunger. I just could not let that go. So when my children were a little older, it was "get the degree or bust." My husband was basically "Mom" to the kids while I went to school.

I finally completed my degree-two, in fact: a four-year degree and a master's degree in business administration. And this turned out to be very helpful. Later, when my husband lost his job as a factory worker, I was able to help him through school. My education saved us financially. He got his bachelor's and master's degrees and has been a counselor for several years now. He said he doesn't think he would have done it without my support.

For some time I was very busy working and raising my family, and I thought: I've done it. I got my degree. I have a successful family. I should be happy. But then I realized that my vision had included helping others, and that still wasn't part of my life. So when one of the alumni directors at school asked me to speak at an honors night for graduating seniors, I agreed. When I asked her what she wanted me to talk about, she said, "Just tell them how you got your education."

To be quite honest, standing up in front of a group of at least two hundred highly educated women who were going to be honored for their expertise in science and math was a bit overwhelming. The thought of telling them where I had come from was not very thrilling to me. But by this time I'd learned about mission statements and I'd written one. It basically said that my mission in life was to help others to see the best in themselves. And I think it was the mission statement that gave me the courage to share my story.

I went into that speech making deals with God: "Okay, I'm going to do this. But if it fails, I'm never going to tell my story again." It turned out to be a success because of what occurred afterward. After listening to my story, several of the faculty women got together and decided to do something to help welfare mothers, and the school started a scholarship fund. It was named after a woman who believed that if you educate a woman, you make a great impact not only on her life but on the lives of her children.

I was happy about what had happened and figured I'd done my part to help others, but then a little later I went through a developmental course for women where I had the opportunity to share my story again. One of the women there got the idea that we should fund a scholarship for one low-income woman, and we all agreed that we would each contribute $125 a year to do this.

From those beginnings my efforts have grown so that now I act as an advisor on a scholarship board for welfare women at a local women's liberal arts college. I'm also involved in fund-raising for a scholarship for low-income women with high potential. These things may not seem like much to some, but I know what a big difference they can make. I had a lot of help along the way from people who felt they were doing "small things," and I hope the small things I do for others now show my thanks.

All of this has had a positive impact on my family as well. My son, who is now working on his master's degree, has a job where he helps people who have disabilities. He is very committed to these people and to their welfare. And my daughter-a first-year college student-is a volunteer teacher of English as a second language. She is also very committed to the underprivileged. They both seem to have a sense of responsibility to others. They have a deep awareness of the importance of contribution and actively seek it. And my husband's work as a counselor provides a constant opportunity for him to serve people in a very personal way as well.

I guess I hadn't really thought about it before, but as I look at it now, I see that in one way or another our entire family is serving and contributing to society as a whole. That makes me feel as though my vision is coming to pass-in a more expanded and complete way than I had originally understood it.

I believe that helping others is the most significant contribution anyone can make in life. I'm grateful that we've developed to the point where we're able to do it.

Just think about the difference this woman's proactivity has made in her own life, in the lives of the members of her family, and in the lives of all those who have benefited from her contribution. What a tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit! Instead of allowing her circumstances to overpower the vision she had inside, she held on to it and nurtured it so that it eventually became the driving force that empowered her to rise above those circumstances.

Notice how, in the process, she and her family moved through each of the four levels mentioned in the title of this chapter.

Survival

At first this woman's consuming concern was for the basic need for food. She was hungry. Her child was hungry. The one focus of her life was to make enough to feed her son and herself so that they wouldn't starve. This need to survive was so basic, so fundamental, so vital that even when her circumstances changed, she was still "obsessed with fighting that monster called hunger" and "could not let that go."

This represents the first level: survival. And many families, many marriages, are literally fighting for it-not only economically but also mentally, spiritually, and socially as well. These people's lives are filled with uncertainty and fear. They're scrambling to make it through the day. They live in a world of chaos with no predictable principles to operate from, no structures or schedules to depend on, no sense of what tomorrow is going to hold. They often feel that they are victims of circumstances or of other people's injustice. They're like a person who has been rushed into the emergency room and then put into the intensive care unit: Their vital signs may be present but are unstable and unpredictable.

Eventually these families may hone their survival skills. They may even have brief breathing spaces between their efforts to survive. But their day-in, day-out objective is simply to survive.

Stability

Going back to the story, you'll notice that through her efforts and help from others, this woman eventually moved from survival to stability. She had food and the basic necessities of life. She even had a stable marriage relationship. Although she was still struggling with scars from the "survival" days, she and her family were functional.

This represents the second level, which is what many families and marriages are trying to achieve. They're surviving, but different work schedules and different habit patterns result in their hardly ever getting together to talk about what would bring more stability to the marriage or family. They live in a state of disorganization. They don't know what to do; they have a sense of futility and feel trapped.

But the more knowledge these individuals acquire, the more hope they get. And as they act on this knowledge and begin to organize some schedules and some structures for communication and problem-solving, even more hope emerges. The hope overcomes ignorance and futility. And the family, the marriage, becomes stable, dependable, and predictable.

So they're stable-but they're not yet "successful." There's a degree of organization so that food is provided and bills are paid. But the problem-solving strategy is usually limited to "flight or fight." People's lives touch from time to time in order to deal with the most pressing issues, but there's no real depth in the communication. People generally find their satisfactions away from the family. "Home" is just a place that has to take you in. There's boredom. Interdependence is exhausting. There's no sense of shared accomplishment. There's no real happiness, love, joy, or peace.

Success

The third level, success, involves accomplishing worthy goals. These goals can be economic, such as having more income, managing existing income better, or agreeing to cut expenses in order to save or have money for education or a planned vacation. They can be mental, such as learning some new skill or getting a degree. You'll notice that most of the goals reflected in this woman's story were in these two areas. They involved economic well-being and education. But goals can also be social, such as having more time together as a family with good communication or establishing traditions. Or they can be spiritual, such as creating a sense of shared vision and values and renewing their faith and common beliefs.

In successful families, people set and achieve meaningful goals. "Family" matters to people. There's genuine happiness in being together. There's a sense of excitement and confidence. Successful families plan and carry out family activities and organize to accomplish different tasks. The focus is on better living, better loving, and better learning, and on renewing the family through fun family activities and traditions.

But even in many "successful" families, a dimension is missing. Look back once again at this woman's account. She said, "For some time I was very busy working and raising my family, and I thought: I've done it. I got my degree. I have a successful family. I should be happy. But then I realized that my vision had included helping others, and that still wasn't part of my life."

Significance

The fourth level, significance, is where the family is involved in something meaningful outside itself. Rather than being content to be a successful family, the family has a sense of stewardship or responsibility to the greater family of mankind, as well as a sense of accountability around that stewardship. The family mission includes the leaving of some kind of legacy-of reaching out to other families who may be at risk, of participating together to make a real difference in the community or in the larger society, possibly through their church or other service organizations. This contribution brings a deeper and higher fulfillment-not just to individual family members but to the family as a whole.

The woman in this story felt a sense of responsibility and began to contribute in her own life. And because of her example, her children developed it in their lives. Families ideally would reach the point where this sense of stewardship or responsibility would be an integral part of their family mission statement-something the entire family would be involved in.

At times that might mean that one family member would contribute in a particular way and the rest of the family would work together to support that effort. In our own family, for example, it meant that we all rallied around Sandra to support her when she spent hours working as president of a women's service organization. We tried to provide support and encouragement for some of our children when they chose to devote a couple of years to church service in foreign lands. We've all felt a sense of unity and contribution over the years as the family supported me in my work-and later some of our children's work-in the Covey Leadership Center (now Franklin Covey). All of these things have been family efforts, though not all family members were involved directly in making the contribution.

There are other times when the entire family is directly involved in something such as a community project. I know of one family that works together to provide visits and entertaining videos for elderly people in rest homes. This began when their own grandmother had a stroke that forced them to put her in a rest home, and it seemed the only thing she really enjoyed was videos. The family decided that they would visit her at least once a week and bring her different old movies from the video store. It became such a success with the grandmother and with other patients that they started getting videos for others as well. Through all the years the five children in this family were teenagers, they continued serving in this manner. And it helped these kids not only to stay close to their grandmother but also to serve many other older people.

Another family spends each New Year's Eve cooking for and feeding the homeless. They hold several planning meetings beforehand, deciding what they want to serve, how to decorate the tables, and who's going to take care of what responsibility. It's become a joyous tradition for them to work together to provide a wonderful evening in the county soup kitchen for the poor.

I'm aware of many other families in which contribution has meant, at least for a time, rallying around an extended or intergenerational family member in need. One husband and father shared how his family did this: Near the end of 1989 my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. For sixteen months we fought it with chemotherapy and radiation. Finally, near the end of 1990, he was no longer able to take care of himself, and my mother-who was in her 70s-was unable to provide the help he needed.

My wife and I were therefore confronted with some very serious decisions. After discussing it together, we decided to move my mother and father into our home. We put my father in a hospital bed in the middle of our family room, and that's where he stayed for the next three months until he died.

I realize now that had I not had the grounding of principles and a clear understanding of what "first things" meant in my life, I might not have made that decision. But although this was one of the most difficult times in my life, it was also one of the most rewarding. I feel I can look back and know that we did what was the right thing to do in our circumstances. We did everything we possibly could to make him comfortable. We gave him the best it is humanly possibly to give-our selves. And we feel good about that.

The intimacy we were able to develop with my father in those last months was profound. Not only did my wife and I learn from this experience, but my mother did also. She knows she can look forward to the future and trust how we would handle the situation should she get into a similar position. And our children learned invaluable lessons in service as they watched what my wife and I did, and helped in the ways they could.

For those few months the significant contribution of this family was to help a father and grandfather die with dignity, surrounded by love. What a powerful message this sent to his wife and to everyone else in the family! And how enabling this experience will be for these children as they grow up with a sense of genuine service and love.

Often, even those who suffer in these difficult situations can leave a legacy of inspiration for their families. My own life has been profoundly affected by my sister Marilyn's example of contribution and significance as she lay dying of cancer. Two nights before she passed away, she told me, "My only desire during this time has been to teach my children and grandchildren how to die with dignity and to give them the desire to contribute-to live life nobly based on principles." Her whole focus during the weeks and months prior to this time had been on teaching her children and grandchildren, and I know they will be inspired and ennobled by her example-as I have been-for the rest of their lives.

There are many ways to become involved in significance-within the family, with other families, and in society as a whole. We have friends and relatives whose intergenerational and extended families have rallied around them in their struggles with a Down's syndrome child, a severe drug problem, an overwhelming financial problem, or a failing marriage. The entire family culture went to work and came to the aid of those so involved, enabling them to reclaim their heritage and erase many psychic scars of the past.

Families can also become involved in local schools or communities to increase drug awareness, reduce crime, or assist children in families that are at risk. They can become involved in fund-raising, mentoring programs, tutoring programs, or other church or community service. Or they can become involved in significance on a higher level of interdependence-not just within the family but between families on common projects. This might include families working together in a "Neighborhood Watch" program or joining forces with other community or church-sponsored service projects or events.

There are even some communities in the world where the entire population is involved in a massive interdependent and significant effort. One is Mauritius-a tiny, developing island nation in the Indian Ocean, two thousand miles off the east coast of Africa. The norm for the 1.3 million people who live there is to work together to survive economically, take care of the children, and nurture a culture of both independence and interdependence. They train people in marketable skills so that there is no unemployment or homelessness and very little poverty or crime. The interesting thing is that these people come from five distinct and very different cultures. Their differences are profound, yet they value these differences so highly that they even celebrate each other's religious holidays! Their deeply integrated interdependence reflects their values of order, harmony, cooperation, and synergy, and their concern for all people-particularly children.

Contributing together as a family not only helps those who benefit from the contribution, but it also strengthens the contributing family in the process. Can you imagine anything more energizing, more unifying, more filled with satisfaction than working with the members of your family to accomplish something that really makes a difference in the world? Can you imagine the bonding, the sense of fulfillment, the sense of shared joy?

Living outside ourselves in love actually helps the family become self-perpetuating. Its very giving increases the family's sense of purpose and thus its longevity and ability to give. Hans Selye, the father of modern stress research, taught that the best way to stay strong, healthy, and alive is to follow the credo, "Earn thy neighbor's love." In other words, stay involved in meaningful, service-oriented projects and pursuits. He explains that the reason women live longer than men is psychological rather than physiological. A woman's work is never done. Built into her psyche and cultural reinforcement is a continuing responsibility toward the family. Many men, on the other hand, center their lives on their careers and identify themselves in terms of these careers. Their family becomes secondary, and when they retire, they do not have this same sense of continuing service and contribution. As a result, the degenerative forces in the body are accelerated and the immune system is compromised, and so men tend to die earlier. There is much wisdom in the saying by an unknown author, "I sought my God, and my God I could not find. I sought my soul, and my soul eluded me. I sought to serve my brother in his need, and I found all three-my God, my soul, and thee."

This level of significance is the supreme level of family fulfillment. Nothing energizes, unites, and satisfies the family like working together to make a significant contribution. This is the essence of true family leadership-not only the leadership you can provide to the family, but the leadership your family can provide to other families, to the neighborhood, to the community, to the country. On the level of significance, no longer is the family an end in and of itself. It becomes the means to an end that is greater than itself. It becomes the vehicle through which people can effectively contribute to the wellbeing of others.

From Problem-Solving to Creating

As you move toward your destination as a family, you may find it helpful to look at these four different levels as interim destinations on your path. The achieving of each destination represents a challenge in and of itself, but it may also provide the wherewithal to move to the next destination.

You will also want to be aware that in moving from survival to significance, there's a dramatic shift in thinking. In the areas of survival and stability, the primary mental energy focus is on problem-solving: "How can we provide food and shelter?"

"What can we do about Daryl's behavior or Sara's grades?"

"How can we get rid of the pain in our relationship?"

"How can we get out of debt?"

But as you move toward success and significance, that focus shifts to creating goals and visions and purposes that ultimately transcend the family itself: "What kinds of education do we want to provide for our children?"

"What would we like our financial picture to look like five or ten years down the road?"

"How can we strengthen family relationships?"

"What can we do together as a family that will really make a difference?"

That doesn't mean that families who have moved to success and significance don't have problems to solve. They do. But the major focus is on creating. Instead of trying to eliminate negative things from the family, they're focused on trying to create positive things that were not there before-new goals, new options, new alternatives that will optimize situations. Instead of rushing from one problem-solving crisis to another, they're focused on coming up with synergistic springboards to future contribution and fulfillment.

In short, they're opportunity minded, not problem minded. When you're problem minded, you want to eliminate something. When you're opportunity or vision minded, you want to bring something into existence.

And this is an altogether different mind-set, a different emotional/spiritual orientation. And it leads to a completely different feeling in the culture. It's like the difference between feeling exhausted from morning until night and feeling rested, energized, and enthused. Instead of feeling frustrated, mired in concerns, and surrounded by dark clouds of despair, you feel optimistic, invigorated, and full of hope. You're filled with positive energy that leads to a creative, synergistic mode. Focused on your vision, you take problems in stride.

The wonderful thing about moving from survival to significance is that it has very little to do with extrinsic circumstances. One woman said this: We've discovered that economics really has very little to do with achieving significance as a family. Now that we have more, we're able to do more. But even in the early years of our marriage, we were able to give of our time and talents to help others. And it really united us as a family. When our children were very young, we were able to teach them the value of helping a neighbor, visiting a rest home, or taking a meal to someone who was sick. We found that these kinds of things helped define our family: "We are a family who helps others." And that made a big difference while our children were growing up. I am convinced that their teenage years were very different because of that contribution focus.

Driving and Restraining Forces

As you move from survival toward significance, you'll find that there are forces that energize you and help move you forward. Knowledge and hope will push you toward stability. Excitement and confidence drive you toward success. A sense of stewardship and a contribution vision will impel you toward significance. These things are like the tailwinds that help an airplane move more quickly toward its destination-sometimes arriving before the scheduled time.

But you'll also find there are strong headwinds-forces that tend to restrain you, to slow or even reverse your progress, to push you back, to keep you from moving ahead. Victimism and fear tend to drive you back into the fundamental struggle for survival. Lack of knowledge and a sense of futility tend to keep you from becoming stable. Feelings of boredom and escapism thwart the effort to be successful. Self-focused vision and a sense of ownership-rather than stewardship-tend to keep you from significance.

You'll notice that the restraining forces are generally more emotional, psychological, and illogical; driving forces are more logical, structural, and proactive.

Of course, we need to do what we can to power up the driving forces. This is the traditional approach. But in a force field, the restraining forces will eventually restore the old equilibrium.

Most important, we need to remove restraining forces. To ignore them is like trying to move toward your destination with your thrusters in reverse. You can put forth all kinds of effort, but unless you do something to remove the restraining forces, you'll be going nowhere fast, and the effort will exhaust you. You do need to work on driving and restraining forces at the same time, but give the primary effort to working on the restraining forces.

Habits 1, 2, 3, and 7 fire up the driving forces. They build proactivity. They give you a clear, motivating sense of destination that is greater than self. In fact, without some kind of vision or mission of significance, the course of least resistance is to stay in your comfort zone, to use only those talents and gifts that are already developed and perhaps recognized by others. But when you share this vision of true significance, of stewardship, of contribution, then the course of least resistance will be to develop those capacities and fulfill that vision because fulfilling the vision becomes more compelling than the pain of leaving your comfort zone. This is what family leadership is about-the creating of this kind of compelling vision, the securing of consensual commitment toward it and toward doing whatever it takes to fulfill it. This is what taps into people's deepest motivations and urges them to become their very best. Then Habits 4, 5, and 6 give you the process for working together to accomplish all those things. And Habit 7 gives you the renewing power to keep doing it.

But Habits 4, 5, and 6 also enable you to understand and unfreeze the restraining cultural, emotional, social, and illogical forces so that even the smallest amount of proactive energy on the positive side can make tremendous gains. In fact, a deep understanding of the fears and anxieties that hold you back changes their nature, content, and direction, enabling you to actually convert restraining forces into driving ones. We see this all the time when a so-called problem person feels listened to and understood and then becomes part of the solution.

Consider the analogy of a car. If you had one foot on the gas pedal and the other foot on the brake, which would be the better approach to go faster-flooring the gas pedal or releasing the brake? Obviously, the key is to release the brake. You could even lighten up on the gas pedal and still go faster as long as you got that other foot off the brake.

Similarly, Habits 4, 5, and 6 release the emotional brake (or give air) in the family so that even the slightest increase in driving forces will take the culture to a new level. In fact, there is extensive research to show that by involving people in the problems and working out the solution together, restraining forces are transformed into driving forces.1 So these habits enable you to work on driving and restraining forces at the same time and free you to move from survival to significance. You may find it helpful to go over the chart on the previous page with your family to get a sense of perspective, to see where you feel you are as a family, and to identify driving and restraining forces, and decide what to do about them. You may also want to use it as a tool to help your family move from a problem-solving to a creative orientation.

Where Do I Begin?