Notice how, even though he wasn't the parent in this family, this man accepted a proactive leadership role. Notice how he worked in his Circle of Influence and created an experience that bonded and unified the entire family. Now what kind of difference is this going to make to the entire family in years to come?

The reality is that it all comes back to you-what's going on inside your mind and heart and the proactive choices you're making to create family change.

I will never forget an experience I had with a group of parents on the East Coast of the United States. These parents were also presidents of companies, and they had brought their spouses and teenage children with them to attend this family conference. The whole purpose of the three-day conference was to learn how to develop a family mission statement.

For the first day and a half we focused almost entirely on building relationships. We worked on learning to listen to one another and expressing ourselves in ways that affirm and show value to others, rather than belittling them or making them feel put down or embarrassed.

As we moved into the afternoon of the second day, I began to focus on creating a family mission statement. They had already done a great deal of work and reading on the subject prior to the conference. But as we came to the question and answer session at the end of the day, I could tell that these people were really struggling.

They were bright-very bright. They had tremendous talent and capacity. They had accomplished great things in their professions. But they had an underlying problem: Despite their expressions to the contrary, many of them simply did not assign high priority to marriage and family in their own lives. They had a deep habituation and commitment to a working style where the family was essentially a sideshow to the main tent of career. They had basically come to the conference expecting to learn quick-fix techniques that would enable them to rebuild their family relationships and create a great family culture so that they could check "family" off their "to do" list and get back to focusing on their professions.

I tried to connect with them on a different level. I confronted them as forcefully and directly as I felt I could with this question: "Suppose you had a new product you wanted to introduce that you felt had great potential, and you wanted to carry on a nationwide marketing program to do it. Would that excite you? Would you do what was necessary to accomplish the task? Or what if you had a competitor move in on your territory and take away a sizable hunk of your business. Would you be determined to take immediate steps to remedy the situation? Or what if one of your services or products was being unusually accepted in one test market, and you had a two-year lead time on your competitors. Would that turn your talents and energies on? How would you organize yourself to capitalize on that situation as far as you possibly could?"

Almost to a person, they knew what they needed to do-or if they didn't know, they indicated that they would soon find out. It would become a high-priority item, and they would organize their life to do whatever was necessary to accomplish the desired result. They would make sacrifices. They would put aside lesser projects. They would enlist others to give them help. They would bring to bear their full talent, expertise, experience, skill, wisdom, and dedication in doing whatever was necessary to make a success out of the project.

I then changed this line of reasoning and questioning to their marriages and families. If there had been any doubt before, there was none now. It became clear-almost embarrassingly obvious to virtually everyone there-that the fundamental problem and the source of almost every other problem was the fact that they had never really come to grips with the priority of family in their personal lives.

These men and women became sobered and very thoughtful. Their failure to succeed in this family effort drove them to really examine their own personal lives. As they did so, they came to the realization that family was not just some sideshow. It was tremendously important to them. And they began to realize that "success" in this area of their lives was not a matter of technique and a quick fix; it was based on the long-term principles that govern in every dimension of life.

It was at this point that the entire nature of the meeting changed. They began to really tap into their talents and creativity and apply them to their marriage and family life. They began to look to solid, even long-term principles instead of quick fixes and techniques for the solutions to their problems. They began to think of organizing around the things that really mattered.

Notice how their failure to pull their families together in this mission statement experience drove these people back into their own minds and hearts. Until they had their own priorities straight deep inside, they were not able to work effectively on the family level. But once they had their priorities clear, their own inner victory led to victory in the family.

There's no way around the fact that in Habit 2-as in every other effort to improve the family-success comes from the inside out. You may well find that the challenge of creating your family mission statement will drive you to the need to develop your own personal mission statement because this is where, in your own heart and mind, you really hammer out the jugular issues of life. As it says in Proverbs, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it [are] the issues of life."

A clear sense of personal vision can be an enormous help to you-or any member of your family, including even young children-in knowing and doing what really matters most.

I had one counselor share with me the success he had in using mission statements to work with a nine-year-old boy who was having severe behavioral problems. This boy was of the opinion that he could get anything he wanted by bullying people. He would throw other children around the playground, and he created a lot of problems with other children and their parents who were understandably upset by this boy's behavior.

But instead of telling this boy what to do, this counselor taught him the principle of proactivity. He tapped into this boy's unique human gifts. He helped him come up with a personal mission statement of how he wanted to live his life and what he wanted to do. This sense of purpose and vision became so powerful in this nine-year-old boy's life that he turned around 180 degrees. He was able to see the bigger picture and how his behavior affected others. Within a couple of months the counselor said this boy had became a "model citizen."

One father said this: I used to find myself being quite loud, abrupt, stark, and a little bit gruff. But when I wrote my mission statement, I realized that I needed to create more of a calming, reassuring tone in the home. And this has made such a difference! Now I try to use a softer tone of voice, and I try not to dominate the conversation.

My mission statement helps me maintain perspective. It's so easy to react when you have small children. And it's so easy not to take time to think about how that's going to affect them.

But now when I'm in the middle of a situation, I try to stop and think: Is this something that really matters? I find I can justify being strong with the children only if it's something that really affects their life. I realize now that when I overreact to a cup of spilled milk or crayon on the wall, it doesn't do them any good.

As Benjamin Franklin said so beautifully: We stand at the crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices. We choose the thoughts we allow ourselves to think, the passions we allow ourselves to feel, and the actions we allow ourselves to perform. Each choice is made in the context of whatever value system we've selected to govern our lives. In selecting that value system, we are, in a very real way, making the most important choice we will ever make.4 In summary, you may well find that the challenge of creating a family mission statement will drive you to do the inner work you need to do to have your own vision and values clear. You may also discover that this challenge will drive you back into your relationship with your spouse-this very fundamental relationship out of which everything else in the family grows. If you don't have shared vision and values there, it's going to be very difficult to create them in the family. So you may also want to spend time creating a "marriage mission statement" to make certain that you and your spouse are headed down the same path.

Three "Watch Outs"

As you work on your family mission statement, you will want to keep three important "watch outs" in mind: 1. Don't "announce" it. Involving everyone on the level we're talking about takes time and patience. You may be tempted to just write a mission statement yourself or create it with your spouse and then announce it to your children. But don't do it! If the members of your family don't feel that the mission statement represents them, they won't support it. As one mother said, "Everyone has to feel a sense of ownership in the mission statement. Otherwise, it's like when you ask people, 'When was the last time you washed a rental car?' If it's not yours, you don't take care of it the same." So take the time to make sure that everyone is involved and committed. Except for little children, remember: "No involvement, no commitment." With little children, identification (emotional bonding) is even more powerful than involvement.

2. Don't rush it. If you try to rush your family through this, they'll let you have your way just to get it done so that they can get on to other things. But the finished statement will not reflect their feelings, and they'll have little allegiance to it. Again, the process is as important as the product. It requires deep and genuine involvement, listening to one another, and working together to make sure the mission statement represents the thoughts and feelings of everyone involved.

3. Don't ignore it. Remember, "Begin with the end in mind" is a habit of effective families, not an event. The actual writing of a mission statement is only the beginning. The richest fruits come as you translate that mission into the very fabric of your family life, into the moments of your day-to-day living. And to do that you must keep it constantly before you, reflect upon it, and use it as the literal constitution of your family life. You might want to print it up and give everyone a copy, keep a copy in your purse or wallet, or frame it and put it on the wall. One family made a plaque and hung it by their doorbell. It read: "Inside this house are the sounds of love and the spirit of service." With all the frequent comings and goings, this acted as a constant reminder to everyone of the kind of family they were striving to be.

Remember the Chinese Bamboo Tree

You'll also want to remember the Chinese bamboo tree. One father shared this fascinating account of the difference a mission statement and the 7 Habits framework made as he and his wife worked with a difficult daughter for many years.

About five years ago our bright, musically talented daughter had just gone into the seventh grade. She began hanging around with kids who had failed a few grades and were into drugs. At that time, we tried to get her to buy into a family mission statement with no effect.

In an effort to help her, we took her out of public school and put her into Catholic school through the eighth grade. We didn't allow her to hang out with kids from the old school. We even went as far as moving to another part of town. But despite heavy day-today teacher and parent involvement and holding her accountable for her behavior, her grades continued to deteriorate. She began to call her old friends and occasionally meet with them. She became very disrespectful toward her mother. We tried all forms of giving and taking away privileges for behavior without any effect. We finally sent her to Outward Bound with a group of kids sponsored by a local church.

During this time my wife and I wrote a marriage mission statement. We spent about an hour a day listening to each other, and we got serious about our personal mission statements. We kept coming back to the principle of choice and to the core values we would live by-come what may with our daughter.

When she refused to go to private school for high school, we moved from Texas to New Jersey, where we had relatives. We moved from a suburb community to a five-acre country environment in a wealthy part of the state with excellent public schools and very few drug problems. She began the ninth grade there and almost immediately had problems at school. Under pressure from others that we "weren't doing enough," we tried various forms of "tough love" with no positive effect. Our daughter began to cut herself and threatened to run away and commit suicide.

The school recommended that she join a group with the school counselor, where she immediately found friends who were drinking, using pot, and being sexually promiscuous. She became destructive at times, and my wife was afraid for her own safety. We put her in therapy, but with no positive effect.

During the tenth grade she began to fail everything. She refused further therapy and was kicked out of the counseling group at school. She began staying away from home with boyfriends. My wife and I felt we had exhausted all reasonable ideas. We were not willing to let her run away or to call the police on her, but we felt we had tried everything else.

At that point we decided to put our faith in principles instead of in all the popular advice we were receiving. We continued to have our daily talks, and even though I traveled a lot, we never missed a day. We began to separate our problems from those of our daughter and to believe that we were making more of a difference than we could see.

We focused on working from the inside out. We got very serious about being trustworthy. No matter what our daughter's behavior was, we never used it as an excuse to break our word. We focused on building trust in every interaction with her. We demonstrated our unconditional love for her while expressing explicitly what behavior was against our values and what the consequences would be.

We were scrupulous about keeping all consequences in our Circle of Influence. If she ran away, we would not try to find her, but we would go and get her when she called. We would express our love and concern and listen to understand, but we would not disrupt our plans or lives or hide what she was doing from our relatives. We would not trust her unconditionally. We explained to her that she-like us-had to earn trust.

We treated her as a proactive person. We affirmed her talents and allowed her levels of initiative to be equal to her trustworthiness in that area.

We developed a family mission statement even though she did not participate. We included only what we knew she also believed in. We constantly looked at our formal and informal systems of rewards, decision making, and information exchange. At her request we put her in ALC (Alternative Learning Center) classes at school and had weekly meetings with her and key school personnel to just talk.

During the eleventh grade she slowly began to respond, but she continued to use pot and LSD with her friends. She began to respect our not allowing drugs or smoking on the property. She was just passing at school, but life at home was improving dramatically.

Over the next year our relationships strengthened immensely. We gained a deeper understanding of one another and began to have family dinners together. Her "friends" began coming over to our house to hang out, and we were always present when they were around. Drugs remained part of her life, though we continued to express our disapproval and not trust her in any areas where drugs could be a factor.

She became pregnant, and although we did not approve, we allowed her to make her own decision to have an abortion. We continued to affirm her potential and express our unconditional love, and we were always there for her when she needed us-in stark contrast to her "friends."

At the beginning of the twelfth grade she had a bad experience with drugs and immediately called her mom, who took her to the hospital. She suddenly stopped all drugs and alcohol, and began to improve her performance at school.

A year later, relationships at home exceeded our wildest expectations. She began to want to demonstrate how responsible she was. She went back for an extra half year to finish high school and got all A's for the first time since grade school. She got a part-time job and began paying her own way as much as she could. She asked if she could live at home for two more years to go to community college and qualify to attend the university.

My wife and I know that there are no guarantees, but we feel that by aligning our lives with correct principles, we dramatically increased our chances for success with this daughter. The 7 Habits gave us a framework to look for principles in our situation and the confidence that, regardless of how things turned out, we could sleep at night and live with ourselves. Most unexpectedly, we both grew personally and changed as much as our daughter, if not more.

"Growing" children and relationships and all the good things we want in our families takes time. And sometimes, the forces that would throw us off course are powerful and strong-even within the family itself.

I've had some parents-particularly in blended families-tell me that their efforts to create a family mission statement have met with resistance from teenage children. There are some who say, "We didn't choose this family. This wasn't our idea. Why should we choose to cooperate?"

To these parents-and to any who meet with resistance-I would say this: One of your greatest strengths will be in having your personal mission statement and your marriage mission statement firmly in place. These teenagers may feel traumatized and insecure in their own lives and in the family. They may be bouncing off the walls. You have the potential of being the only really solid thing in their lives. If you have your direction and principles clear, and you consistently respond to them based on that direction and those principles, they will gradually come to feel the sense of that unchanging core. You will feel the strength of it also as you interact with them in principle-centered ways through the storm.

I would also say: Don't give up on a family mission statement. Do what work you can as a family. Do what you can, one-on-one, with these resistant children. Love them unconditionally. Make continual deposits into their Emotional Bank Accounts. Continue to work with your other children as well. You may even have to come up with some kind of statement that reflects the hearts and minds of those who will cooperate and just keep reaching out to the others in unconditional love.

Over time, the hearts of these resistant children may soften. It may be hard to imagine now, but I have seen it happen, time and time again. As you keep your vision clear, as you act based on principles and love unconditionally, children slowly begin to develop trust in that principle-centeredness and unconditional love.

Almost always, the strength of the destination and the compass will pull you through-as long as you have the patience and the faith to hold fast to what you know and stay the course.

SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH ADULTS AND TEENS.

All Things Are Created Twice Discuss this statement: "Because all things are created twice, if you don't take charge of the first creation, someone or something else will." Ask: In what ways are we taking charge of the first creation?

Discuss examples of the first and second creations (making blueprint plans before building, creating flight plans before making a flight). In everyday life, what mental creation is required: At work? At school? At home? In sports? Gardening? Cooking?

The Power of Vision Review the airplane metaphor in Chapter One. Explore the significance of an airplane having a clear destination and a compass.

Discuss the importance of vision and clear purpose in the experience related in "Creating Our Own Family Mission Statement." Discuss as parents: What abilities do we want our children to develop to be successful when they are grown?

Identify some of the benefits that flow from developing vision. Ideas might include: a deeper sense of purpose and meaning, a sense of hope or of future possibilities, and a focus on opportunities rather than on problems.

Creating Your Own Family Mission Statement Discuss and apply the three-step process described in "Creating Your Own Family Mission Statement."

Discuss the three suggested guidelines and "watch outs."

Identify the four human gifts. Discuss how developing a family mission statement also develops these gifts.

SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH CHILDREN.

Planning Makes Things Better Ask: If we were taking a trip tomorrow, what would you pack? Don't tell family members where you are going or how long you will be gone. When they are finished packing or making a list of what they would pack, ask what difference it would have made if you had told them the destination was the North Pole and the plan was to live for a month in an igloo.

Ask: Does it make sense to sew a dress without a pattern in mind? To cook a meal without a recipe or a plan? To build a house without a blueprint? Help the family to understand that a family also needs a plan to succeed.

Ask children to imagine what they would like to see happen in their future. Help them translate that vision into words or pictures you can hang on their wall. The ideas expressed could be most helpful as you start developing a family mission statement.

Exploring What Each Child Is All About Set aside a time when each family member tells one strength he or she has noticed about a designated child. Write them down. Keep these in mind as you develop your family mission statement. Continue until everyone has had a turn.

Encourage your children to contribute to your family mission statement. Distribute three-by-five cards to the children and ask them to write down or draw things in their family life that make them happy, activities they love to do with the family, or any good thing they see in other homes that they would like to be doing. Keep the cards as you develop your family mission statement.

Go outside on a clear night, look at the stars, and talk about the universe. Or locate where you live on a map of the world and discuss the size of the world. Talk about what it means to be part of the human family. Consider different ways each person and each family can contribute. Ask family members what they think they can do to help the world. Write down their ideas and keep them in mind when you develop your mission statement.

Make a family flag, select a family motto, or write a family song.

HABIT 3.

PUT FIRST.

THINGS FIRST.

Okay, now, I know what you're going to hear from people is "We don't have the time." But if you don't have the time for one night or at least one hour during the week where everybody can come together as a family, then the family is not the priority.

-Oprah Winfrey In this chapter we're going to take a look at two organizing structures that will help you prioritize your family in today's turbulent world and turn your mission statement into your family's constitution.

One of these structures is a weekly "family time." And as television talk show host Oprah Winfrey told her audience when she talked with me about this book on her show, "If you don't have the time for one night or at least one hour during the week where everybody can come together as a family, then the family is not the priority."

The second structure is one-on-one bonding times with each member of your family. I suggest that these two structures create a powerful way to prioritize your family and keep "first things first" in your life.

When First Things Aren't First

One of the worst feelings in the world is when you realize that the "first things" in your life-including your family-are getting pushed into second or third place, or even further down the list. And it becomes even worse when you realize what's happening as a result.

I vividly remember the painful feeling I had one night as I went to bed in a hotel in Chicago. While I had been presenting that day, my fourteen-year-old daughter Colleen had had her final dress rehearsal for a play she was in-West Side Story. She had not been selected to play the lead but was the understudy. And I knew that for most of the performances-possibly all-she would not play the leading role.

But tonight was her night. Tonight she was going to be the star. I had called her to wish her well, but the feeling in my heart was one of deep regret. I really wanted to be there with Colleen. And, although this is not always the case, this time I could have arranged my schedule to be there. But somehow Colleen's play had gotten lost in the press of work and other demands, and I simply didn't have it on my calendar. As a result, here I was, alone, some thirteen hundred miles away, while my daughter sang and acted her heart out to an audience that didn't include her dad.

I learned two things that night. One was that it doesn't matter whether your child is in the leading role or in the chorus, is starting quarterback or third string. What matters is that you're there for that child. And I was able to be there for several of the actual performances where Colleen was in the chorus. I affirmed her. I praised her. And I know she was glad I had come.

But the second thing I learned is that if you really want to prioritize your family, you simply have to plan ahead and be strong. It's not enough to say your family is important. If "family" is really going to be top priority, you have to "hunker down, suck it up, and make it happen!"

The other night after the ten o'clock news there was an advertisement on television that I have often seen. It shows a little girl approaching her father's desk. He's hassled, has papers scattered all over, and is diligently writing in his planner. She stands by him-unnoticed until she finally says, "Daddy, what are you doing?"

Without even looking up, he replies, "Oh, never mind, honey. I'm just doing some planning and organizing. These pages have the names of all the people I need to visit and talk with and all the important things I have to do."

The little girl hesitates and then asks: "Am I in that book, Daddy?"

As Goethe said, "Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." There is no way we can be successful in our families if we don't prioritize "family" in our lives.

And this is what Habit 3 is about. In a sense, Habit 2 tells us what "first things" are. Habit 3, then, has to do with our discipline and commitment to live by those things. Habit 3 is the test of the depth of our commitment to "first things" and of our integrity-whether or not our lives are truly integrated around principles.