What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Remember
Please find a place to read these next few pages where you can be alone and uninterrupted. Clear your mind of everything except what you will read and I will invite you to do.
Don’t worry about your schedule, your business, your family or your friend. Just focus with me and really open your mind.
In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there.
As you walk down the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have tom to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life.
As you take a seat and wait for the services to being, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and also extended - children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service.
Now think deeply. Let yourself sink into the depths of your soul. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate?
What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievement would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives?
Before you read further, take a few minutes to write down some impressions, vision and values. It will greatly increase your personal understanding of what your deepest sense of self wants to express.
If you participated seriously in this visualization experience, you touched for a moment some of your deep, fundamental values. You established brief contact with that inner guidance system that whispers what you needed to remember.
If you have done this visualization exercise, and you now have a sense of what your core values are, then this article will give you ideas on how to implement, express and share them with power and confidence.
Transcript of chapter 2: ‘Begin with the end in Mind’ from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey