Page 81 - Stephen R. Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Eff People.pdf

many different kinds of thought processes and we barely tap our potential. As we
become aware of its different capacities, we can consciously use our minds to meet
specific needs in more effective ways.

Two Ways to Tap the Right Brain

If we use the brain dominance theory as a model, it becomes evident that the quality of
our first creation is significantly impacted by our ability to use our creative right brain.
The more we are able to draw upon our right-brain capacity, the more fully we will be
able to visualize, to synthesize, to transcend time and present circumstances, to project a
holistic picture of what we want to do and to be in life.

Expand Perspective

Sometimes we are knocked out of our left-brain environment and thought patterns and
into the right brain by an unplanned experience. The death of a loved one, a severe
illness, a financial setback, or extreme adversity can cause us to stand back, look at our
lives, and ask ourselves some hard questions:

"What's really important? Why am I doing what I'm doing?

But if you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create
perspective-expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.

There are a number of ways to do this. Through the powers of your imagination, you can
visualize your own funeral, as we did at the beginning of this chapter. Write your own
eulogy. Actually write it out. Be specific.

You can visualize your twenty-fifth and then your fiftieth wedding anniversary. Have
your spouse visualize this with you. Try to capture the essence of the family relationship
you want to have created through your day-by-day investment over a period of that
many years.

You can visualize your retirement from your present occupation. What contributions,
what achievements will you want to have made in your field? What plans will you have
after retirement? Will you enter a second career?

Expand your mind. Visualize in rich detail. Involve as many emotions and feelings as
possible. Involve as many of the senses as you can.

I have done similar visualization exercises with some of my university classes. "Assume
you only have this one semester to live," I tell my students, "and that during this semester
you are to stay in school as a good student. Visualize how you would spend your
semester.

Things are suddenly placed in a different perspective. Values quickly surface that before
weren't even recognized. I have also asked students to live with that expanded
perspective for a week and keep a diary of their experiences.

The results are very revealing. They start writing to parents to tell them how much they
love and appreciate them. They reconcile with a brother, a sister, a friend where the
relationship has deteriorated.

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