Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

The first habit taught that we are responsible for our responses to stimulus - in other words that we can choose our actions and who we are. The second habit builds on this by teaching that we are responsible for our choices and that we should create a plan for our lives based on our most important ideals or goals.

The section begins by having you imagine your own funeral, at which there are to be four speakers - someone from your family, a friend, someone from your work or profession, and someone from your church or a community organization. Imagining what you'd like them to say is meant to help you realize what values are most important to you. Covey says "the most fundamental application of 'begin with the end in mind' is to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined." I also like this: "It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy - very busy - without being very effective."

Covey talks about everything having two creations - a mental or first creation, and next a physical or second creation. This concept is familiar from writings in the book of Abraham (Pearl of Great Price). As applied by Covey, we need to create the plan of our lives. If we don't, it will be planned for us based on circumstance or on "scripts" handed to us by our parents, our genetics, etc. "In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances outside our Circle of Influence to shape much of our lives by default. We reactively live the scripts handed to us by family, associates, other people's agendas, the pressures of circumstance - scripts from our earlier years, from our training, our conditioning. These scripts come from people, not principles....We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people's agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits."

He spends some time applying this principle to business, stating that it's important that there be leadership in a business, not just management. "Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish?...'Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.' " Also applied to parenting: "too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling. And leadership if even more lacking in our personal lives. We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values."

The value of imagination: there is an important place for imagination in adulthood - it can help us "rescript" ourselves and our lives. Covey says "I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past."

The rest of the section spends a long time on personal mission statements and their importance in defining and reminding us of our core values, against which we measure our decisions and actions. We have a family mission statement because I learned about it from someone else and it seemed like a good idea. I need to work on personal and business mission statements now. That's gonna take some time but I want to do it.