[blockquote_left] Habit #2: Begin with the end in mind.
Avoid emotional cancers from toxic society: complaining, criticizing, comparing, competing.
Mission statements should be timeless, addressing both ends and means.
Covey’s personal mission statement: Live, love, learn, and leave a legacy.
Families need to create their mission statement together, not have it handed down. [/blockquote_left]
1. To teach ourselves to get a good education and become financially responsible, we will treat misbehavior and crises as learning opportunities.
2. To stick together always, we will be loyal to each other and the family, making sure those we bring into the family don’t divide it.
3. To show respect to older family members, all children will be taught to listen to, care for, and honor their elders in the family.
4. To teach each of us a sense of identity and self-worth, we will show acceptance of each other and encourage kind and honest communication.
5. So that each of us will make our own peace with God our creator, we will go to church, study the Bible, and pray together as a family.
6. To become ambassadors of peace in a strife-torn world, we will settle our differences politely, agreeing to disagree agreeably whenever we can’t compromise.
7. To learn to give and receive love, respect, and understanding in all our relationships, we will start by working to do this with each other.
8. To keep the children happy, older family members will give children what they want unless it’s obviously unsafe, bad for them, or too expensive. (Older family members for and through their children and grandchildren.)
Steven Covey’s best-selling book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People made a great case for individuals and families to draw up mission statements. He suggested the mission be timeless (ongoing), and that the statement include both the means and ends (the hows and whys) for the mission.
Different families have different top priorities. I’ve seen families that were dedicated to such goals as staying together, getting educated, making money, respecting family elders, teaching self-worth and identity, serving God, and keeping the peace.
I believe the most common mission is seldom stated or even admitted, but actions speak louder than words. The typical American family seems to me bent on this mission: "To keep the children happy, older family members will give children what they want unless it’s obviously unsafe, bad for them, or too expensive."
A better mission might be this one: "To give and receive love, respect and understanding in all our relationships and activities, we will start by doing this with each other." Whatever mission your family adopts, it can’t just be dictated by the parents. It has to come out of much discussion by the whole family, as in the kind of family meeting described in last week’s column.
Once a mission is established, families need to consider using family meetings to draw up some rules or guidelines for achieving their mission. Here are some guidelines I’ve found helpful in creating healthy, happy families:
Each of us needs privacy, and the freedom to be one’s own unique person.
Yet we do not lie to each other, or cover up what others need to know.
We may not tell the whole truth, but we’ll tell nothing but the truth.
Criticism should say "You’re a better person than that," not "You’re a bad/lazy/stupid person."
If it will help a child or spouse grow or learn, we can tell them the truth politely, even if it hurts their feelings or wounds their ego.
Discipline teaches better when it comes with expressions of love.
Parents avoid giving to others the time, money or attention needed by their marriage or children.
Children need their parents to give as much to their marriage as to any of their children.
Parents should put their children’s needs ahead of their own until they are of age (18-25).
Children need to lose for a short, set time those privileges and activities which they abuse.
Discipline should not take away from children an activity they need for their well-being.
Discipline should not take away from children a privilege they have not abused.
Children need to be given a way to earn back lost privileges and activities.
Parents need to be a united front so children cannot play one against the other.
Parents need to avoid disrespecting or disagreeing with other authorities (teachers, grandparents, etc.) in front of their children.
Parents should not criticize a child in front of others.
Families and individuals should remain open to guidance and support from outside sources.
Though trust must be both earned and given, forgiveness can only be given, and it benefits everyone involved.
Finally, apply all guidelines in light of other guidelines, and the family mission statement.
Now and then in the life of every family, parents need to call a family meeting. Some common purposes include solving a problem, making a decision, planning family outings or activities, or understanding and getting along with a rebelling family member.
Some families hold meetings once a week, but regular meetings work better once a month or every other week to keep them special. Others are held whenever the need arises. They should last no more than an hour. Here are some guidelines I have found helpful for making family meetings run smoother and get the job done:
1. Parents facilitate the meeting, to make sure the other rules get followed and the purpose is met. They don’t hog the floor or the power, but make sure everyone gets a chance to speak briefly without being interrupted.
2. Parents call the meeting, and explain the time and agenda in advance. Because often their sense of timing is better than the parents’, a child can suggest a meeting, but it shouldn’t be called until the parents have their heads together on the agenda. The agenda should be a proposal, with a list of pros and cons for the idea, to get everyone thinking.
3. Keep things positive. Divert negative energy into time-out breaks. Encourage children to talk out resistance in advance, with one or both parents, to help the parents shape the proposal before the meeting starts. Everyone who might be defensive would have time to collect and vent their thoughts in advance. Once they’ve been heard, they will be able to listen better to others.
4. Encourage everyone to express their ideas and feelings in the family meeting, briefly, in a risk-free environment. Parents need to assure children their ideas won’t be criticized or ridiculed by anybody, especially the parents. If children don’t feel safe, they won’t express themselves, and if they haven’t had much input, they won’t be much invested in the outcome.
5. Make decisions by consensus, not majority vote. This promotes harmony, not division. Parents and older children might sum up the discussion like this: "From what I’m hearing, the plan that suits most people would be. . . ." Parents listen for consensus, and declare when it’s been reached.
6. Close the meeting on a positive note. Praise each child for the best of their contributions. Say what you’ve learned to help you understand each family member. Let others follow this lead, with all these closing comments being positive.
In my next column, I’ll talk about how useful it is for more mature families to adopt a mission statement, which can be especially helpful to start a new season or year. I’ll also give families some rules or guidelines that other families have found helpful in working to fulfill their missions.
1. Have realistic expectations. Don’t sentimentalize old memories too much. And don’t go the other way either, replaying empty, depressing memories of the past. Content yourself with reality.
2. Give to others, without expecting anything in return—especially appreciation. Let that be a pleasant surprise, and give just for the pure joy it.
3. Dust off two or three good holiday memories as annual keepers, and make at least one good new one this year.
4. Take time to slow down. Smell the candles and cookies. Look at the houses all lit up.
5. Expand your family of origin, to include a family of choice too. Invite friends over, and treat them like family should be treated.
6. Believe in holy spirit. If believe seems too strong and absolute for you, pretend that holy spirit once did take up full residence in a human being, and is still doing it. When you act like something’s true, it begins to feel true, which will get you into the Christmas spirit for real.
7. Believe in saints, not ghosts. If you think people’s spirits can hang around and affect other people after they’ve died, don’t look back at the Scrooges of Christmas past. Look at Jesus. Believe or pretend that for a week and see how it goes.
8. Act out forgiveness. Forget about trust, just wish a meanie well. It’s your gift to God and yourself even more than to the one who hurt you.
9. Go outside where it’s quiet and natural. Wrap up real good, and stay out long enough to take it in, letting it take you in too.
10. Make the New Year a new kind of year. Write down three ways you could do this, and ask three people to help you with these changes.
Imagine that you have messed up big time—physically abused your child, cheated on your wife, stole money at work, or lied to your husband about where you were. And let’s say you really want to make sure that both you and the people you’ve hurt can trust that you have learned your lessons of how and why not to do that again. How would you go about crafting an apology that would do all that?
The purpose of most apologies today is merely to minimize pain for the apologizers, protect their image, and enable them to avoid the work they need to do but don’t want to do. Like any other form of lying, over time, a weak apology fails at all three of these goals.
Most people don’t know how to go about restoring both the trust of others and their own trustworthiness. That’s because there are so few role models in America for genuine remorse. I can’t recall when I last heard a satisfactory apology from a public figure who had made a moral mess, can you? An effective apology needs to answer three simple questions.
Don’t blame it on the situation, or on anybody else’s behavior, because you can’t guarantee those won’t come up again. Besides, that doesn’t take responsibility for the choices you made about how to handle your feelings.
Sure, maybe you put yourself in a bad situation, and you can change that. But what else do you need to change? attitudes you have harbored that provoked your choice? beliefs you have used to rationalize or excuse your behavior? images you’ve had of yourself and the other people involved here? These ideas in your head can’t be proven right or wrong, but you and others can prove the kind of words and actions these beliefs will provoke and excuse.
Put yourself in their place. Imagine a situation where they could theoretically do something like this to you. Imagine how you’d feel, if there were no real remorse in the other person, how hard it would be to carry on like nothing had happened. What would this do to your mind, your heart, your ability to go on like before, doing things for that person, facing your friends and family, trying to go to sleep at night, or fighting off your own bad, stress-related habits, like eating or drinking to your frustration?
If you have hurt someone in your personal life, you can apply what you have learned to your situation, and to your loved one. “I understand that I have made you have to carry around feelings of ______ and _______, that I have embarrassed you in the eyes of ____, and that now you’re going to have to really struggle with your ________ and _______. This is what I have done to you. What else have I messed up in your life? I know that I have hurt _____ and _____, but who else do you think I have hurt, and how?”
How will you clean up your side of the street? What will you do to help heal the hurt, and earn back the trust you have broken? Again, put yourself in their place—what would you need them to do in this situation to resolve your hurt and mistrust?
Do you need to go have a talk with others you have hurt, to see how your actions have affected them, and tell them you were wrong and you are sorry? How can you show them that you are going to teach yourself a lesson, by making sure you suffer more than all the pleasure you have derived from your bad habit over the years, even if it is possible, more than they will have to suffer for your actions?
Do you need to get an education, like anger management training, or understanding another culture, gender, or generation? Do you need to talk with someone to learn new role models for your behavior in certain situations?
Do you need counseling to work through old feelings that you’ve never expressed toward people in your childhood, feelings that piggyback on your natural emotions to provoke and rationalize your bad habits? Do you need residential treatment to break an addiction, to let your family have a break from you to heal, and to get you away from temptations you can’t resist?
Changing your beliefs requires admitting that you can and should change them, because they caused harmful behavior. You first confess this to people you’ve hurt, but real change inside requires you to tell others who share these attitudes and beliefs, especially the friends and family who may have taught them to you in the first place, by their words and lifestyles. And your lifestyle will also have to change, to express and firm up your new attitudes and beliefs.
Why don’t we ever hear apologies that answer these three questions in America? Very few of us really believe in and practice personal growth. Spin doctors say the public would see repentance as weak, weird and wacko, but I think those words better describe the conscience of any nation which values image over substance, and anesthesia over the truth that hurts while it is setting us free, free of the illusions that we are better than others, and don’t need them.
I pray that America may soon see a genuine, effective apology from one of its celebrities. I pray that you and I will amend our wrongs by helping others get over our messes, by cleaning them up. That way we can bring some major good things out of the next bad situation we create.
Dr. Schmidt is a psychologist life coach with offices in Middletown, Lexington, and Shelbyville.
The following article is offered in an effort to prevent someone's suicide:
If someone you know is talking about helplessness or suicide, you would do well to write them a letter. And if it's you, write yourself a letter, and ask someone else to write you one too, saying something along these lines:
"Please keep this letter in your (wallet or purse), so that you can read it if you ever think you've thought of everything, you've tried everything and it still seems to you there's no hope. Stop here a minute and read first the article I've enclosed" [last week's column, see last line below].
"If you think you're all alone in your misery and no one cares, I beg you to stop running from your pain, shame and loneliness. Listen to them instead, and let them teach you that you can't make it alone, that we're all as sick as our secrets, that continuing to live a lie is killing you, and that your life isn't working the way you're living it, so why not start it over?
Suicide would be a permanent response to a temporary situation. Better to kill something else instead, such as your strong will/pride/ego, your sick relationships, or your bogus reasons for living (so you can choose some better ones).
Instead of killing your body and hope, why not kill those unrealistic little rules you live by, such as: I must never let anybody know what I've done, what I'm thinking, how I feel. I couldn't stand to be a burden, or to be pitied, helped or found to be a fraud. I can't live with _______, and I can't live without ________ either. I can't go on any longer by myself. I'm sure my heartache will never end.
So how do you kill those parts of your life that are killing your desire to live?
1. Tell somebody about it.
2. Do everything they tell you to do, as much as your conscience will allow.
3. If you can't or won't do all that, tell another person, and try your best to do what they say.
4. Repeat step 3 as often as necessary until you can live with yourself again.
If you're wondering, who cares? and why bother?, apparently you haven't yet realized that you are a huge blessing in my life. Here are some things if I were you I would want to live for: . . . .
I love the way you . . . .
I have benefited from the times you have . . . .
I will need you to be here for me in the future when . . . .
I'm not alone. Others have told me (ask them!) you have been a blessing to them and they need you too: . . . . For each time we need you, your suicide would guarantee us a feeling of rejection and abandonment, but your getting help will make us happy right now and later.
Our society wouldn't excuse a murder just because the killer claimed that he didn't know how to stop wanting to do it, or that she didn't know anyone she could turn to for help, and yet that is just what suicide is, murder, so there is no excuse. Even a suicide attempt is a crime that gets the police involved.
We all have people who can get us the help we need to turn our attitude and our lives around, but we won't know who they are until we ask them to give us time, hear us out, and then help us all they can.
When you've chosen someone to call, say something like this: I don't know how to solve my problems. If you will help me, and hook me up with others to help me, I will tell all my secrets to somebody, confess who I can't forgive (including myself) and tell why, seek to receive and believe the forgiveness of others, and ask what I can do to mend the good relationships I've broken. I trust you to tell this only to people who will actively help me out, and who will keep what you've told them in private. As an experiment to see if my life can be turned around, I will now do whatever I am told to do for a month.
If you read this letter and the attached article, do all you can, but you still believe suicide is the best for all concerned, don't believe your feeling—that's like trusting this decision to a child. And don't believe your thoughts either—that's like trusting your life to a parent. Trust your beliefs, in the most loving God you have ever experienced. Just make sure your God has some skin on (helpers like me), or else you're tying God's hands behind him.
You owe it to yourself, your friends and your family to get some professional help first. Go to suicideprevetionlifeline.org, befrienders.org, hopeline.com, or mayoclinic/health/suicide.
If you've tried all this, and you're still there, you write me a letter, or leave me a recording. Answer my reasoning point by point, or at least paragraph by paragraph.
And if that too hasn't changed your mind, just know that I'm not going to carry around anger for your suicide, so I forgive you. Before you go, why don't you join me in that forgiveness? It will make a big difference for lots of people."
The hallmarks of addiction are: failed efforts to control or stop the addiction, withdrawal pains, obsessive thoughts about the habit, increasing consumption, continued addictive behavior despite huge costs/problems from doing so, and self-deception about the causes and effects of the addictive behavior.
A very common cause and effect of addictions are their polar opposites: compulsive habits of avoidance (aversions, or “anorexias”). The causes and effects of these aversive disorders are remarkably similar to those for addictions: both addicts and anorexics were often abused, neglected, or traumatized in their youth; exposed to addictions and enabling co-addicts in their families; and raised in homes that had way too much discipline or affection, or way too little.
For sex addicts, the best course of treatment is very structured and homework-intensive, so it has a time frame built into it. It is multi-dimensional, involving 12-step recovery, individual and ideally group counseling, a regimen of physical health, your family (if they will participate), and for Christians, prayer, church and Bible study. It reflects a structure of 30 tasks that is now emerging from research as the model standard for all addiction treatment programs.
I used to include a time line in this outline, but that was designed for hard core addicts who needed an intensive outpatient alternative for residential treatment. The amount of time to work through these phases, and the number of tasks that will need to be written out vs. discussed, will depend on the severity of your problem, and that really can't be known until the end of the second phase of treatment when you're out of denial.
Sexual addiction is not a black and white concept, as if you're either addicted or you're not. It's more like as infectious disease, and regarding the lust virus, you need to ask yourself, "How bad a case do I have? How much of my system is infected? How much damage has it done to my mind, heart, calendar, budget, career, faith, self-esteem, marriage?" The more extensive the damage, the more extensive the treatment and recovery you'll need to get free of its grip.
The stages of treatment outlined above are very useful, in that they come in a logical order. Though you are working on all the issues to some extent all the time, it is best to keep your primary focus on one aspect of recovery at a time. The later phases require building on the foundation of the earlier.
Note that many addicts want to put the last phase first, the fix their marriage and family life, and then establish victory over their bad habits. This effectively would make the spouse a substitute addiction, and it wouldn't work for either of you. Full restoration of maritalintimacy can only come in the final stage of treatment.
Because addicts are usually (1) pretty unhappy with their lives due to their addiction, (2) quite injured and misled from their childhood experiences, (3) damaged from trauma, (4) addicted to more than one type of substance or behavior, (5) suffering from losses that haven’t been grieved, and (6) unaware of the existence or relevance of these five things, addicts can’t effectively plan their own treatment. So this course doesn’t have many optional features. It works if you work it, and you’re either on board or you’re not. But rest assured that my goal is to phase regular sessions with me out of your life, and turn you over to the guidance, support and accountability of fellow believers and recovering 12-steppers.
Addicts are much like the prodigal son, codependents are much like the elder brother, and recovery is much like the father who comes running with open arms. I am like a fellow traveler who has walked the road of recovery himself, and I am here to lead you to a new home life that is better than you could have ever imagined.