A Prisoner’s Story

Study the metamorphosis of this man whose life was shattered, yet while in prison lives triumphantly. Notice the immediate effect upon his mind as he becomes aware of the space that exists between what happens to us and our response to it. Then notice what happens when, instead of denying, blaming, and seeking revenge, he chooses to focus on only those things he can control.

I woke up in the hospital one day with my life in ruins. My wife told me there had been a car accident. I’d been drinking at a party with my friend Frank. He was with me when I wrecked the car after leaving the party. Frank was killed.

I was charged with manslaughter for killing my friend. While awaiting trial, I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I walked into the meeting on the first night feeling that I had nothing in common with the people there. I walked out feeling as though I’d never belonged somewhere so much in my life.

The twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous was a big help in turning my life around. I needed help with more than my guilt and my grief over the death of my friend. My marriage was in trouble. I was facing a murder trial. The motorcycle dealership I owned, one of the largest in the country, was deeply in debt. My drinking was really only a symptom of far more significant problems. I drank to dull both the highs and lows of my life. Personally and professionally, I was failing.

With the help of AA, I started looking for material to help change my life. I was thirty-fours years old when I read the Alcoholic Anonymous book. It was the first book I’d ever read cover to cover. The 7 Habits was the second. The part on being proactive versus reactive made a lot of sense to me, particularly because I was probably facing a prison sentence. Id never been in jail. I also ha no idea what would happen to my wife and daughter, my family, or my businesses if they put me a way for thirty years. That was the penalty I faced if found guilty. At times I felt like I wanted to die.

I realized that I had to focus on what I could control [Habit 1 Be Proactive]. At work, I started by focusing on preparing my store managers to handle the business if I went to prison for a long time. I shared with them the principles of the 7 Habits. I also worked with them to reduce the company’s debt.

I began to get the aspect of my life in order, but my relationship with my wife was still deteriorating. She was gone a lot during this period, taking care of a sick brother in Florida. I visited her, but it was clear we were growing further and further apart.

One day, I started suffering terrible cramps in my upper body and arms. It turned out that I had a bone spur in my neck from the accident when I had smashed my head on the roof of the car. The spur was cutting into my spinal cord and required eight hours of surgery. I dropped from 240 pounds to 195. But I got through it, in part because I discovered and read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. In fact I read it four times. I learned from that book that I had the power to control my responses to what was happening to me [Habits 1; Be Proactive]. My world was crumbling, but I did not have to fall apart with it. 

As I began to change from within, people around me noticed. I received a letter one day from my wife saying that she had come to realize that if she divorced me, she might be divorcing the wrong person. She wanted to come home and try to make our marriage work again.

In our visits during the time we weren’t together, I worked hard on seeking first to understand her. I had always tended to think that everything that goes on is about me. It’s false pride or ego. When I learned to not react, but to keep gathering information from her, we began to communicate better, and eventually she moved back in with me.

She had only been home three days when the prosecutors’ office offered me a plea bargain. Instead of the possible thirty year sentence I’d faced, they offered me ten years. I accepted it. When they took me off to prison, I went with Viktor Frankl’s book in mind. Thinking that I was going to make the most out of the experience no matter what happened. I was determined to control what I could control, and to not be affected by those things outside my influence. 

There were a couple of time in prison where I almost got into altercations, but I make myself stay proactive and not reactive. I’d focus on the end in mind, which was to stay out of trouble so I could earn time for good behavior and get home early [Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind]. 

I earned a job clearing the front offices inside the prison and I built trust with the administration to the point that when I mentioned a problem or concern to them, they’d listen. One of the things I saw was that when children were brought to visit their fathers, there wasn’t anything from them to do while the adults were talking. I put together a proposal to form a children’s library for the visit hall. They didn’t have the money, so I had my wife pick out books for different age groups and we paid for them. We had buys in the wood shop make cabinets and the library grew into a big thing. Other people donated books and we even got a Spanish language section.

Now you see hundreds of kids sitting with their fathers and reading books instead of just sitting there or falling asleep like they used to.

I also began sharing what I ‘d learned about changing my life with other inmates who were interested. I ordered more copies of the Frankl book and The 7 Habits and passed them around. I invited inmates to my cell to discuss the principles a couple of times a day and encouraged them to discuss these principles with others.

One day, a Muslim inmate come up to me and said, “Out of all of us in this prison, probably no one has lost more by coming here than you. Yet you are the happiest, most positive person in this room. Why is that?”

I told him: “While I have no control over the circumstances of my life right now, which are the consequence of actions I took years ago, the only thing I can change right now is my attitude and my behavior. And that’s what I focus on. I can walk around here pissed off, kicking furniture, crying the blues, whining, but that’s not going to get me anywhere. It’s certainly not going to get me home to my family any faster, and its not going to make things easier. So I just choose not to be that way, because I might get killed tomorrow, and if I get killed tomorrow, I am not going to waste this entire day, my last day on this earth, being miserable.”

One day, I learned that a fire had destroyed our motorcycle store. My parents watched it burn for twenty hours. When my wife arrived on the scene and saw it had burned to the ground, she collapsed. She had been told there was just a small electrical problem. I was so devastated when I heard about the fire that I went to a friend in the prison. He sat me down and threw back at me everything I’d taught him. He told me that there is something good and a lesson to be learned in everything that happens to you. He got me to see that this would be an opportunity for my parents to build the store on their own. I built it the first time, and this would allow them to present it to me as gift when I got out.  I’ve always been bad at taking things from other people, so this fire will allow me to accept something more gracefully. He said it would also give my parents something to focus on other than the fact that their son is still in prison. I felt a lot better after talking it through with my friend. I moved right through the whole experience. 

I’ve tried to give something back here by sharing with inmates what I have learned about how to keep commitments to themselves. Nearly everyone here is reactive. I would have them post commitments to exercise or read a book, or write a letter. They found that when they fulfilled a commitment, they felt better about themselves. 

Now I am in a halfway house. They’ve formed an honors group of about thirty guys and we have our own area to create a more positive environment. It’s calmer. The guys are older. A lot of people want to move back here with us. In some ways it’s harder than prison because you have to stay focused. You are allowed to leave and go out and work during the day but you have to come back and live within the rules at night or you’ll be sent back to prison. You are caught between two worlds here. 

Since arriving here I’ve developed a seminar I call “Think Before You Drink.” I go to schools and talk to kids that range from ages eight to eighteen. I share my entered experience with them. It is always very emotional. When I finish, their questions for me often last up to forty-five minutes. In this past year I have spoken to nearly ten thousand kids. My message is always the same: choices, actions, and consequences. It helps me deal with killing my friend in my car. From their letters I sense that I’m reaching them.

I keep getting promised that I will be on the next list for release. My wife and daughter have stopped asking when I am going to get out. It hurt too much to be continually told I hadn’t make the list. Again, these are circumstances that I have to live with which are the result of decisions I made and actions I took in the past. I feel bad that other people have to suffer, too, but again, it’s been a growing experience for all of us. My wife is a totally different person than she was four years ago. She’s so much healthier now,  in all ways: spiritually, mentally, physically. She plans to enter a fitness contest for the first time at thirty-two years old. When I first went to prison, she used to say that there could not be a God because of all that had happened to us. But a year and a half a go, she wrote me a letter. She enclosed the “Serenity Prayer” and wrote me a poem. She closed by saying that she would be honored to walk into eternity with me. 

It has been a growing experience for all of us. No doubt about. 

Isn’t it fascinating that despite the complications of your past life and present circumstances, by simply becoming proactive in your Circle of Influence, you’ve put on a totally different road of healing, of recovery, of contribution, of courage, and of peace. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all the psychic scars of the past are healed, for those scars may reassert themselves in other ways in the future. But it does mean that if you take responsibility for your response in the present moment, and if that response is based upon a value system of working within your Circle of Influence, that action may mitigate or, through faith, may even erase those psychic scars. 

Those who work around prisoners commonly acknowledge that their fundamental problem is that they deny responsibility for their situation. So the concept of taking responsibility being proactive and working within your Circle of Influence hits the issue at its very heart. In other words, if there is any space between stimulus and response, no matter what the circumstance genetics, present pressures, or past emotional or psychological scarring the most liberating, ennobling, exalting, and freeing thing of all is the awareness of the ability to choose one’s response.

This is the essence of the work of Nazi death comp survivor Viktor Frankl.

I phoned Mr. Frankl several months prior to his passing to express my tremendous appreciation for his life’s work. He said, “Don’t write me off yet. I still have two more projects to finish.” Meaningful projects were what his life’s work was about. He represented a new force in psychotherapy called logotherapy “logo” standing for the search for meaning, the search to find a purpose, a reason, a goal, a task which carries personal meaning. He said that even though he was blind, his wife was reading to him several hours a day and helping him with these projects. He died the same week that Mother Teresa and Princess Diana died. 

Story from: Living The 7 Habits

My Living Nightmare

The following story is profoundly sobering. Sense the depth of this man’s sorrow, and also the exhilarating power of a single idea-that there is space between stimulus and response.

After graduating from college, I become a successful engineer. Then in my late twenties, I felt my inner voice telling me that I could teach single adults. 

So I quite my career and enrolled in a seminary. 

I poured myself into my studies and graduated with the highest honor the seminary faculty and administration awards each year. Just before graduation, my wife and I, together with our newborn son, Seth, moved so I could be involved with a single adults program at a large church. Again, I become successful, and enjoyed a thriving ministry that was making a difference in the lives of people. 

Our family flourished in our new situation We were expecting our second child in two months. Life was good. One night, as my wife lay resting on the couch, I decided to clean my shotgun. As I was cleaning the gun, it discharged and shot my wife. The doctors were unable to save here or our unborn child.

I was devastated. It was living nightmare. My emotions alternated from denial to anguish to despair and complete emptiness. At age thirty-three, my life came to a screeching halt. I moved in with my parents for a few months after the accident. I couldn’t live alone. I continued to minister to my congregation for almost two years. Actually, they ministered to me. But I had to stop because the situation was a painful reminder of my life with Julia. You know, when you’re a religious leader, your wife and family are such an integral part of your work. I could hardly walk into the church without feeling a rush of pain and remorse. So I quit this job that had given me so much joy. 

I didn’t really move on to much either. A friend of mine gave me a job selling large construction equipment. I’d never sold large equipment in my life-didn’t when know the name of some of the pieces at first. Although my job wasn’t really brain surgery, it was a godsend. All I needed to do was show up, sell some compressors of a few backhoes in the course of a month, and go home, I wasn’t intellectually stimulated, I wasn’t challenged. I couldn’t have been at the point. I was still numb. My brain and mind and heart were still trying to process what had happened. So that kind of job was just what I needed. 

For a while my life was on autopilot. I woke up, fed Seth, took him to day care, when to work, picked him up, made dinner, cleaned up, and went to bed.

Before the accident, I was a very driven person. I would set goals and accomplish them. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of one thing that I wanted to accomplish after the accident. I could do all the little, everyday things that needed to be done, like shopping for milk. But I couldn’t bring myself to start doing the important things. I couldn’t, for example, start to plan a new future for Seth and myself. I just didn’t have it in me to think that far ahead or with that much interest in the future. 

I started taking the book First Things First to the park and began to read just little bits at a time. When I came to the section about stimulus and response, I recognized myself. I know that I was standing at the edge of the space between stimulus and response. I’d been standing in that space for three years actually. For three years, I had slowly, inch by incremental inch, been moving toward the time that I could respond. Now, finally, three years later, I felt I could respond to my wife’s death.

This feeling wasn’t an instantaneous kind of experience. Slowly, gradually, I felt capable of more control, more initiative, more action. I can remember taking to one of my best friends, a pastor. I said, “I’m having all these weird sensations again. Something isn’t right.”

He replied, “Phil, I think what’s happening is that you’re waking up.”

“What do you mean I’m waking up?”

“Well, you’re finally ready to leave your cocoon. Your body, your mind, your heart are ready to live again. So, I think you’re waking up.”

One of the first goals I set was to finish the book. I used to be a voracious reader before my wife’s death, but I hadn’t read a book all the way through in three years. I probably hadn’t even read a magazine either. As I read I became more and more alive. I also felt more equipped to tackle the future and more ready to shape it rather than let it just happen to me.

My second goal was to leave a legacy for my son. I didn’t want my legacy to be that my life never got going again. I decided to concentrate on building something he could be proud of. You mustn’t think I was gung ho from the beginning. I slowly began to sit up and take notice. I thought long and hard about what was important to me and to Seth. I took as my motto to live each day as if it were my last, so that I would always do the important things first. I examined how I could incorporate this mind-set into my future plans. Then I formulated a mission statement that would help me recover, make a contribution to this world, and develop strong relationships with my loved ones. Slowly, surely, our lives became brighter, livelier, and livable. Ecclesiastes in the Bible talks about a time for everything. When the time was right, I was able to pick myself up and set on with life. 

Today I am happily remarried. Seth loves his new mother. I have two beautiful stepdaughters. And my wheels are turning-somewhat slowly, somewhat methodically, but still turning. I began publishing a newsletter for remarried families, I’ve purchased my own business, and I’ve accepted many speaking engagements for the upcoming year. 

Without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have ever done was forgive myself for the accident. The second was to live through the grieving process. The third was to have the courage to dream again and then begin the process of making those dreams come true.

Please understand, I still have what I call “my blue funks.” As John Claypool, an Episopalian minister, once said after his eight-year-old daughter died of leukemia, “I will walk again, but it will always be with a limp.” I might be limping, but I am moving along. 

I would like to share a personal exhilarating moment that I recounted previously in my other books. It occurred when I was on sabbatical in Hawaii. I was wandering through some stacks of books in the back of a college library. A particular book drew my interest, and as I flipped through the pages, my eyes fell on a single paragraph that was so compelling, so memorable, so staggering that it has profoundly influenced my thinking and my life.

In that paragraph were three sentences that contained a single powerful idea:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.

In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

I cannot begin to describe the effect that idea had on me. I was overwhelmed by it. I reflected on it again and again. I reveled in the freedom of it. I personalized it. Between whatever happened to me and my response to it was a space. In that space was my freedom and power to choose my response. And in my response lay my growth and happiness.

The more I pondered it. I could become a force of nature in my own right. 

You ‘re Successful.. but Are You Happy?

I’ve often told the story about the person who was climbing the ladder of success and got to the top rung only to find it was learning against the wrong wall. This story illustrates how Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind essentially defines the wall you want to put your ladder against.

I was sitting at a restaurant with a young guy who had been with our agency for about five years. He had a large home, a parking place close to the front door, and a brass nameplate on his door. Over lunch, we started talking about the definition of success. I mentioned a Personal Mission Statement. He said he hadn’t heard about the concept. To demonstrate to him how to go about creating one, I asked him what was important to him. He started naming all the things he wanted to do. Not one had anything to do with his job.

I was intrigued. “Well, are you happy?” I asked him when he finished. 

He said, “Well, no.”

I said, “But you’re successful, right?” and laughed a little. He just sat there thinking.

I didn’t see him again for a couple of months because we were traveling to different parts of the country. One day, I spotted him in the hallway. Wanting to catch up on his life, I thought I’d walk him to where he was going. “Hey, Christian wait up. Where you going? I’ll walk with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere. This is my last day,” he said with a grin. 

I was shocked. “What”

“Yeah, I was just in to see the boss. He asked me why I was leaving. I told him it was your fault.”

“Oh no. You’re kidding me. Why’d you tell him that?”

“Well, I told him about our conversation in El Paso. About how you make me look at my life to see whether I was doing what I wanted to do with my life.

And I wasn’t . So I quit this job to start doing the things I really love. Thanks, buddy.”

I haven’t seen him for about two years now. When he quit his job, he and his wife started their own little roofing company. He likes working with wood. He used to be in the telecommunications field; now he’s hammering shingles on roofs and building porches. And guess what? He’s happy. 

The Western world is very action-oriented, the Eastern world more reflective. Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, and Habit: 3 Put First Things First, attempt to bridge East and West-reflect, and then act on your decision. This story beautifully illustrates the power of choice (Habit 1: Be Proactive), thinking carefully about what matters most (Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind), and then acting upon it (Habit 3: Put First Things First). This man made a courageous 180-degree shift by putting his success ladder against the wall of happiness. The best way to predict your future is to create it.

Source: Living the 7 Habits

My Flower Shop

This story is a beautiful illustration of how our mind creates our world. If we hold a vision or a dream deep inside our heart and mind, it will begin to not only influence our attitudes and actions, it will reach our and influence the circumstances of our lives. Notice how all things are created twice-first mentally and then physically (Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind). This woman planted the mission statement so deeply into her heart that it bridged the gap between her dream and its fulfillment.

I’ve dreamed about owning a flower shop since high school. In college, I studied horticulture. Slowly the dream died under the pressure of marriage, divorce, and raising a family. Ironically, it was my son’s death that resurrected my dream As I saw those beautiful flowers coming to our door in expression of people’s sorrow for our loss, I was moved. As I touched their petals and smelled your touch, your brave color, your smell. I’d forgotten all about you. I envisioned the florist carefully arranging these beautiful blooms so that this arrangement could brighten our lives at this dark, dark time. I knew I wanted to help in that way.

When I imagined my eightieth birthday as part of developing a Personal Mission Statement, I thought about my flower shop. I imagined all the people I could help: the births, weddings, birthdays, and funerals. On all those days I could help people show they cared. I couldn’t imagine a more nurturing and rewarding way to spend my days. When it came time to write my mission statement, I put that I would own a flower shop one day. Just seeing the words on paper somehow made my dream more real.

About a year later I ran into the owners of a flower shop called Ocean Shores. I asked, “How’s the flower shop going?” They said, “Oh, we’re getting ready to sell i. We haven’t got a buyer yet. Would you be interested?” 

These words grabbed my heart. Rather than saying, “I can’t do it; it’s not possible,” instead of making excuses, like “Gee, I would really like to, but it’s not the right time,” or “You know, I have a full-time job, and am a single mother supporting two teenagers,” I thought, “This is it. This is it. Here comes my dream.”

I set to work to make it happen. I examined their profit-and-loss statements. I hired a business consultant to see if this was financially feasible. I got the financing I needed and was able to buy the store.

Now that I own my own flower shop, all of my business decision and how I deal with the employees is measured against the dream I had in the first place. 

“When It came time to write my mission statement, I put that I would own a flower shop one day. Just seeing the words on paper somehow made my dream more real.”

My mission statement gave me the courage, and I am actually doing what I ‘ve always dreamed. I know owning a flower shop is my own peculiar dream come true. Others want to own the world. I just want to make it more beautiful. 

Imagination is more powerful than memory. Imagination taps into possibilities, into the infinites. Memory is limited by pass events and the finite. When this woman used her imagination and her dreams as the criteria to make her decision, they become self-fulfilling prophecies. The subconscious mind seizes upon experience and opportunity to actualize those imagined dreams. Such dreams also ignite excitement and hope in other people. 

Story from: Living The 7 Habits

Living for Today

Notice the growth of this young woman’s proactive muscles through using all four unique human gifts (self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will). Notice the movement in her mind-set from being a victim to becoming the creative force of her own life. Think also about the statement, “Planning is invaluable, but plans are worthless.”

As I sat in the intensive care unit watching over my comatose older brother, Byron, I kept asking myself, “Why? Why did I walk a way from the same accident without a scratch or bruise on my body?” His head was wrapped in gauze from the severe brain damage and his eyes ware swollen shut. The doctors convinced us that he probably wouldn’t survive the night.

They now say that the accident that I miraculously walked away from may very well have been the environmental stress impact in my life that resulted in the onset of a very serious chronic inflammatory disease that affects many of the body’s organs. This disease would later bring many more difficult and challenging trial to my life.

I was nine years old at the time of our accident and my dream was to become the next Mary Lou Retton. I survived that setback of the accident but my dreams were shattered one year later when I began experiencing join pain in my wrists and knees. The doctors diagnosed me with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis but said I would most likely grow out of it. In the meantime, they advised me to quit gymnastics because of the high stress on the body. Tears were shed, but my activities, goals, and dream only shifted. Academics, basketball, swimming, tennis, skiing, and water skiing become my new loves in life.

During my junior year in high school, I began to feel much more severe joint pains throughout my enticed body. I felt the slightest touch or movement of every joint and bone. Rolling over in bed, getting up to use the bathroom, typing my shoes, and brushing my teeth took tremendous effort. The question “Would I ever walk or run again?” ran through my head several times. I remember so clearly my concerned innocent little sister asking my mom in a quiet voice, “Is Elisa going to die?”

More tests were done which determined that I had the incurable systemic lupus erythematosus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease that attacks the body’s tissue. I convinced myself that this was my secret. Despite my condition, I would be just like everyone else and this diagnosis was not going to keep me from doing in life what I had always dreamed and hoped for. I grew to learn that a smile on my face and determination in my heart were the only things that would keep my spirits high and give me the strength to move forward [Habit 1: Be Proactive].

I was able to successfully graduate from high school with the help of massive dosages of medication. I knew I would live with this disease for the rest of my life but thought the episode I experienced in high school was my last trial and that I could live with whatever else happened.

Getting a college education was the next goal in my life [Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind]. I could not wait to move out on my own, cook my own meals, be independent, and live the life of a college student. First semester was difficult making all the necessary adjustment, but I loved the challenges and the memories I was making. I returned home for Christmas to spend the holidays with my family and there I began to experience symptoms I had never experienced before. I began to retain water and soon looked nine months pregnant. What was happening?

Once again I was back in the doctor’s office, only this time the lupus was attacking my kidneys. I was determined to be back in school in less than a week, so we needed to cure this quickly. But the doctors informed me that school would not be an option for me that semester. I returned for a week’s worth of intense hospital treatments and then four months of intravenous treatments. I was nineteen years old, trying to get a college degree and live my life as actively as anyone else would, but my physical condition was not allowing me to.

After endless days of hospital care, needles, IVs and tests, I slowly began to shed the water retention. Although once kidney function is lost it is never fully regained, with medication I was able to return to full activity and was back at school for another start. I was a semester behind, but caught up in the spring and summer terms.

My major in communications required all students to do an internship before graduation. Winter semester was my scheduled internship and graduation was to take place in August. I was lucky to get the internship of my dreams and work with some talented people in my field. Two weeks into my internship I began experiencing the same symptoms of water retention and bloating. This couldn’t be happening! It couldn’t happen right now, not with this internship I be faced with for the next three to four months. Only this time I was not going to drop out of school. Mentally I convinced myself that I was going to stick it out-school, internship, everything. 

Once again I looked nine months pregnant and couldn’t wear any of my own clothes. The intense swelling in my legs and feet left scarred stretch marks. The capillaries popped in my face, leaving purple bruises and swelling for months. Friends and classmates who saw me one week looking normal turned quiet and stared as I forced myself to go about my normal day-today activities. So many times I wanted to crawl in a hole and hide until it was all over. The smile I learned to paste on my face during my junior year of high school kept me going. I knew there was an end to all this but could not see it at the time. My symptoms varied with each flare-up and I was able to fight this round without extended hospitalization, so I was able, painfully, to move on with my life. Each day I got better and within time I was back to full strength. My goal to graduate was attained and despite my condition I did so in less than four years.

A career was next on my list and I was anxious to apply my education and experience in the workforce. I found a wonderful job an was slowly adjusting to this new lifestyle. I had been through enough trials. Only two months into my new job, and still trying to make a good impression, I had another flare-up Why? Why? Why?

The treatments continue. Each time my kidneys get weaker and weaker and the treatments get stronger and stronger with more and more side effects. I fight nausea, fatigue, hair loss, bone depletion, bruising, and sun sensitivity as a result of the mediations my body daily depends so heavily on. The threat of dialysis or a kidney transplant lingers. It may just be a matter of time, nobody knows. 

Living with lupus is living on the edge. I never know when it will attack, what symptoms I will experience, how long recovery will take, and how much debt for medical expenses I will be faced with later. Bearing children is very unlikely and the thought of someone accepting me and my condition is always a concern. I’ve learned not to ask “Why?” anymore but “What can I learn from this experienced?” The goals I set for myself are goals I know I can accomplish but obstacles will be put in my way. I live for today and what I can do today, not in the past nor in the future. Because for me, the future may not be what I have planned. 

What an amazing person! I would like to make four points:

• First, people who study the characteristics of stress-hardy individuals basically focus upon three attitudes, all of which are manifested by this brave woman: challenge, control, and commitment.
• Challenge leads you to learn from experience, whether it’s positive or negative, rather than having an entitlement approach to a life of easy comport and security.
• Control basically means keeping your focus on the circle of things you can do something about, however small they may be, so that you don’t lapse into victimize, passivity, and powerlessness.
• Commitment leads you to stay involved with different tasks and goals, such as completing an education, rather than just hanging back in self-protection.
• Second, notice how this woman’s question changed from asking “Why?” to asking, “What can I learn?” While struggling to survive the death comps of Nazi Germany, Viktor Frank learned to ask himself the question, “What is it that life is asking of me?” instead of “What is it I want from life?” He would also confront others who were in deep depression and experiencing suicidal tendencies with the same question: “What is life asking of you? What have you got to live for? What meaning can you find?” instead of “What is it you want out of life?” This is why Frankl says that each person’s sense of meaning is usually detected rather than invented. When you ask the question, “What is life asking of me?” you are listening to your conscience. Like radar, your conscience scans the horizon of your responsibilities and your situation and then gives your guidance. 
• Third, the statement that “Planning is invaluable, but plans are worthless” has some wisdom in it. While I don’t fully agree that plans are worthless, I do think the statement has meaning in changing situations and that it leads to important insights. Take the woman in this story as an example. All of her plans and expectations were repeatedly dashed and she experienced continued disappointment, so she began to define Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, in terms of learning, adapting, coping, adjusting, and optimizing.
• Fourth, Floyd C. Douglas wrote a beautiful story called “Precious Jeopardy” which parallels, in some respects, the woman’s life’s journey in this story. It’s when your life is threatened that you really fully appreciate and value life. Life is very precious, but can be constantly jeopardized by forces outside our control. For many years, our family would read “Precious Jeopardy “around Christmas because it had such a sobering, yet exhilarating and inspirational, effect upon us, particularly as we reflected upon the previous year, planned for the next year, and, most importantly, sought to live in the present moment with gratitude. 

Story from: Living The 7 Habits

It’s Never Too Late to Change

Observe in this story the basic elements of the change process: self-awareness, taking responsibility, authentic expression, group support, and accountability.

I am a teacher of adults. During the introductions of one of the seminars I was leading, when everyone was talking about why they were there, one gentleman stood up and said, “My name is Harry. I am seventy-six years old, and I am here because my wife sent me.” Everyone stated laughing, but he was very serious. He continued, “My wife told me that this is my last chance. If I don’t straighten up, I am out of my rear. Your see, I’ve been a rascal all my life. Do you think it’s too late for me?”

I answered, “It’s only too late if you don’t start now.”

Well, as the workshop progressed, the group took him on as a personal project. Harry is a person that you hated to love, but you loved him anyway. He was just so cute, but he had this little impish way about him. You could see how his wife might have come to the end of her rope with him. The group could see that his wife’s Emotional Bank Account was empty. He had made very few deposits and numerous withdrawals over many years. In fact, her Emotional Bank Account was so overdrawn it was close to bankruptcy. Through modeling and mentoring and teaching, he soon began to make deposits. At first his wife didn’t believe he was sincere, and that was very frustrating for him. He was just so disappointed that she didn’t automatically think, “Well look how this guy has changed!” He wanted to give up, but the group would not let him. The group said, “Your wife’s bank account is so overdrawn, you have got to be consistently doing things.”

So Harry started doing little household chores that he had never done before. He took out the rash, cleaned up after himself, took his dishes to the sink, and began to offer to help around the house. And that was a first for him. His wife apparently was so angry that she was thing, “This is great, but it won’t last. “So he continued doing little things for her like making sure when she took the car out that he had it washed and filled with gas. If he come home and she was busy, he would ask, “Can I run to the store for you? Can I do errands for you?” and he consistently did this. He started taking her out to lunch, and doing all kinds of things. You could just see that love was being rekindled. 

Our group was together two hours a week over an eleven-week period, so we would get a progress report each week. As the weeks went by, she began to trust him and feel like maybe he really was making a change. At the last session Harry walked into the room with a big smile on his face. He come to the front of the room and gave me a great big hug. Well, I kind of held him off at arm’s length and I said, “Now Harry, this isn’t some of your rascally behavior is it? “and he said, “Oh no, that hug is from my wife, and she baked cookies for the whole class. She wanted me to tell everyone that I could stay-she said I could stay!”

        True group support, a lot of genuine expression, and a sense of accountability not only gave this seventy-six year-old man the power to transform his life, they are elements common to most successful change efforts. One-shot events may begin a change process, but they are usually insufficient. Both a process and systemic reinforcement based on self-evident, universal, timeless principles are needed. 

Many years a go, at the end of one of my semester courses in college, I remember asking a speech professor, “If you were to do your career all over again, what would you do differently?” In addition to teaching, he was also a speaker of international renown. His response to my question was both interesting and instructive, and I am convinced that, among other things, It unconsciously had a marked influence on my life. He said, “I would build an organization.” I asked him why. He said, “So there would be follow-through and lasting influence-a process, not just an event.” That very principle it what let me to leave a university many years later to start my own organization.

Story from: Living The 7 Habits

Moving Out to the Country

Many of us feel utterly trapped in our present circumstance. We not only fail to see a way out, we often don’t even ask the question, “What else can I do?” This is a story of a valiant couple who chose to do whatever was necessary to fulfill their mission statement to not only keep the family first, but also to secure more enjoyable employees. 

I used to work for the federal government in Washington, D.C. I thought my family was happy and just as excited as I was about our situation. I was wrong, but too wrapped up in the urgent, important things at work to notice. My wife and family have followed me all around the world moving from place to place. Finally my wife said, Can you make a move this time to somewhere we’ll be happy? 

I loved the job, but inner-city D.C. wasn’t the best place for my family. In the past, it would have been easy to say, Honey, come on, be reasonable. I can’t just move like that! You know they always control where I go. I just go where they say to go. But when I saw her eyes, I realized this was not just a little request for her. This was, in a way, life or death. She’d had enough. Using my mission statement as a reminder of what I valued [Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind\, I told her, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

The next day, I went to my boss and said, “Look, I love working here. I am happy doing the job, but I need to get a balanced between work and my family. My wife wants to move out of the city. I think she’ll move whether I do or not. If I don’t have my family living here with me, I am not going to be effective for you. I am not going to be able to do the things you want me to, because I’ll always be worried about my family.”

He didn’t want to let me go, but he could see I was serious. During our conversation, he mentioned an opening in an agency outside the city for which I was qualified. He helped me get the job. When people heard I was moving to the country they couldn’t believe it. “Stan, are you nuts? You’re throwing away your chance for senior management. What are you doing?” They were really concerned I was suffering from temporary insanity.

“I don’t think I am throwing it all a way,”I’d reply. “I’m actually picking something else that is better.” Most of them just shook their heads and gave me a consoling pat on the shoulder.

I moved my family out of Washington to a small town. I stayed with the agency doing a job I enjoy. I still see my old friends and have opportunities to travel. My children are blossoming and are attending a school where they are able to excel and get the attention they need. My wife is overjoyed with owning our first home We set aside two nights a week as family nights. We have more time together and love gardening as a family. I never realized how much fun it could be to get dirty in the yard.

- There is one sure thing that we directly control our own behavior. As for the behavior of others, we have only indirect control, which is based upon what method of influence we use. Here are also many things over which we have no control things such as the weather, the economy, our in-laws, our genes. The key to all three challenges (direct control, indirect control, and no control) is always the same begin by hanging yourself your habits, your methods of influence, or your attitudes. The couple in this story literally picked up and changed their circumstances, which resulted in a more balanced, peaceful, happy personal and family life. They changed their methods of influence with each other by practicing Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. They changed their method of influence with the husband’s boss by courageously seeking to be understood (the last half of Habit 5) and by coming up with a win-win synergistic arrangement (Habits 4 and 6: Think Win-Win and synergize). It is absolutely marvelous to see the freedom people really have when they take responsible and initiative. 

True Story from: Living the 7 Habits

How Could I waste My Life?

This grief-filled women used all four unique human gifts to literally reinvent her life. Notice how she grew in self-awareness, how she consulted her imagination and conscience, and how she exercised tremendous willpower to rediscover and renew her life. What a truly great contribution she is making! What peace of mind resulted.

I was forty-six year old when my husband, Gordon, was diagnosed with cancer. Without hesitation, I took early retirement to be with him. Although his death eighteen months later was expected, my grief consumed me. My first Christmas without him I didn’t even decorate the house. I sorrowed over our dreams unfulfilled, over the grandchildren he would never get to hold or touch. I would turn to speak to him, only to be reminded that he wasn’t there. Grief filled every corner of my soul. I was only forty-eight and had no reason to live. 

My overarching question through my sorrow was “Why did God take Gordon and not me?” I felt Gordon had so much more to offer the world than I did. At this low point in my life, with my body, mind, and spirit fatigued beyond measure, I encountered the 7 Habits. I was led to ask myself, “If I am here for some reason, what is it supposed to be?” I was motivated to find new meaning in my life.

“Begin with the End in Mind” suggests breaking out the roles of your life. So, I drew a pie chart with my “used to be” roles as they were before Gordeon’s death. On a second pie chart I left a huge blank where work and wife used to be. That large, blank piece of pie drove home to me that my life was irrevocably difference. I drew a big question mark in the slice. It sat there looking at me, asking, “What are your ‘going to be’ roles?”

I grabbed ahold of the idea that all things are created twice-first mentally, and then physically. I had to write a new script. I had to ask myself, “What talents do I have? “So I took an aptitude test, which gave me some clarity on my top three abilities. To create a scenes of balance in my life, I focused on the four dimension: on an intellectual level I realized that I loved to teach; spiritually and socially, I wanted to continue to support the racial harmony we had endeavored to live through our biracial marriage; emotionally, I knew I needed to give love. When my mother was alive she rocked critically ill babies in the hospital. I wanted to give comfort as she had, continuing here legacy of unconditional love. 

I was afraid to fail. I had never done anything in my adult life except work for the veterans Association. But I told myself it would be okay to try difference things, like trying on hats. If I didn’t like teaching after a semester, I didn’t have to go back. If the racial relations hat didn’t fit, it would be okay to take it off and try on something different. I began again by going to graduate school so I could teach a t the college level. Graduate school  is hard, period, but age forty eight, it was really touch. I was so used to passing document off to my secretary to type that I had to take a semester just to learn how to type my own papers on the computer. 

My concentration was still somewhat impaired from the aftermath of Gordon; it was difficult to discipline myself to read what someone else wanted me to read. Turning off the TV and returning the cable box where acts of sheer will. But I knew that I needed to gibe those things up if I wanted to get where I planned to go [“Habit 3: Put First Things Firs”].

I completed graduate school with a 4.0 GPA, and began teaching at a historically black college in Little Rock. I was appointed by the governor to serve on the Martin Luther King Commission to improve racial relations in Arkansas. I rock the crack babies and infants with AIDS who are hooked up to ventilator tubes. However short my time with them is, I know that I am giving comfort, and I am getting their love in return. It gives me a sense of peace.

Now my life is very good. I can feel my man Gordon smiling at me He told me time and time again before he died that he wanted me to have a life full of laughter, happy memories, and good things. How could I waste my life, with his directive on my conscience? I don’t think I could. I have an obligation to live my life the best I can for the people I love the most-where they are on this earth or on the other side. 

- This amazing woman not only got ahold of her life, she had the wisdom to mentally create an entirely new one (Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind). Her inspiring example illustrates the importance of balancing the four dimension of life embodied in Habit 7 Sharpen the Saw- the physical, the mental, the social and the spiritual. She faced fear straight on and left here deeply scripted comfort zone of fearing failure. This is no quick fix story. She was patients, persistent, and paid the price. 

Story from: Living the 7 Habits

Welcome to Royal Home Serviced Apartment

Comfortable, spacious and fully furnished. Your serviced apartment immediately becomes your home-from-home. Private and tranquil, enjoy the quality of life that is made possible by all the space you can imagine. Your work is effective and productive. Your relaxation is complete.

With 61 spacious units, functional, and well-furnished apartments, the small residential community at Royal Home Serviced Apartment promises an undisrupted peace throughout your stay with us.

Each of the apartment, complete with teak interiors and tasteful furnishings, provides a cozy environment to live in.

Whatever your accommodation needs are, you can choose to stay in our one or two bedroom unit depending on your personal preferences.

One Bedroom

- Size: 100sq.m to 120sq.m
- 2 bathrooms
- 1 big living room
- 1 Balcony with geat view to Phnom Penh city
- Open kitchen with dinning room

Two Bedrooms

- Size: 100sq.m to 150sq.m
- 2 bathrooms
- 1 living room
- 1 & 2 Balconies with geat view to Phnom Penh city
- Open kitchen with dinning room

Penhouse

- Size: ~300sq.m
- 3 Bedrooms
- 1 extra room for office, study room or meeting room
- 4 bathrooms
- 1 hug living room
- Open kitchen with dinning room
- Hug balcony connected from diningroom to bedroom
- Great view to whole Phnom Penh city