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