The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

TWO WAYS TO TAP THE RIGHT BRAIN
If we use the brain dominance theory as a model, it becomes evident that
the quality of our first creation is significantly impacted by our ability to
use our creative right brain. The more we are able to draw upon our right
brain capacity, the more fully we will be able to visualize, to synthesize, to
transcend time and present circumstances, to project a holistic picture of
what we want to do and to be in life.
Expand Perspective
Sometimes we are knocked out of our left brain environment and thought
patterns and into the right brain by an unplanned experience. The death of a
loved one, a severe illness, a financial setback, or extreme adversity can
cause us to stand back, look at our lives, and ask ourselves some hard
questions: “What’s really important? Why am I doing what I’m doing?”
But if you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other
people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously
create your own.
There are a number of ways to do this. Through the powers of your
imagination, you can visualize your own funeral, as we did at the beginning
of this chapter. Write your own eulogy. Actually write it out. Be specific.
You can visualize your twenty-fifth and then your fiftieth wedding
anniversary. Have your spouse visualize this with you. Try to capture the
essence of the family relationship you want to have created through your
day-by-day investment over a period of that many years.
You can visualize your retirement from your present occupation. What
contributions, what achievements will you want to have made in your field?
What plans will you have after retirement? Will you enter a second career?
Expand your mind. Visualize in rich detail. Involve as many emotions and
feelings as possible. Involve as many of the senses as you can.
I have done similar visualization exercises with some of my university
classes. “Assume you only have this one semester to live,” I tell my
students, “and that during this semester you are to stay in school as a good
student. Visualize how you would spend your semester.”
Things are suddenly placed in a different perspective. Values quickly
surface that before weren’t even recognized.

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I have also asked students to live with that expanded perspective for a
week and keep a diary of their experiences.
The results are very revealing. They start writing to parents to tell them
how much they love and appreciate them. They reconcile with a brother, a
sister, a friend where the relationship has deteriorated.
The dominant, central theme of their activities, the underlying principle,
is love. The futility of bad-mouthing, bad thinking, put-downs, and
accusation becomes very evident when they think in terms of having only a
short time to live. Principles and values become more evident to everybody.
There are a number of techniques using your imagination that can put you
in touch with your values. But the net effect of every one I have ever used is
the same. When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters
most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and to do, they
become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and
tomorrow.