فصل 14

Habit 2—Begin with the End in Mind

Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will

“Would you tell me please which way I ought to walk from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat “I don’t much care where-” said Alice, “Then it doesn’t matter which way to walk,” said the Cat.

FROM ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

You’ve just been asked to put together a jigsaw puzzle. Having done many such puzzles before, you’re excited to get started. You pour out all 1,000 pieces, spreading them out across a large table. You then pick up the lid to the box to look at what you’re putting together. But there’s no picture! It’s blank! How will you ever be able to finish the puzzle without knowing what it looks like, you wonder? If you only had a one-second glimpse of what it’s supposed to be. That’s all you’d need. What a difference it would make! Without it, you don’t have a clue where to even start.

Now think about your own life and your 1,000 pieces. Do you have an end in mind? Do you have a clear picture of who you want to be one year from now? Five years from now? Or are you clueless?

Habit 2, Begin with the End in Mind, means developing a clear picture of where you want to go with your life. It means deciding what your values are and setting goals. Habit 1 says you are the driver of your life, not the passenger. Habit 2 says, since you’re the driver, decide where you want to go and draw up a map to get there.

“Now just wait a minute, Sean,” you might be thinking. “I don’t know what my end in mind is. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” If it makes you feel any better, I’m grown up and I still don’t know what I want to be. By saying begin with the end in mind, I’m not talking about deciding every little detail of your future, like choosing your career or deciding whom you’ll marry. I’m simply talking about thinking beyond today and deciding what direction you want to take with your life, so that each step you take is always in the right direction.

Begin with the End in Mind—What It Means

You may not realize it, but you do it all the time. Beginning with the end in mind, that is. You draw up a blueprint before you build a house. You read a recipe before you bake a cake. You create an outline before you write a paper (at least I hope you do). It’s part of life.

Let’s have a begin-with-the-end-in-mind experience right now using your tool of imagination. Find a place where you can be alone without interruption.

There. Now, clear your mind of everything. Don’t worry about school, your friends, your family, or that zit on your forehead. Just focus with me, breathe deeply, and open your mind.

In your mind’s eye, visualize someone walking toward you about half a block away. At first you can’t see who it is. As this person gets closer and closer, you suddenly realize, believe it or not, that it’s you. But it’s not you today, it’s you as you would like to be one year from now.

Now think deeply.

What have you done with your life over the past year?

How do you feel inside?

What do you look like?

What characteristics do you possess? (Remember, this is you as you would like to be one year from now.) You can float back to reality now. If you were a good sport and actually tried this experiment, you probably got in touch with your deeper self. You got a feel for what’s important to you and what you’d like to accomplish this next year. That’s called beginning with the end in mind. And it doesn’t even hurt.

As Jim discovered, beginning with the end in mind is a powerful way to help turn your dreams into realities: When I feel frustrated or get depressed, I have found something that really helps me. I go someplace where I can be alone, and then I close my eyes and I visualize mentally where I want to be and where I want to go when I am an adult. I try to see the whole picture of my dream life—and then I automatically begin to think about what it’s going to take to get there, what I need to change. This technique started when I was a ninth grader, and today I am on my way to making some of those visualizations become a reality.

In fact, thinking beyond today can really be quite exciting and, as this high school senior attests, can help you take charge of your life: I have never planned a thing in my life. I just do things as they pop up. The thought that one should have an end in mind never, ever entered my mind. It has been so exciting to learn, because I suddenly find myself thinking beyond the now. I am now not only planning my education but also thinking about how I want to raise my kids, how I want to teach my family, and what kind of home life we should have. I am taking charge of me—and not blowing in the wind anymore!

Why is it so important to have an end in mind? I’ll give you two good reasons. The first is that you are at a critical crossroads in life, and the paths you choose now can affect you forever. The second is that if you don’t decide your own future, someone else will do it for you.