Begin with The End in Mind

Begin with the End in Mind

Florian Dupuis

MPS 502 Organizational Dynamics

Thursday, 18th October 2018

Dr. Byron Phillips

Abstract

Did you already think about starting your life in the end? That is what Stephen Covey want to make us a thing about. Begin with the End in Mind is the second habit of Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989).  To explain the failure of this, the sheep is the perfect example of following other people without knowing anything. If we don’t control our destiny and our life, we are not more different than a sheep like 80% of Americans who don’t have any goals. Research from different sources shows we are motivated by the end, by the accomplishment. To make this habit ours, Covey suggests creating a personal mission statement. It will help us to determine what we really want in our life. What are the goals we want to reach? However, this habit is not always applicable in a strict way. Some processes like creativity or writing are asking for a step-by-step process. For example, when we are starting to write a book, we don’t have to know what will be the end of it. This habit and this book by covey are a good way to help us determine goals, improve happiness, confidence and simply our lifes.

What would our life be like if we started everything we did at the end? What if instead of being pushed around by other people to genders you were pulled forward by the endpoint that we created. What if we could end up with everything we have ever wanted without having to give up anything good to get it.

If we don’t start with the end in mind we will never be anything more than a sheep. According to a study of the University of Leeds, if we have a flock of 200 sheep, we only have to get five percent of the sheep moving in a particular direction with rest of the sheep to follow without knowing why. This same study showed that for any large group of human beings we only get five percent of them moving in a particular direction… If we are not following our direction and what we want to be, we will be stuck. Being stuck in one of the worst feelings in the world because it makes us feel heavy, confused, and feel like a failure.

What can be the end point of this habit? It cannot be a job title, it cannot be an annual salary, it as to be something more general like simply the actions that we want to wake up and do on daily basis. It can start with a to-do list of daily actions (travel in the world, speaking publicly, learning from different scientific discipline, writing books, create a business). Having a goal is the key.

In the 1950s, Kurt Richter who graduated from Harvard University and went to be a professor at John Hopkins University did a series of experiments on two groups of rats. The first group of rats had put in a high-sided bucket of circulating water and hand swim as long as they could before sinking. The average rat can swim for fifteen minutes. The second group of rats did the same experiment, but when they starting to sink, Richter saved the rats and let them rest. The second time when the rats were placed on the bucket for the second time, they swam sixty hours. The conclusion of this experience is that the rats get energy through hope and have a vision of being saved and kept swimming for it.

        The same process exists in sport. During the preseason, we were doing fitness and running a lap on campus. Whenever how many laps we did, when coach yelled “This is the last one give everything you have”, we get a better record on this last one because we knew it was the very last one and our motivation was boosted. Begin with the End in Mind states that we are not obliged to live according to the scriptures inculcated in us.

Begin with the End in mind is the second habit describe in by Stephen Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989).

Stephen Covey begins this chapter by inviting us to visualize ourselves attending our own funeral and carefully considering what we would like our family, friends, colleagues, and community to say about us. Would we like us to say that we were a fair, honest, funny, kind person? That we have successfully raised our children? That you have been a faithful husband or wife. That we had participated in making the world better. We are the creators of our life. In doing so, we can realize that until today, we have lived a scenario of which we have relegated the responsibility to the circumstances and to our entourage.

This tool focuses on who you want to be (character), what you want to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles on which being and doing are grounded.

Convey offers us to write a personal mission statement responding to several questions, what we want to be (character), what we want to do (actions and projects to be done) and what are our values and our principles (the basis of our actions). By doing this, we do not base our actions and decisions on what somebody is going to think or to impress another but because this is in line with our deepest convictions. Our personal mission statement reflects our uniqueness, both in content and form. For example, Benjamin Franklin's personal mission statement does not look like Martin Luther King's, either in terms of content or in form.

We have the imagination and creativity to create our own vision, according to our values and the things that make more sense to us. The important occupations that form the center of life are the source of security, guidance, appreciation, and power. The main point of our life could be oriented family, business, money, pleasures, associations or friends. Each of these aspects is unable to bring lasting happiness. Many pleasures and rewards of the past are futile and pure fantasies. To avoid regretting one's life, each of us must examine the things placed at the center of his life. Our sense of security depends on it. If what is placed at the center of our life does not participate in the development of our proactivity, it is urgent to make a paradigm change.

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