The seven 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: 

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THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE                                                                        Brought to you by FlyHeart 
"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. 
      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.