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Moon Shell
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A Heart of Dirt
tom walsh

Just Listen
Rachel Naomi Remen

The Secret Life
Stephen R. Covey

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This is a snail shell, round, full and glossy as a horse chestnut.  Comfortable and compact, it sits curled up like a cat in the hollow of my hand.  Milky and opaque, it has the pinkish bloom of the sky on a summer evening, ripening to rain.  On its smooth symmetrical face is penciled with precision a perfect spiral, winding inward to the pinpoint center of the shell, the tiny dark core of the apex, the pupil of the eye.  It stares at me, this mysterious single eye--and I stare back.

Now it is the moon, solitary in the sky, full and round, replete with power.  Now it is the eye of a cat that brushes noiselessly through long grass at night.  Now it is an island, set in ever-widening circles of waves, alone, self-contained, serene.

How wonderful are islands!  Islands in space, like this one I have come to, ringed about by miles of water, linked by no bridges, no cables, no telephones.  An island from the world and the world's life.  Islands in time, like this short vacation of mine.  The past and the future are cut off; only the present remains.  Existence in the present gives island living an extreme vividness and purity.  One lives like a child or a saint in the immediacy of here and now.  Every day, every act, is an island, washed by time and space, and has an island's completion.  People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole and serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual.  "No man is an island," said John Donne.  I feel we are all islands--in a common sea.

We are all, in the last analysis, alone.  And this basic state of solitude is not something we have any choice about.  It is, as the poet Rilke says, "not something that one can take or leave.  We are solitary.  We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so.  That is all.  But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it.  Naturally," he goes on to say, "we will turn giddy."

Naturally.  How one hates to think of oneself as alone.  How one avoids it.  It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.  An early wallflower panic still clings to the word.  One will be left, one fears, sitting in a straight-backed chair alone, while the popular girls are already chosen and spinning around the dance floor with their hot-palmed partners.  We seem so frightened today of being alone that we never let it happen.  Even if family, friends, and movies should fail, there is still the radio or television to fill up the void.  Women, who used to complain of loneliness, need never be alone any more.  We can do our housework with soap-opera heroes at our side.  Even day-dreaming was more creative than this; it demanded something of oneself and it fed the inner life.  Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter, and companionship to which we do not even listen.  It is simply there to fill the vacuum.  When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place.  We must re-learn to be alone.

It is a difficult lesson to learn today--to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week.  For me, the break is the most difficult.  Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time.  It is like an amputation, I feel.  A limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function.  And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious.  Life rushes back into the void richer, more vivid, fuller than before.  It is as if in parting one did actually lose an arm.  And then, like the starfish, one grows it anew; one is whole again, complete and round--more whole, even, than before, when the other people had pieces of one.

For a full day and two nights I have been alone.  I lay on the beach under the stars at night alone.  I made my breakfast alone.  Alone I watched the gulls at the end of the pier, dip and wheel and dive for the scraps I threw them.  A morning's work at my desk, and then, a late picnic lunch alone on the beach.  And it seemed to me, separated from my own species, that I was nearer to others:  the shy willet, nesting in the ragged tide-wash behind me; the sand piper, running in little unfrightened steps down the shining beach rim ahead of me; the slowly flapping pelicans over my head, coasting down wind; the old gull, hunched up, grouchy, surveying the horizon.  I felt a kind of impersonal kinship with them and a joy in that kinship.  Beauty of earth and sea and air meant more to me.  I was in harmony with it, melted into the universe, lost in it, as one is lost in a canticle of praise, swelling from an unknown crowd in a cathedral.  "Praise ye the Lord, all ye fishes of the sea--all ye birds of the air--all ye children of men--praise ye the Lord!"

Yes, I felt closer to my fellow people, too, even in my solitude.  For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other people, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation.  It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love.  It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger.  When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.  If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.  How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us.  Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us--or having found them dry.  Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover.  And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be found through solitude.
       
   

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Just Listen
an excerpt
Rachel Naomi Remen

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen.  Just listen.  Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.  And especially if it's given from the heart.  When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them.  Just take them in.  Listen to what they're saying.  Care about it.  Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it.  Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this.  It has taken me a long time to believe in the power of simply saying, "I'm so sorry," when someone is in pain.  And meaning it.

One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story people often interrupted her to tell her that they once had something just like that happen to them.  Subtly her pain became a story about themselves.  Eventually she stopped talking to most people.   It was just too lonely.  We connect through listening.  When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves.  When we listen, they know we care.  Many people with cancer talk about the relief of having someone just listen.

I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening.  In the old days I used to reach for the tissues, until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief.  Now I just listen.  When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.

This simple thing has not been that easy to learn.  it certainly went against everything I had been taught since I was very young.  I thought people listened only because they were too timid to speak or did not know the answer.  A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well intentioned words.

The secret life is the key to a quality life and that in turn is the key to a quality culture, products, and services.  Once in New York City, I attended the Broadway play, The Secret Garden.  The play was particularly poignant for me that evening because my mother had just died.

The Tony- Award- winning musical is the story of a young girl whose mother and father die of cholera in India as the play begins.  She is sent to live with her uncle in a large British manor.  The old house is filled with romantic spirits.  As the restless girl explores the grounds of the estate, she discovers the entrance to the magical secret garden, a place where anything is possible.

When she first enters the garden, she finds that it appears to be dead, much like her cousin, a bedridden boy, and her uncle, still haunted by memories of his lovely wife who died giving birth to the boy.  In harmony with natural laws and principles, the girl faithfully plants seeds and brings new life to the garden.  As the roots are warmed and the garden cultivated, she brings about a dramatic transformation of her entire culture within one season.

In my many years of teaching and training, I have seen several such transformations brought about by proactive people who exercise principle-centered leadership and the Seven Habits in their secret, private, and public lives.

When I returned home to Salt Lake City the next day to speak at my mother's funeral, I referred to the Secret Garden, because for me and many others, my mother's home was a secret garden where we could escape and be nurtured by positive affirmation.  In her eyes, all about us was good, and all that was good was possible.

Our Three Lives

We all live three lives:  public, private and secret.  In our public lives, we are seen and heard by colleagues, associates, and others within our circle of influence.  In our private lives, we interact more intimately with spouses, family members, and close friends.  The secret life is where your heart is, where your real motives are the ultimate desires of your life.

Many executives never visit the secret life.  Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by who and what precedes and surrounds them or by the pressures of the environment.  And so they never exercise that unique endowment of self-awareness the key to the secret life where you can stand apart from yourself and observe your own involvement.

Courage is required to explore our secret life because we must first withdraw from the social mirror, where we are fed positive and negative feedback continuously.  As we get used to this social feedback, it becomes a comfort zone.  And we may opt to avoid self-examination and idle away our time in a vacuum of reverie and rationalization.  In that frame of mind, we have little sense of identity, safety, or security.

Examine Your Motives

The most critical junctures in my life take place when I visit my secret life and ask, "What do I think?  What do I believe is right?  What should my motives be?"  These are times when I choose my motives.  One such time occurred when I first heard Dag Hammarskjold say, "It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual, than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."  That statement had such a profound effect on me that I started to say to myself in regard to my relationships with other people, "Wait a minute it's my life.  I can choose whether I want to make reconciliation with this person or not.  I can choose my own motives."

One of the exciting fruits of the "secret garden" is an ability to consciously choose your own motives.  Until you choose your own motives, you really can't choose to live your own life.  Everything flows out of motive and motivation that is the root of our deepest desires.

Now, when I get into a frustrating or perplexing situation, I enter into my secret life.  That's where I find not only motives but also correct principles; that's where the inner wisdom is.  As I learn to be proactive in exploring the secret life, I tap into self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and into the exercise of free will to choose another motive.

People who regularly explore their secret life and examine their motives are better able to see into the hearts of others, practice real empathy, bestow real empowerment and affirm worth and identity.

A healthy secret life will benefit your private and public lives in many ways.  For example, when I'm preparing to give a speech, I read aloud a favorite discourse on faith hope and charity because it helps me to purify my motive. I lose all desire to impress.  My only desire is to bless.  And when I go to a public setting with that motive, I have great confidence and inner peace.  I feel more love for the people and feel much more authentic myself.

Executives who attend our leadership training in the mountain setting of Sundance often tell me, "This is the first time in many years that I've done any soul searching.  I've seen myself as if for the first time, and I've resolved that my life is going to be different.  I'm going to be true to what I really believe."  Recently, many people have written me to say, "Your habits and principles have made the difference.  I'd never really thought about some of them before, but I resonate with them."  That's because these principles are found in people's secret life.

And yet most of us spend our busy days privately doing our thing, never pausing long enough to enter the secret life, the secret garden, where we can create masterpieces, discover great truths and enhance very aspect of our public and private lives.

Having a healthy secret life is the key to having a quality private and public life, as well as a quality culture, product or service.
 

Reproduced with permission from the Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine.  Subscribe at: www.jimrohn.com.  Dr. Covey is the author of several acclaimed books, including the international bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.