Yom Kippur
Evening
Seven Habits of
Highly Effective Jews
Step Two: From Independence to Interdependence
(Part One)
Last week on Rosh Hashanah, I started my series of drashot for these High Holy Days by
introducing the Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People. It’s a book,
written by Dr Stephen R Covey, first published in 1989. Most of you have heard of this book, and
probably some of you have read it. After
all, it’s been called the best-selling and most highly-acclaimed business and
self-help book of all time. And to me,
the reason why is self-evident. It’s
because it’s really a book about living and operating in the context of a
value-driven life. It’s not a book about
personality, or about little tricks and short-cuts to success. In that way, it stands out in the field of
its genre. Its wisdom is truly wisdom: timeless, not faddish.
I read The Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People years ago. I followed up my reading of the book by
attending one of the seminars based on the book’s teaching. Clara attended also. For both of us, it was life-changing. What we learned, we have used every day of
our lives since. Does that mean that every
day, in every way, we have been successful in letting the Seven Habits guide
our actions? Of course not. That’s because remaining true to your values,
as meritorious a mindset as it is, is often not easy. Okay, it’s seldom easy. But Easy is not a primary value for
our lives. If it is one of your primary
values, I cannot counsel strongly enough that Easy is not a worthy value. I’m not saying that we should seek to
make things difficult. But to
avoid everything that is difficult, to habitually take the course of least
resistance? If that’s a guiding
principle of your life, then your life is only a shadow of what it could be. And that is a tragedy.
So while Easy is not
in and of itself a bad thing, Easy shouldn’t be our motivator in life. We don’t work to live our lives by the Seven
Habits because they are easy. Rather,
we work to live by them despite their often being difficult.
If you follow
my speaking, either by regular attendance in shule or by reading my drashot
on my blog or listening to my podcasts, then you know that values are a big
concern of mine. Specifically, I’m
passionate about the proposition that we should continually work to clarify our
values. How can we live a value-driven
life if we don’t have clarity on what those values are? And we should use our Jewish tradition as
one of the sources to shape those values.
And in our daily activities, whether work or play, we should endeavour
to act according to those values.
Recently I presented
a three-month series in Gates of Peace, our congregational newsletter,
presenting my own Core Values and how I acquired them. They are:
Service before Self.
Excellence in all We Do.
Integrity Always. And I
challenged you to formulate your own Core Values and make them the
guiding principles of your lives. If you
missed this series, I invite you to talk to me after the service and I will
make it available to you.
The Seven Habits are
a series of behavioural devices that will help you to live out your
values. Just because we’ve developed a
series of value-statements that reflect the inner motivations guiding us,
doesn’t guarantee that we will be guided by them. And the culprit, interfering with this
dynamic? Emotions.
As I’ve said before,
I’m knocking emotions. They are what
make us human. They are what enable us
to be all the things that ‘human’ implies.
They are an essential part of who we are. But they are also something we must learn to
tame and control. We have names for
people who constantly allow their emotions to rule their behaviour. Drama Queens.
Anal-explosive. Mercurial. Unpredictable…although I submit that people
who constantly operate on an emotional level are quite predictable. So the point isn’t that emotions are bad. Rather, that when we allow our emotions to
always, or usually to guide our actions, we find ourselves hampered from living
according to our values.
Last week on Rosh
Hashanah, I talked about the first three Habits. Be Proactive. Begin with the End in Mind. Put First Things First. These are not rocket science; they’re
practically self-evident. Covey shows us
that, when we master these habits, we will experience Private Victory. These will give us the ability to
transition from dependence to independence.
Or at least, partial independence since truly, absolute
independence being neither possible nor desirable.
But independence in
degree, as much as it means to each one of us who has managed to achieve it, is
not the end of the road. Independence is
a way station on the Road to Happiness.
But that road then goes through a place called ‘interdependence.’ That’s where we take the selfhood that
independence brings, and share ourselves with others. Where we learn to rely on others, and allow
others to rely on us.
There is a romantic
notion of the rugged individualist, the one who is self-contained and goes
about his life in a self-imposed isolation and independence from, others. The Marlboro Man. Shane.
Captain Slocum. At any given
time, some of us have wished to be one of these. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know
deep in our hearts that nobody finds happiness through isolation from
others.
Retreat into
one’s self is an important tool to be used at times. It helps us to clarify things without a lot
of clutter and background noise interfering.
There have been many occasions when, all talked out and needing time for
myself, I went off to find solitude for a morning or an afternoon. Usually I found it by going for a bike ride
or for a paddle in a kayak. These are
two activities that for me, are quite solitary.
But it is a temporary state.
On any given day we may wish the world would stop so we can get off. But we know that retreat from the
world and from others is not the road to happiness.
Over the years
I’ve met a number of ascetics as they’re called: monks and nuns, Catholic, Orthodox and
Buddhist. None was happy. Perhaps content on a certain level. But contentment is not happiness. And the proof, to me, was that after their
period of retreat, they always re-surrounded themselves with other people. Those who have experienced solitude and have
grown through the experience, often spend much of their time teaching others
what they learned through their solitude.
This need to reach out to others, even by those who found insight
through solitude, proves my point. We
are ‘hard-wired’ to be with others.
I hope that I
speak directly to you, my members who sit before me. We definitely have an older demographic in
our congregation. This is not surprising
given two factors. One is that Jews come
up to the Gold Coast to retire. The
other is that many of the under-sixty crowd are today avoiding religion either
largely or altogether. This mindset, by
the way, is not limited to Jews. So our
congregation’s demographic balance leans heavily towards grandparents. You who fit this description, feel an
obligation to attend services. But
messages such as the one I bring today, might not resonate for you. You see yourselves as ruled by a lifetime of
habits and don’t feel motivated to reach for new ones. This isn’t criticism, just my
observation. And I agree that it would seem
natural to someone in the autumn of their years to dismiss all this talk about change
and self-improvement as applying to younger people, but not them. But while it may seem natural, that is most
definitely unfortunate.
Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur attest to a different reality.
That nothing in our lives is pre-ordained. Even when we might feel stuck in behaviour
patterns that we have allowed to become ingrained into our personalities, we
are never stuck. If we take this
days seriously, and really listen to their message, we know otherwise.
We can change
and improve and thus find new joy in life.
And it is never too late to do so.
Each day is, as the saying goes, the first day of the rest of your
life. It isn’t over ‘till it’s
over. Each day with which we are
blessed, can be occasion for renewal and moving forward. If you feel continually tired, perhaps it’s
partially because you are not allowing yourselves this joy. Yom Kippur is for you, too. If it is only an occasion for regret, then
we’ve missed the boat. It can, and
should be an occasion for looking forward.
It’s something to think about.
So tomorrow morning,
I’m going to present the next three Habits.
Dr Covey believed that mastery of these three habits, assuming that one
had already achieved personal victory, would lead to public
victory. Or to put it another way, they
would enable one to transition from independence to interdependence. And the Habits are: Think Win-win. Try to Understand before Trying to Be
Understood. Synergise. Each of these Habits represents a vital
tool. Mastery of these tools will help
you as you reach for interdependence.
For now, gut
yontef and an easy fast!
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