7 Habits of Highly Effective Families

There are certain fundamental principles that govern in all human interactions, and living in harmony with those principles or natural laws is absolutely essential for quality family life.

The greatest power of the 7 Habits does not lie in the individual habits but in all the habits together and in the relationship between them. With this framework you can diagnose or figure out just about anything that happens in any conceivable family situation.

Family itself is a “we” experience, a “we” mentality.

My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love the verb. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?

Now just think about the word “responsible”—“response-able,” able to choose your own response. That is the essence of proactivity.

That vision of the Smith Team helped us through what was the greatest challenge our family had ever faced.

The way you treat any relationship in the family will eventually affect every relationship in the family.

I’m convinced you would be hard-pressed to come up with a deposit that has more impact in the family than making and keeping promises.

As Goethe said, 'Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.

This was one of the most exciting things that developed out of our family mission statement work— the creation of this social will, this sense of “we.” This is our decision, our determination. This is what we have decided we are going to be and to do.

This coming together—this sharing and agreeing upon role expectations, problem-solving strategies, vision and values in a relationship —is called “co-missioning.” In other words, it’s a commingling or joining of missions or purposes.

This was their creation, not merely something we dictated. No suggestion was dismissed lightly. This was important business, and we treated the process with respect. We enjoyed talking together about what we really wanted our family to be.

A mission statement doesn’t have to be some big, formal document. It can even be a word or a phrase, or something creative and entirely different such as an image or a symbol.

With a clear sense of shared vision and values, you can be very demanding when it comes to standards. You can have the courage to hold your children accountable and to let them experience the consequences of their actions.

The family mission statement literally becomes the DNA of family life.

If you carefully consider the problems people face in marriage, you will find that in almost every case they arise out of conflicting role expectations and are exacerbated by conflicting problem-solving strategies.

A clear sense of personal vision can be an enormous help to you—or any member of your family, including even young children—in knowing and doing what really matters most.

I have climbed the ladder of success, and as I’m getting near the top rung, I realize that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. It’s not in money; it’s not in positions. It’s in this family relationship.

The rewards of home and family are almost all intrinsic. You’re not paid to do it. You don’t get prestige out of doing it. No one cheers you on in the role. As a parent your compensation is the satisfaction that comes from playing a significant role in influencing a life for good that no one else can fill.

If we had it to do over, we would put a higher priority on our family, on these children—particularly when they were little. We would have made a greater investment.

Children learn the most important lessons not from Power Rangers or even Big Bird but from a loving family who reads with them, talks to them, works with them, listens to them, and spends happy time with them. When children feel loved, really loved, they thrive!

By creating and living by a mission statement, families are gradually able to build moral authority in the family itself. This planning also made a big difference to me because it helped me commit to do what I really wanted to do but often didn’t do because of the pressure of the moment.

If we do not teach our children, society will. And they—and we—will live with the results.

Any change—even a tiny one—in your direction today will make a significant difference hundreds of miles down the road.

One-on-ones are where most of the real work of the family is done. This is where there is the deepest nurturing of heart and soul.

The greatest thing you can do for your children is love your spouse.

People don’t act on what they know; they act on how they feel about what they know and about themselves. If they can come to feel good about themselves and about the relationship, they are encouraged to act on what they know.

Eventually, by making and keeping promises, your sense of honor will become greater than your moods or any baggage you may carry with you.

Really, the only long-term viable alternative is win-win. In fact, it is the essence of a beautiful family culture. Both win-lose and lose-win will ultimately result in lose-lose.

Synergy is a situation in which one plus one equals at least three. It is the highest, most productive and satisfying level of human interdependence.

This abundance mentality is the spirit of “family.” It’s the spirit of “we.” And this is what marriage and family are all about.

Parenting is not about being popular and giving in to every child’s whim and desire. It’s about making decisions that truly are win-win—however they may appear to the child at the time.

The key is in creating clear expectations up front, and family “win-win agreements” can help you do this.

The best thing about this whole experience is that the agreement helped me be calm and let them learn. They chose; they got the consequence. I was loving, I was supportive, but I didn’t get in the way.

People do not see the world as it is; they see it as they are—or as they have been conditioned to be.

And until we gain the capacity to step out of our own autobiography—to set aside our own glasses and really see the world through the eyes of others—we will never be able to build deep, authentic relationships and have the capacity to influence in positive ways.

There’s no way to have rich, rewarding family relationships without real understanding.

Most mistakes with our children, with our spouses, with all family members are not the result of bad intent. It’s just that we really don’t understand. We don’t see clearly into one another’s hearts.

The deepest hunger of the human heart is to be understood. Next to physical survival, our strongest need is psychological survival.

Creating a warm, caring, supportive, encouraging environment is probably the most important thing you can do for your family. This is why it is so important to create a loving, nurturing environment in the home—an environment where it is safe to be vulnerable, to be open.

Most of us either seek first to be understood, or if we do seek to understand, we are often preparing our response as we “listen.” So we evaluate, advise, probe, or interpret from our own point of view. And none of these is an understanding response. They all come out of our autobiography, our world, our values.

When you give an understanding response, both of you gain a greater understanding of what she’s really thinking and feeling. You make it safe for her to open up and share. You make it comfortable for her to engage her own inner gifts to help deal with the concern. And you build the relationship, which will prove immensely helpful further down the road.

Always ask yourself, “Will this feedback really be helpful to this person, or does it just fulfill my own need to set this person straight?” If there’ s any anger inside you, it’s probably not the time or the place to give feedback.

Separate the person from the behavior. We might judge the behavior against standards and principles. We might describe our feelings and observe the consequences of this behavior. But we must absolutely refuse to put a label on another person.

Use “I” messages. When you give feedback, it’s important to remember that you’re sharing your own perception—the way you see the world. So give “I” messages: “This is my perception.” “My concern is…” “This is how I see it.” “This is the way I feel.” “This is what I observed.

Synergy is the summum bonum —the supreme or highest fruit—of all the habits. It’s the magic that happens when one plus one equals three—or more. And it happens because the relationship between the parts is a part itself.

The key to creating synergy is in learning to value—even celebrate—the difference.

To understand that reality—and to adjust expectations accordingly—is, to a great extent, to control our own satisfaction. Our expectations are also the basis for our judgments.

It’s not enough to simply tolerate differences in the family. You can’t just accept differences. You can’t just diversify family functions to accommodate differences. To have the kind of creative magic we’re talking about, you must actually celebrate differences.

Synergy unleashes tremendous capacity. It gives birth to new ideas. It brings you together in new multidimensional ways, making huge deposits in the Emotional Bank Account because creating something new with someone else is enormously bonding.

The key to your family culture is how you treat the child that tests you the most. When you can show unconditional love to your most difficult child, others know that your love for them is also unconditional. And that knowledge builds trust.

Some say that feedback is the “breakfast of champions.” But it isn’t. Vision is the breakfast. Feedback is the lunch. Self-correction is the dinner.

This is the synergy that comes through a complementary approach—an approach in which one person’s strength is utilized and his or her weaknesses are made irrelevant by the strength of another.

This approach requires significant self-awareness. When a person is aware of a weakness, it instills humility sufficient to seek another’s strength to compensate for it.

Always be aware that happiness does not come from money, possessions, or fame; it comes from the quality of relationships with the people you love and respect.

All of them develop an intrinsic sense of personal and family worth that is independent of others and of the environment—even though it manifests itself in relationships and in the environment.

Through traditions you reinforce the connection of the family. You give a feeling of belonging, of being supported, of being understood. You are committed to one another. You are a part of something that’s greater than yourself.

The main point is that renewing family traditions will help you create and nurture a beautiful family culture that encourages you to keep on track and keeps family members coming back to the flight plan time and time again.

The added social dimension of “family” makes doing everything more exciting and more fun because you have someone special to share it with. In fact, those family bonds are often even more important than the event itself.

To celebrate a birthday is to celebrate the person. It’s a wonderful opportunity to express love and affirmation and make huge deposits into the Emotional Bank Account.

Holidays provide an ideal time to build traditions. They happen every year. It’s easy to create a sense of anticipation and fun as well as meaning and camaraderie around them.

We find that with these kinds of intergenerational activities, siblings and cousins usually end up the best of friends. We feel a great sense of strength in and appreciation for the members of our extended and intergenerational families. We firmly believe they go a long way toward reweaving the safety net that’s become unraveled in society.

Learning together can be a wonderful tradition and one of the greatest joys of family life. It also affirms that when you raise your children you are also raising your grandchildren.

The point is that if you organize your family life to spend even ten or fifteen minutes a morning reading something that connects you with these timeless principles, it’s almost guaranteed that you will make better choices during the day—in the family, on the job, in every dimension of life.

Can you see how tremendously renewing this tradition of serving together can be? It’s spiritually renewing because it’s focused on something higher than self.

Having fun together is so vital and so important that it could even be listed as a tradition in and of itself. And it can be nurtured and expressed in many ways.

In any distress or disease, true healing involves all four dimensions: the physical, the social/emotional, the mental, and the spiritual. Family renewal helps make this four-dimensional healing available to everyone in the family.

The fourth level, significance, is where the family is involved in something meaningful outside itself. Rather than being content to be a successful family, the family has a sense of stewardship or responsibility to the greater family of mankind, as well as a sense of accountability around that stewardship.

On the level of significance, the family becomes the vehicle through which people can effectively contribute to the well-being of others. This level of significance is the supreme level of family fulfillment. Nothing energizes, unites, and satisfies the family like working together to make a significant contribution.

In fact, a deep understanding of the fears and anxieties that hold you back changes their nature, content, and direction, enabling you to actually convert restraining forces into driving ones.

There is no question that example is the very foundation of influence. When Albert Schweitzer was asked how to raise children, he said, 'Three principles—first, example; second, example; and third, example.

The way you fulfill your mentoring role will have a profound effect on your child’s sense of self-worth and on your ability to influence and teach.

Teaching moments are some of the supreme moments of family life—those incomparable times when you know you’ve made a significant difference in the life of another family member.

This is the point at which your efforts help “empower” family members so that they develop the internal capacity and skill to live effectively. And this is at the heart of what parenting and family are all about.

Good families—even great families—are off track 90 percent of the time! The key is that they have a sense of destination.

Because all things are created twice, if you don’t take charge of the first creation, someone or something else will.

It’s not enough to say your family is important. If ‘family’ is really going to be top priority, you have to ‘hunker down, suck it up, and make it happen!

The heart of empathy is understanding how people see the situation and how they feel about it, and the essence of what they are trying to say.

Win-win is really the only solid foundation for effective family interaction. It’s the only pattern of thinking and interacting that builds long-term relationships of trust and unconditional love.

Synergy—the Summum Bonum of All the Habits… It’s the magic that happens when one plus one equals three—or more.

Families and family members are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or conditions.

The highest form of mental creation is a marriage or family mission statement.

The unconditional love and inside-out change become irresistible.

When you create a social will, you produce something that is much more synergistic than just a collection of individual wills.

The deepest hunger of the human heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms, validates, recognizes, and appreciates the intrinsic worth of another.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

When your happiness comes primarily from the happiness of others, you know you have moved from “me” to “we.” And the whole problem-solving and opportunity-seizing process changes.

Through a family mission statement you can let your children know that you are totally committed to them, that you have been from the very moment of their birth or adoption.

The principle is this: What is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you. In other words, in your heart you essentially say, “My love for you is so great and our happiness is so entwined that I would not feel good if I got my way and you were unhappy—particularly when you feel so strongly about it.

I realized that Cathy and I would both be adults someday, just like my sister and me. And dearest friends do not have to be alike. The words came to mind, 'How dare you try to impose your personality on her. Rejoice in your differences!

We count on each other’s different perspectives to increase our judgment, to help us make better decisions. We count on each other’s strengths to help compensate for our individual weaknesses. We count on each other’s uniqueness to give spice and flavor to our relationship.

I believe that helping others is the most significant contribution anyone can make in life. I’m grateful that we’ve developed to the point where we’re able to do it.