Primary Greatness: The 12 Levers of Success - Softcover

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Recognized as one of Time magazine’s twenty-five most influential Americans, Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) was an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and author. His books have sold more than twenty-five million copies in thirty-eight languages, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was named the #1 Most Influential Business Book of the Twentieth Century. After receiving an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate degree from Brigham Young University, he became the cofounder and vice chairman of FranklinCovey, a leading global training firm.

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Primary Greatness

CHAPTER 1

THE SECRET LIFE

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

—FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

We all live three lives: public, private, and secret. The secret life is where your heart is, where your real motives are—the ultimate desires of your life. It is also the source of primary greatness. If you have the courage to explore your secret life, you can honestly question your deepest motivations. Are you prepared to rescript those motivations—to realign your life to the core principles of true success?

The secret life is the key to primary greatness.

In New York City, I attended the Broadway play The Secret Garden. The play was particularly poignant for me, 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 family culture within one season.

In my many years of teaching and training, I have seen several such transformations brought about by proactive people who live by principles of greatness in their secret, private, and public lives.

When I returned home 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

In our public life, we are seen and heard by colleagues, associates, and others within our circle. In our private life, we interact more intimately with spouses, family members, and close friends. The secret life is part of the other two.

The secret life is the mainspring that motivates the other two lives. Many people never visit the secret life. Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by whom and what precedes and surrounds them or by the pressures of the environment. Thus, they never exercise that unique endowment of self-awareness—the key to the secret life—where you can stand apart from yourself and observe yourself.

Courage is required to explore your secret life because you must first withdraw from the social mirror—the reflection of ourselves that society feeds back to us but may have little to do with our inner selves. We get used to the view of ourselves in the social mirror. 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 deeply visit my secret life and choose my motives. “Wait a minute,” I say to myself. “It’s my life. I can choose how to use my time and energy. I can choose whether to get up in the morning and exercise. I can choose to get angry or not. 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 life is the 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 motives and motivation—they are the root of our deepest desires. The question is, which motives will we put first in our lives?

When I face a frustrating or perplexing situation, I enter into my secret life. That’s where I face myself and ask, “Will I live by correct principles, or will I surrender to the demands of secondary greatness?”

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 my motives.

For example, when thinking about your career, you might ask, “Now, what is my real motive?” N. Eldon Tanner, former Speaker of the Alberta Legislative Assembly and former Cabinet member, once said, “Whenever I had a big career decision, I had to visit my heart and ask, ‘Am I totally prepared to put first things first—and in this position, will I keep my priorities straight?’?” He said, “I’d have to struggle with that question until it was settled.” Once he had made that decision, he would look at the assignment and ask, “If it would build the causes most dear to me, I will go and serve there.” He became well respected throughout his country.

I met with this great man once when I was serving on a search committee for a new university president. When I entered his office, he left his desk and came around, sat next to me, and said, “What do you want me to understand?” He listened to me with much intensity and sincerity, then said, “I want you to know how much I respect you.” It deeply impressed me.

People who regularly explore their secret life and examine their motives are better able to see into the heart of others, practice empathy, empower them, and affirm their 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 that is inspiring to me because it helps me clarify my motive. I lose all desire to impress. My only desire is to serve. 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 I have consulted with tell me, “This is the first time in many, 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 try to be true to what I really believe.” Over the years, many people have written me to say, “Your 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 reside in their secret lives.

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 every aspect of our public and private lives.

A healthy secret life is the key to primary greatness.

Self-Affirmation

A key to having a healthy secret life is self-affirmation. Among the most important bits of communication are messages of affirmation you give yourself and others.

A good self-affirmation has five characteristics:

• It’s personal, meaning it is written in the first person.

•...