Sermon 10/11/98: Time Alone: "# He got there the following morning and at nine o'clock he opened the first prescription. It said, 'Listen carefully.' He had three hours to listen carefully. He didn't know what to do with the time, but as he listened he began to hear things he had missed. We pass them by in life. They are all around about us. The sound of creation itself. And the still small voice of God speaking to us. He didn't know how the time would pass, but it did.
# And it came to be noon and he opened the second prescription and it said 'reach back,' reach back to your memories. And in his mind there were memories that were happy, memories to lift him up. And too there were memories that brought him down, that dragged him down, that held him back. Three hours alone. Just to sort through those memories.
# And the time passed by and it was three o'clock in the afternoon and he opened the third prescription and it said, 'Examine your motives.' And as he tells the story he says that this was the time that things began to click for him; that he had not been following the motives that he wanted to follow in life. Well -- the pursuit of money, the pursuit of prestige, the pursuit of a fame, whatever it was, all of these things came into his mind and he realized that he was off track, he was off base, he was pursuing things that he didn't really want to pursue. And his life began to take a different shape, a different form at that point. Three hours to examine his motives.
# And then it was six o'clock in the evening and the last prescription was opened. It said, 'Write your worries in the sand.' So he found a stick and he wrote out his worries in the sand and he turned around to leave and he said he knew at that point the tide had turned. And the tide had turned! And as it came in it washed away his worries. Write your worries in the sand."

Covey's four questions.