Live An Effective Life – Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Part 1

I enjoy reading. I make sure each month there is a book I am gleaning wisdom from. If you asked me nine years ago about reading, my answer would have probably been, ” I am not a reader” or I just do not have time to do so. Reading is one of the tools you can use for your personal growth journey. It sets you on the path of continuous learning. Instead of going round and round trying to figure things out, you can learn from those who gathered the wisdom, practiced it, and put it in a book. One of the books that have lessons that can help you and me live as the best version of ourselves is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People By Stephen Covey. You can purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Powerful-ebook/dp/B01069X4H0

In the first part of the book, Covey speaks of how a lot of people he has come in contact with have managed to archive outward success but have found themselves struggling with an inner hunger, a deep need for personal congruency and effectiveness and for healthy, growing relationships with other people. He believes that if you want to change a situation, you should change yourself, and to change yourself effectively you have to change your perceptions. That’s where the concept of a paradigm shift comes into play.

Personality Ethic vs Character Ethic

Over the years, the concept of success has shifted from character ethic to personality ethic, says Covey. And that is one of the reasons why people are finding it hard to live effective and fulfilled lives. Character ethics include this like (integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule). An example where success based on character ethics is exhibited is through the biography of Benjamin Franklin. Personality ethic is where success is a function of personality, public image, attitudes, skills and techniques, and behaviors. To live an effective life, personality ethics attributes should become your secondary success instead of your primary. Trying to have your personal ethic as the primary thing that governs your life is a result of quick fixes and only results in unfulfillment in the long run. I would like to think it may be one of the major causes of depression and anxiety in millennials and gen Z.

To live an effective life Covey says “We must allow ourselves to undergo paradigm shifts — to change ourselves fundamentally and not just alter our attitudes and behaviors on the surface level — in order to achieve true change.” This is where the 7 habits come into play, to help us achieve true change.

• Habits 1, 2 & 3 are focused on self-mastery and moving from dependence to independence. These habits are based on private victory.
• Habits 4,5&6 are focused on developing teamwork, collaboration, and communication skills, and moving from independence to interdependence.
• Habit 7 is focused on continuous growth and improvement and embodies all the other habits.

Let’s look at each habit individually

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Being proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. It means more than simply just taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. The word responsibility can be broken down into ‘response’ and ‘ability’. We have the ability to choose our response in life. Proactive people understand that their behavior is a function of their decisions, not the conditions. As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” In the words of Gandhi, “They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.” It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place. This can be a lot to take in considering the blame game that has been normalized in our culture.

Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They say statements like:

• I can’t
• I have to
• if only
• and they ultimately believe they have no choice.

A proactive person uses empowering vocabulary such as I can, I will, and I prefer.

In order to be proactive, we must focus on the influence instead of our circle of concern. The circle of concern includes those things that we have no control over like government policies and how people choose to act toward us. The circle of influence includes those things that we have control over, that we can change. Find out which circle you spend most of your energy in.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

Habit 2 makes you dodge the activity trap that I believe leads to unfulfillment in life. Most of us find it rather easy to busy ourselves. We work hard to achieve victories — promotions, higher income, more recognition. But we don’t often stop to evaluate the meaning behind this busyness, behind these victories — we don’t ask ourselves if these things that we focus on so intently are what really matter to us. To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. We can use our imagination to help us with habit 2. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. Sometimes when your life is not working out, revisit your blueprint.

Habit 2 is about personal leadership, please note leadership, not management. Leadership is the first creation and management is the second. In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. Rescripting is an important part of developing personal leadership. Because we already live with many scripts that have been handed to us, the process of writing our own script is actually more a process of “rescripting,” or Paradigm Shifting — of changing some of the basic paradigms that we already have. As we recognize the ineffective scripts, the incorrect or incomplete paradigms within us, we can proactively begin to rescript ourselves. Whether we like it or not, we all have been handed down scripts by our parents, guardians, teachers, or whoever had authority over us when we were younger. Personal leadership and habit 2 are about rescripting and deciding your own destination.

One best way to incorporate habit 2 in your life is to develop a personal mission statement. It focuses on what you want to be (character) and to do(contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based. A mission statement will reflect your uniqueness. A personal mission statement based on correct principles becomes the same kind of standard for an
individual. It becomes a personal constitution, the basis for making major, life-directing decisions, the
basis for making daily decisions in the midst of the circumstances and emotions that affect our lives. Personal mission statements expand to family mission statements and to organizations’ mission statements.

Habit 2 Application suggestions

1. Take time to visualize your funeral and write your obituary.
2. Take time to write down your roles as you see them now, are you satisfied with that mirror image of you? roles may include, sister, brother, CEO, friend, or husband.
3. Decide to work on your mission statement
4. Apply the principle of mental creation/ visualization to your next project or goals you would like to achieve.
5. Share with your family and organization and create your family mission statement, or simply help them create theirs.

Habit 3: Put First Things first

The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.

Steve Covey

Habit 3 is the practical fulfillment of Habits 1 and 2. It’s the second creation. Habit 3 is all about management. To be successful at putting first things first you need willpower, you need to be disciplined. Discipline comes from the word disciple. When you are an effective manager of yourself, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.

Using the fourth-generation time management method will help you become a better manager of yourself. The fourth generation of time management recognizes that “time management” is really a misnomer — the challenge is not to manage time but to manage ourselves. Satisfaction is a function of expectation as well as realization. And expectation (and satisfaction) lie in our Circle of Influence. Rather than focusing on things and time, fourth-generation expectations focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and accomplishing results. The time management quadrant best illustrates how we usually spend our time. All activities can be categorized based on two factors, urgent and important.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because urgent or not, they aren’t important.
They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.
Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent
but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission
statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, and preparation — all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren’t urgent.

Habit 3 Application Suggestion ( Live An Effective Life – Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Part 1)

1. Identify a Quadrant II activity you know has been neglected in your life — one that, if done well, would have a significant impact on your life, either personally or professionally. Write it down and commit to implementing it.
2. Draw a Time Management Matrix and try to estimate what percentage of your time you spend in each quadrant. Are you happy with how you are spending your time?
3. Make a list of responsibilities you could delegate and the people you could delegate to or train to be responsible in these areas.
4. Organize your next week. Start by writing down your roles and goals for the week, then transfer the goals to a specific action plan. At the end of the week, evaluate how well your plan translated your deep values and purposes into your daily life and the degree of integrity you were able to maintain to those values and purposes.
5. Commit yourself to start organizing on a weekly basis and set up a regular time to do it. (https://tanyafungai.com/today-matters-5-proven-tips-for-an-effective-daily-plan/)

That’s Habits 1,2, & 3 focusing on self-mastery. In the next blog post, I will share summaries of habits 4,5,6&7

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