7 Habits That Will Make You Highly Successful in Life (summarized)
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| From the 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R Covey |
Our habits constantly express our character and produce our effectiveness. According to Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
The writer identified seven habits shared by all truly effective people. Fortunately, for those of us not born effective (no one is), these habits can be learned. Furthermore, the collective experience of the ages shows us that acquiring them will give you the character to succeed.
As you open the gates of change to give yourself new habits, be patient with yourself. This is not a quick fix. But I assure you that you will see immediate benefits. And if you see the whole picture clearly, you’ll have the perseverance to see the process to its conclusion. Have faith - it’s worth the effort. Now let's proceed;
1. BE PROACTIVE:
Proactivity means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives and recognizing the opportunity to make things happen. If we think our lives are a function of our conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to have control over us - we have let ourselves become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by the weather, proactive people carry their own weather with them.
Do you find yourself using these expressions?
- “That’s the way I am.” There’s nothing I can do about it.
- “He makes me so mad!” My emotional life is outside of my control.
- “I have to do it.” I’m not free to choose my own actions.
For all of us, there are many things that concern us that we can’t do anything about, for now. But there are also things we can do. Proactive people work on their circle of influence - the people and things they can reach - and spend less energy on their much wider circle of concern. By keeping their focus on their circle of influence, they actually extend their area.
The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct it, and learn from it.
Try this exercise for 30 days:
- Work only in your smaller circle of influence;
- Make small commitments to yourself and others, and keep them;
- Be a light, not a judge; be a model, not a critic; be the solution, not the problem.
If you stall to think some important problem in your life is “out there” somewhere, stop yourself. That thought is the problem.
2. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND:
The second habit to succeed in life is, to begin with, the end in mind. It means to know where you’re going so as to understand where you are now and take your next step in the right direction. The best way to start is to develop a personal mission statement. It describes what we want to be (character) and to do (achievements).
Organizations need mission statements. So do families, so start developing your mission statement. Your mission statement may take you some weeks to write, from the first draft to final form; it’s a concise expression of your innermost values and directions.
3. PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST:
Question: What one thing could you do which you aren’t doing now - that If you did it regularly, would make a tremendous difference in your business or personal life?
We have a constant amount of time, no matter what we do; the challenge we face is to manage ourselves. To be an effective manager of your self, you must organize and execute around priorities because we don't manage time, we only manage ourselves.
People get “harried” away from their real goals and values by subordinating the important to the urgent; some are beaten up by problems all day, every day.
To paraphrase Drucker again, effective people don't solve problems - they pursue opportunities. They feed opportunities and starve problems.
Here are what to consider:
- Identify your key roles
- Think of two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each role during the next seven days.
- Look at the week ahead with your goals in mind, and block out the time each day to achieve them. Once your key goals are in place, look at how much time you have left for everything else! How well you succeed skill depends on how resilient and determined you are at defending your most important priorities.
4. SEEK TO UNDERSTAND, THEN BE UNDERSTOOD
The most important word to know in mastering this habit is “listen.” Listen to your colleagues, family, friends, customers - but not with the intent to reply, to convince, to manipulate. Listen simply to understand, to see how the other party sees things. The skill to develop here is empathy. Empathy is not sympathy. A sympathy is a form of agreement, a judgment. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it’s that you fully understand him, emotionally and intellectually.
Empathic listening is powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with, instead of projecting and assuming your own thoughts and motives. You can only work with someone productively and make an appropriate deposit in your Emotional Bank Account with him if you understand what really matters most to him.
5. THINK WIN/WIN
“Think win/win,” entails making an important deposit in another person’s Emotional Bank Account, finding a way both of you can benefit by your interaction. All the other possibilities - win/lose (I win, you lose), lose/win (I lose, you win), and lose/lose - are ineffective, either in the short term or the long term.
The best way to approach Win/Win dealing is to remember that it (like all agreements) embodies a caveat: The complete description is “Win/win - or no deal.” Your attitude should be, “I want to win, and I want you to win, if we can’t hammer something out under those conditions, let’s agree that we won’t make a deal this time. Maybe we’ll make one in the future.”
Using the paradigm of Win/Win requires three traits:
- Integrity - We define integrity as the value we place on ourselves: We need to be self-aware, possessed of an independent will. We make and keep meaningful promises and commitments to ourselves and others.
- Maturity - This is the balance between courage and consideration. Simply put, you must have enough empathy and goodwill to work for a win for your counterpart, and enough courage to make a win for yourself.
- Abundance Mentality - You must know and believe that there is plenty out there for everybody. Many people don’t: They think that to succeed themselves, others must fail. They harbor secret hopes that other people must suffer misfortune - not terrible misfortune, but acceptable misfortune that will keep them in their place. The Abundance Mentality recognizes that possibilities for growth and success are potentially limitless, and sees in others the opportunity to complement its own strengths.
6. SYNERGIZE
7. SHARPEN THE SAW
Suppose you come upon a man in the woods feverishly sawing down a tree. “You look exhausted!” you exclaim.
“How long have you been at it?”
“Over five hours,” he replies, “and I am beaten. This is hard.”
“Maybe you could take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw. Then the work would go faster.”
“No time,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing.”
Habit seven is taking time to sharpen the saw (you’re the saw). It’s the habit that makes all the others possible.
To sharpen the saw means renewing ourselves, in all four aspects of our natures which includes:
- Physical - exercise, nutrition, stress management;
- Mental - reading, visualizing, planning, writing;
- Social/Emotional - service, empathy, synergy, security;
- Spiritual - spiritual reading, study, and meditation;