Into: 7 Habits

We first make our habits, then our habits make us.

-         English Poet

The book I’m doing this blog about is the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey.  The habits listed in this book are:

1.     Be proactive

2.     Begin with the End in Mind

3.     Put First Things First

4.     Think Win Win

5.     Seek First to Understand Then to be Understood

6.     Synergize

7.     Sharpen the Saw

These habits are separated into two categories; the private victory and the public victory. Putting these habits into practice is a growing tree; you don’t get leaves before you get the roots. You need to build these habits on top of each other; they all work together as one. You need to get the ‘private victory’, the self-mastery, before you can go onto the ‘public victory’, being a good team player. And habit 7 is last; it feeds all the other habits by renewal.

The seven habits can help you:

·        Get control of your life

·        Improve your relationships with friends

·        Make smarter decisions

·        Get along with your parents

·        Overcome addiction        

·        Define your values and what matters most to you

·        Get more done in less time increase your self confidence

·        Be happy

·        Find balance between school, work, friends, and everything else

These posts will try to give you a brief overview of the whole book.

Habit 1: Be proactive

People are just about as happy as they make up their mind to be.

-         Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President

What does being proactive mean? To be proactive, you just need to stay calm. You take life as it comes, don’t make a huge scene when you don’t get your way, and don’t blow up in someone’s face. When you are proactive you use T.H.I.N.K. before you speak. Think is an acronym for is it True, is it Helpful, is it Inspiring, is it Necessary, and is it Kind?

You can’t control everything, which is why you don’t worry about the things you can’t change but focus on the things that you can change, because each day you have almost 100 chances to be either proactive or reactive. Reactive people make choices based on impulse. They are like a can of soda. If life shakes them up a bit, the pressure builds and they suddenly explode.

The victimitus virus is where people this that the world owes them something. They say things like “I would be starting but the coaches have something against me.” Or “I would have done a better 40-yard dash time, but my shoes came loose.”

Proactive people are different than reactive people; they are responsible, think before they act, bounce back when something bad happens, focus on things they can do something about, and always find a way to make it happen. They are more fun to be around because they do not hold grudges or say they can’t right away.

The fact is we can’t control everything that happens to us. We can’t control where we were born, who are parents are, or how others might treat us. But we can control one thing, how we respond to what happens to us. This is why we need to stop worrying about things we can’t control and start worrying about things we can.

 

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

The hardest thing in life is to know what bridge to cross and what bridge to burn

-         David Russell

Beginning with no end in mind is like starting a 1,000 piece puzzle with no picture on what it is supposed to look like in the end. Your life is like a jigsaw puzzle; do you know where u want to end up when it is all over? Or are you just winging it? 

You begin with the end in mind all the time; draw a blue print before you build a house, read a recipe before you bake a cake. It’s the same concept with life. 

One reason to create a vision is that if you don’t, someone else will do it for you. Do you want your friend to tell you what to do? You may have fine parents but do you want them to create the blue print for your life? And if you are not much of a ‘planner’ and like to ‘go with the flow’ you will usually end up where the flow is going, which is usually not be your idea of an end. “The road to anywhere is really a life to nowhere.”

Mission statement is like the blue print of your life. Making your own mission statement will help you focus on where you want to be when you are older. Writing a mission statement can open your eyes to what’s really important to you and help you make decisions. 

A personal mission statement is like a tree with deep roots. It is stable and isn’t going anywhere, but it is also alive and continually growing.  With deep roots, you can survive all the storms of life. 

An important part of developing a personal mission statement is discovering what you are good at. Everyone has a talent. Some people have talents like being a good singer, being a good listener, drawing, or just being nice. 

Habit 3: Put first things first

It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

-         Edmund Hillary (First to climb Mount Everest)

Have you ever noticed how much you can fit inside a suitcase if you neatly fold it all instead of throwing it in? It’s the same with our life; the more organized you are, the more you can pack into your life. More time for family, friends, homework, and yourself. 

There are 4 different types of people: Procrastinator, Prioritizer, Yes- Man, and Slacker.

The Procrastinator’s motto is “I’ll stop procrastinating… sometime soon.” You may know a procrastinator. Don’t expect them to work on a paper or study for a test until the night before; so working with them in group projects is a disaster, everyone is done their part, and they haven’t even started.

The Yes-man’s motto is “Yeah, sure! No problem.” They have a real hard time saying no to anyone. They try so hard to please everyone that he usually ends up pleasing no one, including themselves. They cave to peer pressure very easily because they want to be popular and don’t want to stand out. 

The Prioritizer focuses on the things that are important than the other things. Their homework is always handed in on time, and still has time for friends and themselves. They take a look at everything they have to do and then prioritize like wise.

Putting first things first takes courage and will often cause you to stretch outside of your comfort zone. You comfort zone is filled with all the things you are familiar with, places you know friends you hang out with often. But the courage zone is all about making new friends, speaking before large audiences. Everything that makes us feel uncomfortable is here, but it is also the only place where you could meet your full potential. 

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.

-         C.S. Lewis, Author    

Thinking win-win is the foundation for getting along well with other people. It begins with the belief that we are all equal, that no one is better than anyone else. 

There are different attitudes that people have towards other people. For example win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, and win-win. 

Win-lose are full of pride. It is an attitude toward life that says the pie of success is only so big, and if you get a bigger piece of it, there is less left for me. Win-lose is competitive, the totem pole of success is where you have to sit and step on other people to get higher up. 

Lose-win people are otherwise known as the door mat. They are weak, and get stepped on easily. You find your-self setting low expectations for yourself and compromising your standards again and again.   

The lose-lose is the worst of all! It says “If I’m going down, then you’d going down with me.” War is a great example of lose-lose. Whoever kills the most people wins the war… is anyone really winning? Lose-lose can also happen when someone when someone becomes obsessed with another person in a negative way. Like sibling rivalry to a whole another level. 

in-win is a belief that everyone can win. It’s the hardest to keep, but also the best. It is saying I won’t step on you, but you can’t step on me either. You care about other people and want them to succeed but you won’t let them step on you to do that.  

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand then to be Understood

Listen or thy tongue will make thee deaf.

-         Native American Proverb

If you can see things from others point of view before sharing your own, a whole new world will be opened for you. This habit is the key to communication is because everyone’s deepest need is to be understood. Everyone wants to be respected and valued for who they are – a unique, one-of-a-kind, individual.

 

There are 5 types of poor listening:

·        Spacing out

·        Pretend listening

·        Selective listening

·        Word listening

·        Self-centered listening

Spacing out is when someone is talking to us but we ignore them while we wander off to our own little word. 

Pretend listening is when we aren’t paying much attention to the other person, but we make pretend comments like “yeah,” “uh-huh,” “cool.” The other person will often feel like they aren’t good enough to be heard or paid attention to. 

Selective listening is where we pay attention only to the parts that we want to hear. Since you’ll always want to talk about what you want to talk about, instead of what the other person wants to talk about, chances are you’ll never develop lasting friendships.

Word listening is when we actually pay attention to the words of someone, but not the body language. If you focus on only the words, you won’t really get what the person’s deeper emotions and feeling actually are.  

Self- centered listening is when we listen, but we see everything from our perspective. Instead of standing in another persons shoes, we want to stand in our own.  

But then there is genuine listening. To do this you must listen with your eyes, hart, and ears. Listening with just your ears isn’t enough, because only 7% of communication is done with words. The rest comes from body language, and tone or feeling. To hear what people are really saying, you need to listen to what they are not saying.