The Daily Skunk

I want to start this off by saying “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is a great book. The information or “book report” that I’m giving you is how I have interpreted what Mr. Covey has written, and my application might not be the way he intended. If you get the book you will also see that some of the things I write here are basically taken right out of the book, the reason for this is that Mr. Covey’s ideas are very clearly and concisely established. So, I just want to say I highly recommend this book, I have only read through the first habit, there is a lot more information and practical descriptions in the book than you will get from me. If you like what you see here, I suggest you go to a book store and at least look through the book, or even buy it.

Habit 1 – Being Proactive

Being proactive is being responsible for you own life. You are the greatest influence on your life, no matter what you think. People who are highly effective realize this and they don’t make excuses if something didn’t turn out the way they had planned. They try to understand what went wrong and take the necessary steps to ensure that the same mistake isn’t made again.

When you are proactive, you are value driven. When you are value driven it is easier to be productive and you will be more confident in your decisions. When you understand your values, it should be fairly easy to decide if the choice you need to make will compliment or go against your values.

One of the first steps you need to take to become proactive is to understand that you are where you are in life because of the choices you made 1 year ago, 1 month ago, 1 day ago. Good or bad, that is the reality and once yo except it you can move ahead. You can choose to continue doing what you are doing, but consider how this productivity (or lack of) is going to affect you in the future.

This is why I asked you to write our your goals, how can you be value driven if you don’t know your values or what you want in life? Your goals are the road map of your future.

Now, being proactive means that you will have to understand several things about your environment. You have to understand how the people you interact with affect your productivity, and by productivity I mean every aspect of your daily life from work to home. They are either working with you or against you. The level of influence that they have on you is something you have given them.

So what is the point? The point is this, when you realize the level of influence a specific person has on you, you can determine if this interaction is positive or negative. If they are negative they need to be removed from your life. If they are making you make choices that go against your values, it is counter-productive to your proactivity and this will eventually overlap into many aspects of your life.

As an example, I want you to think of a time when someone didn’t treat you with respect, made you feel really inadequate or incompetent. How did you feel? How would the situation have been different if you wouldn’t have given them the power to make you feel sad, mad, etc.? Now, I’m not trying to deny that we are emotional beings, things will affect you to some degree sometimes no matter what, but try to define the people who should actually have the privilege of influencing your emotions, your productivity, your life.

Proactive people would rather act than be acted upon. This means taking initiative, initiative is taking the responsibility to make something happen. You have the option of taking the steps to make something happen, or you can wait and let something that you have much less control over happen to you.

By taking initiative you are proclaiming that you have the power to influence your environment. Positive thinking is a very important aspect of this paradigm, and for good reason. You don’t see people who constantly say things like “I can’t” or “this is impossible” every having a positive impact on anyone’s life, especially their own. Our language becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Erase the “I can’t” and replace it with “I can” or “I will”. Start your goal statements with “I will”, it is very empowering.

Another big idea in the 1^st habit is the “Circle of Concern”. Draw a big circle, then draw another smaller circle in the center. Put all of your concerns in the big circle. You really only have control over a certain portion of your concerns,and it is these concerns that belong in the inner circle. The inner circle is the “circle of influence”. Positive energy will increase the size of your circle of influence and negative shrinks it, but your circle of influence shouldn’t ever get bigger than your circle of concern.

The problems or concerns we face fall into 1 of 3 categories: direct control (problems involving our own behavior), indirect control (problems involving other peoples behavior) or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as past or situational realities).

Most of the solutions to solving these problems will be addressed in the next 6 habits.

Finally, we know that being proactive means being responsible. This starts with making and keeping commitments to ourselves and others. This is a reflection of your integrity, your accountability, and the way you influence others.

These ideas of the 1^st habit should bring you to a higher self awareness.  Through this you can strengthen your life and others. Covey ends the 1^st habit with the proposition of a 30 day challenge. He challenges you to test the principle of proactivity for 30 days. Work only on your circle of influence. Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge, a model not a critic. Be part of the solution, not the problem.

William

-A review of “The 7 Habit’s of Highly Effective People”