The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change Paperback – November 9, 2004

I rarely if ever leave reviews on purchases, but I felt the need to share this one. I've spent the past several years trying to figure out what I was doing wrong when it came to happiness. I had every reason to be happy, but yet felt this deep hollowness inside. I've tried all the positive thinking quick fixes, meditation, law of attraction, etc. Nothing seemed to click or "cure" this aching inside. It wasn't until I read the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, that the fog finally lifted. This book taught me why all those quick fixes don't work and how my happiness depended on my own internal work and efforts. I encourage anyone who is struggle with a similar situation or everyone for that matter to read this book. It'll change your perspective on life!

Change is hard. How can I change? I suggest two practices for making changes in your life. The first is to follow your conscience. I speak a lot about the idea that between stimulus (what happens to us) and response (what we do about it) is a space to choose, and what we do with that space ultimately determines our growth and happiness. In this space lie the four human endowments of conscience, imagination, self-awareness, and independent will. Of the four, conscience is the governing one. Often, when we are not at peace in our lives, it is because we are living lives in violation of our conscience and deep down we know it. We can tap into conscience simply by asking ourselves questions and pausing to “hear” the answer. For example, try asking yourself the following questions: What is the most important thing I need to start doing in my personal life that would have the greatest positive impact? Think deeply. What comes to mind? Now, ask yourself another question: What is the most important thing that I need to start doing in my professional life that would have the greatest positive impact? Again, pause, think, and go deep inside yourself to find the answer. If you’re like me, you’ll recognize those most important things by listening to your conscience—that voice of wisdom, self-awareness, and common sense within you. Another great question to ask yourself is: What is life now asking of me? Pause. Think carefully. You may sense that you’ve been unfocused and need to be far more careful with the way you spend your time. Or you may decide that you need to start eating better and exercising because you’re constantly tired. Or you may sense that there is a key relationship you need to repair. Whatever it is, there is great strength and power in following through with a change that is endorsed by your conscience. Without deep conviction, you won’t have the strength to follow through with your goals when the going gets tough. And conviction comes through conscience. We all have three different lives: a public life, a private life, and an inner life. Our public life is what others observe. Our private life is what we do when we are alone. Our inner life is that place we go to when we really want to examine our motives and our deepest desires. I highly recommend developing this inner life. This is the place where our conscience can be most instructive because while here we are in the best frame of mind to listen. A second key to change is to change your role. As I’ve always said, if you want to make incremental changes in your life, change your behaviors. But if you want to make significant change, work on your paradigms, the way in which you see and interpret the world. And the best way to change your paradigm is to change your role. You may get promoted to be a new project manager at work. You may become a new mother or a new grandfather. You may take on a new community responsibility. Suddenly your role has changed and you see the world differently and better behaviors naturally flow out of the changed perspective. Sometimes role changes are external events, such as a change in a job responsibility. But other times we can change our role just by changing our mindset or our perception of a situation. Let’s say, for example, that you are seen as a control freak at work and that you know you need to start trusting others and letting go. Well, perhaps you could see yourself differently and redefine your role from one of “supervisor” to one of “advisor.” With this change of role, this mental shift, you would start to see yourself as an advisor to your team members who are empowered to make decisions and seek your counsel when doing so instead of being the one who has to own everything and constantly follow up. I’m often asked, Which of the 7 Habits is the most important? My answer is: The most important habit is the one you are having the most difficult time living. Use your endowments of self-awareness and conscience to help you sense which habit you may need to focus on. Often the best way to change is to pick the one thing, the single habit, and to make small commitments to yourself related to that habit and keep them. Little by little your discipline and self-confidence will increase.

Books like Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook and its counterpart The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People sell for the same basic reason cookbooks or diet and exercise books do: People are eager to improve their lives. I've met several people who feel that self-improvement books are hogwash and say they don't need a book to give them motivation to do something. That's fine, and if you're one of those people, then this book isn't for you. However, if you do happen to struggle with improving certain aspects of your life, you might want to read this. And if you do read it and don't like it, what did you lose, really, except the bit of time you spent reading and the cost of the book?

Essentially, this book is a kind of cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy is a mode of therapy whose sole aim is to get a person to improve his or her stinkin' thinkin'. Any person can do that with a little reorientation regarding what's important to them, especially as these personal values turn into a real action plan. In other words, the aim is to get a person to discover what he or she values the most and then after landing on that then put those values into action in daily life, constantly renewing what was committed to. I'll state this a bit more concretely in a moment, but first let's see what Covey's actual recommendations are.

The first point is that you have the choice to how you would like to respond to any event. You can choose to be angry, choose to be sad, choose to be happy, puzzled, etc., but the ultimate realization here is that between that moment when an external event occurs and your response to that external event, you can choose to respond any way you want. Now, it's true, our default settings are sometimes overwhelming, and sometimes naturally we all feel like we can't choose how to respond to a situation because a feeling overwhelms us. But any time before you find yourselves beginning to act out one of these default responses, ask yourself if this is the only way you can respond to it and if it is the best way.

Points two and three involving keeping your endgame in mind when making plans and prioritizing activities that get you closer to your endgame. A person playing chess wants to checkmate the king. Presumably, a person doing exercise wants to get healthier (or lose weight or feel better, etc.). Think about the ends you want to put your activities toward and realize that if you are getting too concerned in life now with matters that don't matter, that is, that don't match the end-states you want to reach, then maybe you should reconsider the activities you're engaging in now to better reach those end-goals. There should be constant movement toward those ends and less time spent with distracting matters. This step, by the way, involves a lot of discernment on someone's part to find out what he or she really wants to achieve here, and, yes, is very difficult.

Fourth point: When you want to do anything together with anybody, ever, work hard to make the situation a Win-Win situation, and if you can't arrive at a Win-Win situation, then it just must be a No-Deal situation. Any given solution must be good for both parties and if it isn't then it really shouldn't be done. If an agreement is made that's not Win-Win, then one party will feel like he or she is getting the bad end of the stick.

The fifth point is more difficult than it seems, and that is engage in empathic communication with other people. This means listen first before you yourself want to be understand. To make sure you're listening well, track the other person's feelings about something and be able to rephrase what that person's concerns are as though they were your own. If you do this, then you will truly be able to understand another person better.

The sixth point is about creative cooperation, which translates to engaging in activities with other people that will not only be mutually beneficial but will arrive at a result that no one could have done alone. This could be all sorts of things: getting along well with your significant other to make the quality of both your lives better, collaborating with someone at work to do a better job on something, and those kinds of things. As for other points, this is more difficult than one would think when trying to actually make the world better for two or more people. But when implemented, it really strikes at the heart of a lot of problems, which is not making the world better by you being in it; the world should be a better place before of people.

The last and final point is balanced renewal regarding spiritual, mental, social, and emotional priorities. Everyone should be doing something every day to make these priorities a way of life, and that involves the real grind of life. With this last point, I'll be able to give you a practical example of all the points through sharing something personal. Here goes.

Because I realize I can choose what to be concerned about (point 1), I check my anger and frustration and negative emotions. By doing so, I can spend more of my time and energy thinking about what I want to accomplish (2), which is going back to school to pursue clinical psychology with the hopes of one day being a working therapist. So now I prioritize (3) what I need to do to accomplish that goal, namely by taking classes and reading about the field and workplace of clinical psychologists. I plan to move back to the U.S. with my significant other, and we both talked about and understand that to make our relationship work we will need to be together there, and she wants to be in the U.S. and I want her to be there while I pursue my studies (4). I have asked her about her concerns (5) and must take them into account in my decision making. We plan to work together (6) while we are there professionally to have dual incomes, and I and she will also continue to do what we will do to make ourselves happier and healthier people (the final point 7).

This is way too long and all just to say I'd recommend this book, and the counterpart The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's really helped me to be less of a lazy slub and more of a productive, thoughtful person. I hope it would help some of you too.