The 7 Habits

This week I had the opportunity to attend a seminar on The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. While I thought there would be a few useful things to learn from this class, I was surprised at the depth of this course and I loved every minute of it.

The first habit is to be Proactive. The focus of this habit is to make your own choices and be a product of your choices instead of letting your circumstances control you. Part of this is learning to be responsible for your choices. Some ways to do this is to make sure you pause when something happens so you can think before making your choice instead of just reacting. Another thing we learned is using proactive language such as "I choose to..." instead of "I have to...".

The second habit is to Begin With the End in Mind. This was my favorite section. This section is all about thinking about where you want your life to go or on a smaller scale where you want a project or something else to go. We should spend time thinking on where we want to go instead of just acting. May be as simple as having an agenda for a meeting or planning what you want to do on a vacation to complex as a Personal Mission Statement or a blue print for a building. We spent a lot of time thinking about relationships, long-term goals and those who have influenced us. Once we spent this time thinking over our lives we wrote a Personal Mission Statement. This is a statement that says what we want to do with our lives and where we want to go. By having this statement and reviewing it often we can focus on where we want to go instead of just seeing where life leads us.

The third habit is Put First Things First. Most of our time is spend doing urgent tasks, some important and many not important while ignoring important but not urgent items. By doing things such as planning out our week first and then each day we should be able to focus on all the important issues, even the not urgent ones. It is important to look at the important but not urgent issues because they will soon turn into urgent items if we keep ignoring them.

The fourth habit is to Think Win-Win. By trying to think win-win we are trying to find the best solution for everyone. In our society we are very oriented toward a win-lose attitude. The other side must lose for us to win. By caring about the other side and having an attitude of wanting for both sides to win you can come up with a much better solution than what either of you were fighting for.

The fifth habit is Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. In this habit when dealing with each other we usually spend all of our effort on getting the other person to understand our point of view. Everyone is so focused on getting the other side to understand their point of view so they don't have time to actually listen to the other side. If we take time to actually understand the other side first we can come to better solutions quicker. You don't have to agree with the other side to understand them and where they are coming from.

the sixth habit is to Synergize. This means if all sides come together and work together you should be able to come up with a solution that is far better than any of the original ideas. The first step is to listen to the other side until you can repeat their view point back to them and they agree you understand what they are saying. They then must listen and repeat back your viewpoint. By doing this you stop trying to fight and must actually listen and understand the other party. Once this is done you can find the common ground and work from their instead of focusing on where you don't agree.
Synergy or Third Alternative is 1+1 = 3 you come up with a much better answer.
Compromise is 1+1 = 1 1/2 because you both lose something.
Defensiveness is 1+1 = 1/2
Hostility is 1+1 = -1

The seventh and final habit is Sharpen the Saw. This habit means we must take time to renew ourselves in body, heart, mind and soul. We must take the time to renew and improve ourselves or we will get burnt out and be much less effective.

I suggest everyone read this book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey or take the course if you get a chance. I learned a lot from this course and hope I am able to use it in my life.