7 Habits Of Highly Effective People - Self Improvement By Stephen Covey









Hey there! I want to bring to your attention to a new mindset. So, before I read this book, I never really had this super awesome outlook on life. And in fact that changed my thinking forever. So when you're in any situation in life, you can choose to be reactive or proactive. But the basic idea is that by choosing to be proactive you choose to increase your circle of influence. You see there are things that you can control and there are things you can't directly control. Such as the weather, where you were born or your personal decisions of your boss. Things that you can control, include how you react to it.





1. BE PROACTIVE

This is really the only thing you can control in life. If you react without thinking or you say a harsh word to your friend or you drink all night and live in self-indulgent after a long day where you just become depressed when the weather is gloomy. You are becoming a reactive person. You let the environment control you and you're simply a person reacting to stimuli. When you're reactive you focus on things you cannot control. For example, you may have been born into a socio-economic lower or middle class family. You may have been born into an abusive family. You may even been diagnosed with a terrible illness, but focusing on it will not change it. You know, what you can't control. This is the secret to being proactive and in turn becoming an effective person. You can control your work ethic, you can control how you treat the people in your life and you can control if you put on your seatbelt or not. By focusing on things that you can control you bring more power into your life and widen your circle of influence. So, in short reactive people are people who complain a lot instead of actually going out and changing their actions and proactive people understand that even if they're complaining was justified, complaining about it wouldn't change anything. It would just be negative toxins in their life, polluting their social environment of their peers. See most people choose to complain simply because it's easier. So let's move on to the second habit.





2. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

How do you want people to think of you at your funeral? The second habit is all about becoming the person you want to be by thinking deeply about how other people think of you.

No, I'm a mature enough person to not really care what most people think of me. But I do care what my loved ones think of me. I want my girlfriend to think I'm loyal trustworthy and fun to be around and because of this I'm not going to cheat on her. I'm not going to lie to her and I'm not going to fill our conversations with complaints or negative thoughts. See when you die and there's a crowd of people standing around your coffin. What will they say? What were their best memories of you or their worst memories of you. Think about the end before any major decision and this will help you become a more effective person. Do you want to be remembered as a person who added value to society? Maybe start filling your facebook statuses with more positivity and upbeat content. Basically, are you doing the things that allow you to say, you've become the person that you want to be? The second habit also goes into creation a bit. See according to Stephen Covey the author, everything is created twice. Once in the mind and once in the physical real-world. The problem is that many things are created in the mind, but are never manifested into tangible things because we tell ourselves I can't do it a lot of time. The only thing stopping you from doing something is yourself.

An even worse situation is when things aren't even created in the mind at all. For some people debt, drugs, despair or life problems prevent a person from thinking about creation and only on the negative outcomes of their situation. And this is where the first habit comes back. Stop focusing on what you can't control and you'll be able to create more, you'll be able to add more value to the world. The last thing Stephen Covey mentions in this chapter something called a personal mission statement. Now, this is the one line sentence that you can rely on to give you a sense of purpose in the world. A very simple mission statement is, i want the world to be better because I was here. In fact, that's Will Smith's personal mission statement. If you keep this mission statement in mind when you make every decision, you will always keep the end in mind. Now that we've talked about the end. Let's talk about the beginning.



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3. PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST

So, Stephen Covey came with this thing called the urgent and important matrix. Basically everything you can do falls into one of four categories. Here's the super easy graphic that can make it easier to understand. Basically anything urgent is something that needs to be done as soon as possible and anything important is something that makes us effective. The advice the author gives is to do things that are not urgent but they have to be important as soon as possible because if you do things that aren't urgent before they are urgent, then you won't have to be afraid about doing them last minute. Here's the thing that kind of annoys me, if iask most people what they thought was important, they would say things like their health, their relationships, their financial credibility. But when you look into their actions, they spend their time doing other meaningless things like organizing papers, going out for long lunches, hanging out with the wrong crowds, fussing over a little crab, doing stupid stuff for the better part of their day that doesn't lead them to bettering the things that they said was important to them. So, you got to put first things first. Spend some time with your family before you waste your time doing something like playing video games. Start putting effort into creating a monthly budget instead of putting effort in pinning new things on Pinterest. Go and work out first before watching that new episode. The problem here is something psychologists call cognitive dissonance and it's when the things you say are most important to you aren't the same things that you're spending most of your time on. In fact some psychologists say that this is unhealthy. The disconnect between what we say we will do and what we actually do is terrible and I think working on this would improve a lot of our lives.





So the first three habits are about managing yourself and what you can do independently. There are things you can make changes, mindsets you can alter and attitudes you can adjust to. They set the foundation for the next three habits, which has to do with becoming an effective person in society and evolved being dependent.





4. Think win-win





Stephen Covey says that there are six types of relationships and you can think of them as personal business or even biological animalistic relationships. The first two are what most people think the world is made of "lose-win" or "win-lose". which means for me to win you have to lose or the other way around. People with this type of mentality think that to have the largest skyscraper in the neighborhood, they must tear all the other skyscrapers down. You should avoid these situations because someone will lose even if the net gain is 0. In fact, most people don't even agree to us unless they believe in reciprocal altruism in the long run when lose is like a parasite, where one wins and the other loses. The next relationship that we're going to talk about is just toxic and nasty. It's called lose-lose. The best example I can think of is there's a story where this couple got married. Married couple years later they decide to get divorced but the man knew that his ex-wife would win half of everything that he owned in court. But he had quite the ego and he didn't want her getting his Ferrari or Lamborghini. So, he sold them both for $10 each. See both people in this situation lost a substantial amount of value because of their hatred and you should definitely avoid any type of relationship like this. The next two relationships are not bad, but they should also be avoided. Slowly when relationships aren't really a relationship at all since they only affect one person. People in this type of relationship don't care what anyone else gets as long as they get what they want. It's actually very selfish of that. The next relationship is called No Deal. No Deal is a neutral mentality and it's actually the most preferable one if the last one is not offered. Basically each individual agrees that if both parties don't win there is no deal. In other words, it's completely unselfish. If i can't get what I want without you benefiting to it's not worth it and there's no deal. Now the next relationship we're going to talk about is called win-win and these happen in couple relationships or business relationships and even in ecology mutualistic relationships or symbiosis. It is determined to animals, benefit from living together. For you to win the other person does not have to lose. I could buy and read a book that gives me huge insight into a recent problem i'm dealing with and because of this i benefit from the advice and the author benefits from the money. I can write an article and upload it on my website and benefit from the advertisement revenue and the viewers will benefit from the life changing perspective. So, start searching for win-win relationships and you will surely become an effective person. Aha the next habit. I love this habit.



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5. Seek First To Understand And, Then To Be Understood

So the author gives a little story where a dad is talking to his coworker about a situation with his son. The father and son have a talk. After the talk dad goes to his friend for advice. 'I just can't understand my son sometimes', the dad says. He won't listen to me and his friend goes, let me rephrase that. You can't understand your son because he won't listen to you, says the friend. I think to understand another person you have to listen to them. Honestly when I read this little story, i actually got Goose Bumps, but the author is so right. How many times do we get mad at another person because they don't think the way that we think but we haven't even tried to hear their side of the story first. We see the world through our eyes. Even from a baby, we are born egotistical and understanding others views does not come natural. Learning to become an effective person is understanding, everyone has their own perspectives and opinions from their own personal experiences in life events. You should seek first to understand because once you understand the situation and the person's feelings towards that you might have a better chance of helping them understand you. So, this is a little technical but i want to get into a five levels of listening that covey covers.

Ignoring - it's just downright rude

Pretending - Barely responding

" Yeah, Uh-huh, Right"

Selective Hearing

We only hear certain part of the conversation. Usually only the parts that benefit us and it's really easy to do this with someone who talks a lot or a preschool child.

Attentive Listening

Another level up is called attentive listening, which is not necessarily listening to the content. But rather the way the words are being spoken and you focus on the energy. If you listen to a motivational speaker in another language and you actually get motivated that's called attentive listening.

Empathic Listening

The last type of listening we hardly ever experienced and it's called empathic listening. This type of listening is the listening with the intent to understand. You will get inside the other person's frame of thinking and understand them better and it's not just the words they say or how they're saying them either. We gave them all of our attention including paying attention to their body language and paying attention to their feelings. This is very powerful. Because it gives you accurate data to work with, to understand their thoughts, feelings and motives instead of you being a brick wall saying conform to me. Another form of great advice Stphen Covey gives is to diagnose before you prescribe. Which basically means to understand before you give advice. One of the best ways to find more win-win situation is to understand what the other person wants and needs before you can find a way both of you can benefit.





6. Synergize

So, the next habit is called synergize and it took me a while to completely understand this. But it basically means the interaction of two or more parts produce an outcome that is greater than the sum of their individual parts. So, very basic version of synergy comes from a teaching and physiology. So, one part might be our heart another might be our brain and the third might be our stomach. Of course, these are very complex organs individually, but if they work together, they are extremely effective. Another example would be trees and squirrels. Separately, trees could reproduce by their nuts falling to the ground, but unless there's a really strong wind they won't spread very quickly. On the other hand squirrels could live without trees, but they would have to live in bushes and eat only berries. They might struggle hibernating and eating food in the winter together though. The squirrels get protections in the trees as well as tons of nuts to eat. The trees get the benefit of getting their nuts spread across even more land together, they achieve and grow more than if they were separate. And, one last example would be drugs and alcohol. The effect of sleeping medicine is intensified greatly when mixed with alcohol. But, i do not suggest this trying on your own and in fact most doctors warn against it. These are considered as constructive synergy but there's also reductive synergy. An example of this is if you had the plague but then you're also diagnosed with depression. Both are really bad to have and if you have them at the same time. Well, you might need some external help. There's a medicine for this called "Comorbidity". The opposite of synergy can also happen sometimes referred to as negative synergy and this is when waste is created. Let's say, you spend 5 million dollars on a business deal and another company puts in five million dollars so that you both can invest in the same company for more money. However, the business that you put money in actually failed because it went over a certain amount and because of taxes it failed. The sum of two parts is actually less than the total amount of both separately. An example of negative synergy would be one plus one equals one half. Seeking synergy will benefit your life in many ways. But particularly your business relationships and general life will benefit if you can find synergy. Synergy is basically one one plus one equals three. That was a sixth habit. And that concludes the habits that you can do with improving yourself by dealing with others.



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7. Sharpen The Saw

Now, we're going to be moving on how you can unleash your future potential by investing. So the best investment you can make is in yourself and by reading this book you're ahead of the curve and by reading this article you have a huge advantage of other people. So Covey gives the example of this guy cutting down a tree with a very dull saw. I mean, it's going to take him at least six hours to cut down that huge tree. If he were to spend one hour sharpening the saw it would only take him three hours to cut down the tree, leading to a total of four hours instead of six. See, how simple this is. How easy it is for the guy to cut the tree down faster, but we hardly ever apply the same principle to our lives. For example, we can sharpen our physical saw by eating well, maintaining a healthy diet and exercising regularly. Let's sharpen the saw by working out three times a week instead of paying for it with advanced medical treatment in 40 years. Another example of sharpening our minds is by learning reading and teaching. There are plenty of studies that show teaching someone something is a great way to ingrain ideas into our head. And in fact, it's one of the reasons I'm writing this article. Instead of reading the instructions manual we try to do it ourselves and waste three hours. When we could have humbled ourselves in sharpening our saw. Covey also suggest, sharpening some other areas of our life such as emotional and spiritual areas. You can invest in your relationships with others in many ways. Some of which include spending time with your friends, playing games with your family or studying with classmates. Enriching your spiritual life is also important, whether you're religious or not. Listening to music, engaging in creating art and spending time in prayer or meditation will always add value to your life in the long run. Living a meaningful and effective life doesn't just happen, you have to make time to cultivate the areas of your life you want to produce fruits and you do this by sharpening the saw.









I hope after reading this article you've gained at least one gold nugget of knowledge or practical life advice that may move you in the right direction to becoming a more effective person.



