Think for a minute about how your mind is working. Is it Quick or Alert? Your ability to do what you just did is uniquely human. Animals don't possess this ability. We call it "Self-Awareness" This is only why we can make and break our habits. Habits are powerful factors in our lives. It involves a process and a tremendous committment. Now, let's discuss the 7 habits that we must make to know ourselves better and they provide an incremental, sequential, highly-integrated approach to the development of Personal and Interpersonal effectiveness.
1. BE PROACTIVE
The first and most basic habit of a highly effective person in any environment is the habit of Proactivity. It means, we, humanbeings are responsible for our lives. Our behaviour is a function of our decisions and not conditions. Highly effective people recognize their responsibility. They never bother about their circumstances or conditions or behaviour. This behaviour is a product of their own conscience choice rather than their feeling.
Our basic nature is to act, and not to be acted upon. We must take the initiative, does not mean being pushy, obnoxious or aggressive but recognizing our responsibility to make things happen. Proactive people focus their efforts, The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying. The difference between poeple who exercise initiative and those who don't is just the difference between night and day.
To become Proactive, for a full day, listen to your language and to the language of the people around us. Select a problem from your work or personal life that is frustrating to you.
It is an initiative for having and developing personality.
2. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
This is based on the principle that "all things are created twice". The first one is the Mental Creation and the second is Physical Creation. We work with our mind until we get a clear image of what we want. The first creation is really what we want, that we have thought everything through. Let's take the example - Parenting. If anyone wants to raise responsible, self-disciplined children, they have to keep that end clearly in mind is they interact with their children on a daily basis. They can't behave toward them in ways that undermine their self-discipline or self-esteem.
In our personal lives, if we don't develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people to shape much of our lives. The unique human capacities of self-awareness, imagination and conscience enable us to examine first creations and make it possible for us to take charge of our own first creationm to write our own creation. It can be said that 'Leadership is the first creation and Management is the second creation'. Leadership deals with the top-line whereas Management is a bottom-line focus. No management success can compensate for failure in leadership. But leadership is hard because we are often caught in a management paradigm.
We can easily understand that - "Management is efficiency in climbing the leader of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaving against the right wall."
Set up time to completely separate yourself from daily activities and to begin work on your personal mission statement. Start a collection of notes, quotes and ideas you may want to use as resource material in writing your personal mission statement.
3. PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
This is the exercise of Independent Will toward becoming principle centered. We can't become principle-centered without being aware of developing our own proactive nature. In addition to imagination, self-awareness and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - Independent Will - that really makes effective self-management possible.
It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. The degree to which we have developed our independent will in our everyday lives is measured by our Personal Integrity, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves.
Effective Management is putting first things first while Leadership decides what "first things" are, it is management that puts them first. If we are an effective manager of ourselves, our discipline comes from within; it is a function of our independent will.
So, commit ourselves to start organizing on a weekly basis and set up a regular time to do it.
4. THINK WIN / WIN
Win is not a technique; it's a total philosophy of human interaction. Win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win means that agreemetns or solutions are mutually beneficial, satisfying. Win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person's success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others. It's not your way or my way; it's a better way, a higher way. The alternative for win is Lose. But we shouldn't get disheartened by our loss, rather we should take it positively and decide not to commit the same mistakes again.
Win has Five Dimensions. 1. CHARACTER 2. RELATIONSHIPS 3. AGREEMENTS
4. SUPPORTIVE SYSTEMS and 5. PROCESSES.
Character is the foundation of win and everything else builds on that foundation. From the foundation of character, we build and maintain relationships. From relationships, flow the agreements that five definition and direction to win. They are sometimes called 'Performance Agreements' or 'Partnership Agreements'. Win can only survive in an organization when the systems support it. You basically get what you reward. There is now way to achieve win ends with win/lose or lose/win means. We can't say," we're going to think win whether we like or not. So, the question become how to arrive at a win solution.
Win is not a personality technique. It comes from a character of integrity, maturity and the abundance mentality. It grows out of high-trust relationships.
Select a specific relationship where you would like to develop a win/win agreement. Try to identify a model of win/win thinking who, even in hard situations, really seeks mutual benefit.
5. SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
"Seek first to understand is very difficult approach. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people don't listen within the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply. They are either speak or preparing to speak.
Although it's risky and hard, seek first to understand is a correct principle manifest in many areas of life. It's the mark of all true professionals. As we learn to listen deeply to other people, we will discover tremendous differences in perception. We'll also begin to appreciate the impact that these differences can have as people try to work together in interdependent situations. Seek first to understand.......... then to be understood - knowing how to be understood is equally critical in reaching win.
Seeking to understand requires consideration, seeking to be understood requires courage. Win requires a high degree of both. So, it becomes important in interdependent situations, for us to be understood.
Next time we catch ourselves inappropriately using one of the biographical responses - Probing, Evaluating, Advising or Interpreting.
6. SYNERGIZE
Synergy is everywhere in nature. If we plant two plants close together, the roots comingle and improve the quality of the soil. so, that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. The challenge is to apply the principles of creative cooperation which we learn from nature, in our social interactions. Family life provides many opportunities to observe synergy and to practice it. The very way that a man and a woman bring a child into the world is synergetic. The essence of synergy is to value differences - to respect them, to build on strengths, to compensate for weaknesses.
When we communicate synergitically, we open our mind and heart and expressions to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options. Synergy is exciting. The possibilities of truly significant gain, of significant improvement are so real that it's worth the risk such openness entails.
The next time you have a disagreement or confrontation with someone attempt to understand the concerns underlying that person's position. Address those concerns in a creative and mutually beneficial way.
7. SHARPEN THE SAW
It is the habit that makes all the others possible. It is preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have - YOU. It is renewing the four dimensions of nature - Physical, Spiritual, Mental and Social.
Sharpening the Saw basically means expressing all four motivations. It means exercising all four dimensions of our nature, regularly and consistently n wise and balanced ways. To do this, we must be Proactive.
The physical dimension involves caring effectively for our physical body - eating the right kinds of foods, getting sufficient rest and relaxation. The spiritual dimension provides leadership to our life. It is our core, our centre, our committment to our value system. It is a private area of life and supremely important one.
Most of our mental development and study-discipline comes through formal education. Wisdom in watching television requires the effective self-management which enables us to discriminate and to select the informing, inspiring and entertaining programs which best serve and express our purpose and values. The social dimensions are centered on the principles of interpersonal leadership, emphatic communication and creative cooperation.
Commit to write down specific "Sharpen the Saw" in all four dimensions every week, to do them, and to evaluate your performance and results.
As Teilhard de chardin said, "We are not humanbeings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
So, if we follow all the above sketched steps and principles, we are sure, we will definitely reach the success.
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