L07: Entrepreneurial Journal

Each week it is a privilege to be able to learn, the measure of knowledge acquired each week is more and more and more.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has become so representative of increasing personal effectiveness that it has almost become a cliché, even to the point where it is derided as representative of the inauthenticity and shallowness of many who claim to practice it. I found myself oddly embarrassed to be seen reading this book on the subway – lest someone attribute that same character to me.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

The author defines proactivity (and the paradigm shift that comes with it) as exercising your freedom to choose self-awareness, imagination, conscience, or independent will in between stimulus and response. If you’re unhappy, unsuccessful, etc., it’s because you chose to let something make you that way instead of choosing your own response. This is not to minimize the effect that genetics, upbringing, or environment have on who a person is; however, being an effective person requires that you recognize your responsibility to shape your response to those things.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Whatever is at the center of your life will be the source of your security (your sense of worth), guidance (your source of direction in life), wisdom (your perspective on life), and power (your capacity to act and accomplish).

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Effective management means putting first things first, and doing the things that other people don’t want to do. From Habits 1 and 2, you must have a burning “yes” inside you that allows you to say “no” to other things that don’t align with your principles and goals.

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

The key to this chapter is that in most difficult situations, the problem is the system, not the people. By approaching those situations with the question of how we can change the system in order to make it work for all involved, many difficult problems can be resolved.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

This habit is powerful because it is always in your circle of influence to seek first to understand, then to be understood. When people understand each other, the door is opened for third alternatives – win/win solutions.

Habit 6: Synergize

The key here is that synergy of this type doesn’t have to be a rare experience. We can create it in our everyday lives, beginning to live at a higher level by putting the first five habits into practice and adding a courageous amount of authenticity and openness. To be able to consistently operate at this level is to achieve the ability to be more effective than most people can even dream of being.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

1. Mental (reading, visualizing, planning, writing)
2. Physical (exercise, nutrition, stress management)
3. Emotional (service, empathy, synergy, intrinsic security)
4. Spiritual (value clarification & commitment, study & meditation)