7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Several years ago, I’ve tried to read a book with above title written by Stephen Covey but couldn’t stomach the content. Sensing my curiosity, one day while sending my father for a business trip at KLIA, he bought me a book by Stephen’s son, Sean, 7 Habits for Highly Effective Teens. I read the book till the end and inspired to practice all 7 habits from my college student’s paradigm. For the past 3 days, I’ve been attending a seminar by an associate trainer on the subject. This training, have reminded me back with some principles explained further.

A principle is changeless, self proven, the response is predictable and accepted by all faith. Values are something that we hold on to as our moral guide when a situation becomes tough. Values are not necessarily principles unless it is aligned. Maturity is a process of evolution from totally dependant as a baby towards independent and finally moving ahead towards accepting the concept of interdependent.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

In between a response of a human being to a stimulus, there lies freedom and the power to choose. In other words, we have the freedom to choose the response towards anything that is subjected to us. Being reactive is letting the surrounding or the action of other people controlling the way we behave.
Circle of Concerns consists of parameters that might affect things in our life but we have no control on it. Within Circle of Concerns lies another circle called Circle of Influence which consists on parameters that we have direct control upon. As a proactive person, we’ll try to expand our circle of influence to gain more control on our life.

Habit 2 : Begins with the Ends

Mental creations precede physical creations. Before a masterpiece is completed, a clear vision on the final results is important to serve as the guide during the process. This habit is where we decide on our center of life based on our paradigm. The best is to set your life based on principles. Alternatively people have different center of life, some have spouse, family, work, money, enemy, self or pleasure to name a few.
Then to clarify our purpose in life, we set our own Personal Mission Statement.

Habit 3 : First Things First

Again, Time Matrix plays important role in our time management. Appropriate time spending on QII (Planning and Preparation) will reduce the time and stress from working in other quadrant. By identifying our role and goals in Habit 2, it’s easier to spend more time in QII. By arranging the big rocks first only then we can fit in the smaller pebbles for better effectiveness.

By effectively applying all the above 3 habits, it will lead us to Private Victory thus towards Independent level.