7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Self Improvement by Stephen Covey
So before speaking about the first habit i want to bring to your attention a new mindset so before i read this book I never really had this super-awesome outlook on life and in fact it changed my thinking forever so when you're in any situation in life you can choose to be reactive more 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 in 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 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 were 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 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 when 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 including 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 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 now I'm mature enough person and 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 over their best memories of you or their worst memories of you be thinking about the end before any major decision and this will help you become a more effective person 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 half but 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 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 and even worse situation is when things aren't even created in the mind at all for some people debt drugs despair or other life problems prevent a person from thinking about creation and only on the negative outcomes of their situation and this is where the first have it comes back stop focusing on what you can control and you'll be able to create more you'll be able to add more value to the world the last thing Steven Covey mentions in this chapter something called a personal mission statement now this is the one line sit-ins 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 Oprah wants to be a teacher and be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they ever could be 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 so Stephen Covey came up 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 they 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 fret about doing them last minute here's the thing that kind of annoys me if I ask most people what they thought was important they would say things like their health their relationships their financial credibility 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 crowd fussing over 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 your effort 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 an attitude you can adjust to they set the foundation for the next three habits which have to do with becoming an effective person in society and involve being dependent so the fourth habit is called 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 to 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 20 in fact most people don't even agree to us in this they believe in reciprocal altruism in the long run with lose is like a parasite where one wins and the other losses 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 couple years later they decided to get divorced but the man knew that his ex-wife when 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 ten dollars 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 to relationships are not bad but they should also be avoided solely win 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 that the next relationship is called No Deal or No Deal is a neutral mentality and it's actually the most preferable one is 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 the next relationship we're gonna talk about is called win-win and these happen in couple relationships or business relationships and even in ecology mutualistic relationships or symbiosis is the term 12 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 make a video and uploaded to youtube 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 haha the next habit i love this happen so the other gives a little story where that is talking to his coworker about a situation with his son the father and son have a talk after the talk to dad goes to his friend for advice I just can't understand my son sometimes that ad 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 thought 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 we get mad at another person because they don't think the way that we think 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 the five levels of listening that Covey of covers the first is called ignoring and it's just downright rude so the second level is the kind of level my sister talks to to my mom it's called pretending yeah uh-huh right you're at least responding to the person the third level is called selective hearing we only hear certain parts of the conversation usually only the parts of benefit us and it's really easy to do this with someone who talks a lot or preschool child 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 the last type of listening we hardly ever experience 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 give 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 Stephen 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 situations is to understand what the other person wants and needs before you can find a way both of you can benefit 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 to 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 your brain and the third maybe your 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 can reproduce by their nuts falling to the ground please refrain from commenting about this unless there's a really strong wind they won't spread very quickly on the other hand squirrels can 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 scrolls get protections in the trees as well as tons of nuts to eat the trees get the benefit of getting our nut 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 and not suggest trying this on your own and in fact most doctors and warned against it these are considered constructive synergy but there's also reductive synergy an example of this is if you had the plague it 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 and medicine there's actually work for this and it's called come morbidity 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 five million dollars on a business deal and another company puts in five million dollars for the you both can invest in the same company for more money however the business that you put money and 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 energy 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 plus one equals three that was a sixth Abbott and that concludes the habits that you can do with improving yourself by dealing with others now we're going to be moving on how you can unleash your future potential by investing to the best investment you can make is in yourself am I reading this book you're ahead of the curve and by watching this video you have a huge advantage of other people so comfy gives the example of this guy cutting down a tree with a very dole salt I mean it's gonna take him at least six hours to cut down this 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 we 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 while 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 her head and in fact it's one of the reasons i'm making this video instead of reading the instruction manual we try to do it ourselves and waste three hours when we could have humbled ourselves and sharpened our mental song but he also suggests sharpening some other areas our life such as emotional and spiritual areas you can invest in your relationships with others in many ways some of which includes 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 song i hope after watching this video you've gained at least one gold nugget of knowledge or practical life advice they move you in the right direction of becoming a more effective person if you like this video please leave a big fat like if you want more educational valuable life improving videos like this subscribe thanks for watching
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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://ezpropertysolutions411.com/2019/02/25/7-habits-of-highly-effective-people-self-improvement-by-stephen-covey/