1) Be proactive.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour (H. D. Thoreau). As human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Look at the word responsibility "response-ability" the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice. based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

2) Begin with the end in mind.

This principle is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.

The carpenter's rule is «measure twice, cut once».

Through imagination, we can visualize the uncreated worlds of potential that li within us. Through conscience, we can come in contact with universal laws or principles with our own singular talents and avenues of contribution, and with the personal guidelines within which we can most effectively develop them. Combined with self-awareness, these two endowments empower us to [re]-write our own script.

Do a Personal Mission Statement

The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focuses on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.

3) Put first things first.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least (Goethe).

Question 1: What one thing could you do (you aren't doing now) that if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?

Question 2: What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?

Habit three is the second creation, the physical creation. It's the fulfillment, the actualization, the natural emergence of Habits 1 and 2. It's the exercise of independent will toward becoming principle-centered. It's the day-in, day-out, moment-bymoment doing it.

My own personal maxim of personal effectiveness is ths: Manage from the left [hemisphere]; lead from the right 'hemisphere].

4) Think Win/Win

There are six paradigms of Human Interaction. Win/win is not a technique; it's a total philosophy of human interaction. In fact, it is one of six paradigms of interaction. The alternative paradigms are Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Lose/Lose, Win, and Win/Win or No Deal.

No Deal basically means that if we can't find a solution that would benefit us both, we agree to disagree agreeably No Deal. No expectations have been created, no performance contracs established...

When you have aNo Deal as an option in your mind, you feel liberated because you have no need to manipulate people, to push your own agenda, to drive for what you want. You can be open.

5) Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Communication is the most important skill in life. But, consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What trainig or education have you had that enbles you to listen so that you really, deeply understand another human being from that individual's own frame of reference?

Exercise:

a) Select a relationship in which you sense the Emotional Bank Account is in the red. Try to understand and write down the situation from the other person's point of view. In your next interaction, listen for understanding, comparing what you are hearing with what you wrote down. How valid were your assumptions? Did you really understand that individual's perspective?

b) Share the concept of empathy with someone close to you. Tell him or her you want to work on really listening to others and ask for feedback in a week. How did you do? How did it make that person feel?

c) The next time you have the opportunity to watch people communicate, cover your ears for a few minutes and just watch. What emotions are being communicated that may not come accross in words alone?

d) Next time you catch yourself inappropriately using one of the autobiographical responses probing, evaluating, advising, or interpreting try to turn the situation into a deposit by acknowledgement and apology ("I'm sorry, I just realized I'm not really trying to understand. Could we start again?")

e) Base your next presentation on empathy. Describe the other point of view as well or better than its proponents; then seek to have your point understood from their frame of reference.

6) Synergize.

Simply defined, synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It means that the relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part.

When you communicater synergistically, you are simply opening your mind and heart and expressions to new possibilitis, new alternatives, new options.

You begin with the belief that parties involved will gain more insight, and that the excitement of that mutual learning and insight will create a momentum toward more and more insights, learnings and growth.

Exercise:

a) Think about a person who typically sees things differently than you do. Consider ways in which those differences might be used as stepping-stones to third alternative solutions. Perhaps you could seek out his or her views on a current project or problem, valuing the different views you are likely to hear.

b) Make a list of people who irritate you. Do they represent different views that could lead to synergy if you had greater intrinsinc security and valued the difference?

c) Identify a situation in which you desire greater teamwork and synergy. What conditions would need to exist to support synergy? What can you do to create those conditions?

d) 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.

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.

Habit 7 is taking time to sharpen the saw. It surrounds the other habits on the Seven Habits paradigm because it is the habit that makes all the others possible. It's renewing the four dimensions of your nature physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.

«Sharpen the saw» basiccally means expressing all four motivations. It means exercising all four dimensions of our nature, regularly and consistently in 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, and exercising on a regular basis.

Renewing the spiritual dimension provides leadership to your life. The spiritual dimension is your core, your center, your commitment to your value system. It's a very private area of life and a supremely important one. It draws upon the sources that inspire and uplift you and tie you to the timeless truths of all humanity. I find renewal in daily prayerful meditation on the scriptures because they represent my value system. As I read and meditate, I feel renewed, strengthened, centered and recommited to serve.

Immersion in great literature or great music can provide a similar renewal of the spirit for some. There are others who find it in the way they communicate with nature. Nature bequeaths its own blessing on those who immerse themselves in it. When you're able to leave the noise and the discord of the city and give yourself up to the harmony and rhythm of nature, you come back renewed. For a time, you're undisturbable, almost unflappable, until gradually the noise and the discord from outside start to invade that inner sense of peace.

Most of our mental development and study discipline comes through formal education. Education continuing education, continually honing and expanding the mind is vital mental renewal. Sometimes that involves the external discipline of the classroom or systematized study programs; more often it does not. Proactive people can figure out many, many ways to educate themselves.

It is extremely valuable to train the mind to stand apart and examine its own program. That, to me, is the definition of a liberal education the ability to examine the programs of life against larger questions and purposes and other paradigms. Training, without such education, narrows and closes the mind so that the assumptions underlying the training are never examined. That's why it is so valuable to read broadly and to expose yourself to great minds.

The social and the emotional dimensions of our lives are tied together because our emotional life is primarily, but not exclusively, developed out of and manifested in our relationships with others.

I believe that a life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal growth. I do not agree with the popular success literature that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude that you can psych yourself into peace of mind.

Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.

There is also the intrinsinc security that comes as a result of effective interdependant living. There is a security in knowing that Win/Win solutions do exist.

There is security in knowing that you can step out of your own frame of reference without giving it up, that you can really, deeply understand another human being.

There is security that comes when you authentically, creatively and cooperativly interact with other people and really experience these interdependent habits.

There is intrinsinc security that comes from service, from helping other people in a meaningful way.

Scripting others

Most people are a function of the social mirror, scripted by the opinions, the perceptions, the paradigms of the people around them. As interdependent people, you and I come from a paradigm which includes the realization that we are a part of that social mirror.

We can choose to reflect back to others a clear, undistorted vision of themselves. We can affirm their proactive nature and treat them as responsible people. We can help script them as principle-centered, value-based, independant, worthwhile individuals. And, with the Abundance Mentality, we realize that giving a positive reflection to others in no way diminishes us. It increases us because it increases the opportunities for effective interaction with other proactive people.

Balance in renewal

The self-renewal process must include balanced renewal in all four dimensions of our nature: physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional.

Although renewal in each dimension is important, it only becomes optimally effective as we deal with all four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. To nglect any one area negatively impacts the rest.

Balanced renewal is optimally synergistic. The things you do to sharpen the saw in any one dimension have positive impact in other dimensions because they are so highly interrelated.

The more proactive you are (Habit 1), the more effectively you can exercise personla leadership (Habit 2) and management (Habit 3) in your life. The more effectively ypou manage your life (Habit 3), the more Quadrant II (things that are not urgent but are important) renewing activities you can do (Habit 7). The more you seek first to understand (Habit 5), the more effectively you can go for synergetic Win/Win solutions (Habits 4 and 6). The more you improve in any of the habits that lead to independance (Habits 1, 2 and 3), the more effective you will be in interdependent situations (Habits 4, 5 and 6). And renewal (Habit 7) is the process of renewing all the habits.

As you renew your physical dimension, you reinforce your personal vision (Habit 1), the paradigm of your own self-awareness and free will, of proactivity, of knowing that you are free to act instead of being acted upon, to choose your own response to any stimulus. This is probably the greatest benefit of physical exercise. Each Daily Private Victory makes a deposit in your personal intrinsinc security account.

As you renew your spiritual dimension, you reinforce your personal leadership (Habit 2). You increase your ability to live out of your imagination and conscience instead of only your memory, to deeply understand your innermost paradigms and values, to create within yourself a center of correct principles, to define your own unique mission in life, to rescript yourself to live your life in harmony with xcorrect principles and to draw upon your personal sources of strenght. The rich private life you create in spiritual renewal makes tremendous deposits in your personal security account.

As you renew your mental dimension, you reinforce your personal management (Habit 3). As you plan, you force your mind to recognize high leverage Quadrant II activities, priority goals, and activities to maximize the use of your time and energy, and you organize and execute your activities around your priorities. As you become involved in continuing education, you increase your knowledge base and you increase your options. Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That's true financial independance. It's not having wealth; it's having the power to produce wealth. It's intrinsinc.

The Daily Private Victory a minimum of one hour a day in renewal of the physical, spiritual, and mental dimensions is the key to the development of the Seven Habits and it's completely within your circle of influence. It is the Quadrant II focus time necessary to integrate these habits into your life, to become principle-centered.

It's also the foundation for the Daily Public Victory. It's the source of intrinsinc security you need to sharpen the saw in the social/emotional dimension. It gives you the personal strenght to focus on your Circle of Influence in interdependant situations to look at others through the Abundance Mentality paradigm, to genuinely value their differences and to be happy for their success. It gives you the foundation to work for genuine understanding and for synergetic Win/Win solutions, to practice Habits 4, 5 and 6 in an interdependant reality.

Exercise:

a) Make a list of activities that would help you keep in good physical shape, that would fit your life-style and that you could enjoy over time.

b) Select one of the activities and list it as a goal in your personal role area for the coming week. At the end of the week evaluate your performance. If you didn't make your goal, was it because you subordinated it to a genuinely higher value? Or did you fail to act with integrity to your values?

c) Make a similar list of renewing activities in your spiritual and mental dimensions. In your social/emotional area, list relationships you would like to improve or specific circumstances in which Public Victory would bring greater effectiveness. Select one item in each area to list as a goal for the week. Implement and evaluate.

d) Commit to write down specific «sharpen the saw» activities in all four dimensions every week, to do them, and to evaluate your performance and results.

As I conclude this book, I would like to share my own personal conviction concerning what I believe to be the source of correct principles. I believe that correct principles are natural laws, and that God, the Creator and Father of us all, is the source of them, and also the source of our conscience. I believe that to the degree people live by this inspired concience, they will grow to fulfill their natures; to the degree that they do not, they will not rise above the animal plane.

I believe that there are parts to human nature that cannot be reached by either legislation or education, but requires the power of God to deal with. I believe that as human beings, we cannot perfect ourselves. To the degree to whixch we align ourselves with correct principoles, divine endowments will be released within our nature in enabling us to fulfill the measure of our creation. In the words of Teilhard de Chardin, «We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.»

I personally struggle with much of what I have shared in this book. But the struggle is worthwhile and fulfilling. It gives meaning to my life and enables me to love, to serve, and to try again.

Again, T. S. Eliot expresses so beautifully my own personal discovery and conviction: «We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time».

Livre suggérés par Covey dans First Things First:

Basic Works

The analects of Confucius.

The art of virtue. Benjamin Fanklin.

As a man thinketh (vol. 1 et 2). James Allen.

The Bhagavad Gita.

Book of the Hopi. Frank Waters.

The book of Mormon.

The collected dialogues of Plato.

The Dhammapada.

The essential Gandhi.

The Holy Bible.

The instructions of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni: The oldest book in the world.

The lessons of history. Will and Ariel Durant.

The meaning of the Glorius Koran; an explanatory translation.

The meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

The Nichomachean ethics. Aristotle.

The opening of the wisdom-eye. H. H. Gyatso, the Dalai Lama Tenzin.

Ramayana. R. K. Narayan.

The sayings of Confucius.

The syings of Mencius. James R. Ware.

Siddharta. Hermann Hesse.

Sufism, The alchemy of the heart.

Tao, to know and not be knowing.

Tao te Ching. Lao Tzu.

The Torah.

The Upanishads.

Walden, or Life in the woods. Henry David Thoreau.

The way of Chuang Tzu. Thomas Merton.

The wisdom of Confucius.

Wisdomkeepers: Meetings with Native American Spiritual Elders. Steve Wall and Harvey Arden.

The wisdom of the Vedas. J. C. Chatterji.

World Scripture: A comparative anthology of sacred texts.

Zen, the reason of unreason.

Collections

The art of peace. Morihei Ueshiba.

The art of worldly wisdom. Balthasar Gracian.

The book of virtues. William J. Bennett.

Words of wisdom. Ariel Books, 1992.

The enlightened Heart: an anthology of sacred poetry. Edited by Stephen Mitchell.

The enlightened mind: an anthology of sacred prose. Edited by stephen Mitchell.

Light from many lamps. Edited by Lillian Eichler Watson.

Native American Wisdom. Running Press, 1993.

Oneness. Jeffrey Moses.

The pocket Aquinas. Edited by Vernon J. Bourke.

Prayer of the heart, writings from the Philokalia.

The sayings of Muhammad. Allama Sir Abdullah Al-Mamun Al-Suhrawardy.

Spiritual illuminations. Edited by Peg Streep.

Wisdom: conversations with the elder wise men of our day. James Nelson.

Wisdom is one. B. W. Huntsman.

Words of wisdom. Thomas C. Jones.

A world treasury of folk wisdom. Reynold Feldman and Cynthia A Voelke.

Commentary and Analysis

Proverbial philosophy: a book of thoughts and arguments. Martin Farquhar Tupper.

Ways of wisdom. Edited by Steve Smith.

Wisdom. Edited by Robert J. Sternberg.