This blog is created to honour the end of my Nationals Inter-School Canoe Championship 2009 and the end of a Canoeist Career in Junior College. The 1st few post will be dedicated towards the setting up of this blog and will convey my thoughts and feeling over the 4 days event to honour the Sports which I really believe in, fought for, bleed for and gave my life to.
7 Habits Remarks
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 @ 9:15 AM

What you are shouts so loudly in my ear that I can't hear what you say

The point is, you'll still be lost. The fundamental problem has nothing to do with your behaviour or your atttiude. It has everything to do with having a wrong map.

If you have the right map of Chicago, then the diligence becomes important. Yo u might work on your attitude - you could think more positively. You still wouldn't get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn't care. Your attitude would be so postivie, you'll be happy whenever you were.

Many maps into 2 category, the way the world is and how we perceive they should be



If you don't let a teacher know what level you are -- by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance -- you will not learn or grow. You cannot pretend for long, for you will eventually be found out. Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. Thoreau taught, "How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all of the time?"

But borrowing strength builds weakness.  


it reinforces dependence on external factors to get things done 


It builds weakness in the person forced to acquiesce, stunting the development of independent reasoning, growth, and internal discipline 


And finally, it builds weakness in the relationship. Fear replaces cooperation, and both people involved become more arbitrary and defensive. 


I've learned that once children gain a sense of real possession, they share very naturally, freely, and spontaneously. 


When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. It may have been that the emotional maturity to do that was beyond my level of patience and internal control at the time.


Albert Einstein observed, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. 


Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny 


But knowing I need to listen and knowing how to listen is not enough. Unless I want to listen, unless I have the desire, it won't be a habit in my life. Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions.


Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.

Private victories, the key to self mastery, from idependence to indepeendence.





you will feel benefits and see immediate payoffs that will be encouraging. In the words of Thomas Paine, "That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods."


In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to self-awareness, we have imagination -- the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality. We have conscience -- a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, of the principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And we have independent will -- the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences.


"Proactivity" Defined
In discovering the basic principle of the nature of man, Frankl described an accurate self-map from which he began to develop the first and most basic habit of a highly effective person in any environment, the habit of Proactivity.
While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won't find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

"I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday."

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us 


In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the
future and to inspire others to do so as well.


people who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done. 


At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, "Stephen, I like what you're saying. But every situation is so different. Look at my marriage. I'm really worried. My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can I do?"
"The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked.
"That's right," he reaffirmed. "And we have three children we're really concerned about. you suggest?"
"Love her," I replied.
"I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore."
"Love her."
"You don't understand. The feeling of love just isn't there."
"Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her."
"But how do you love when you don't love?"
"My friend, love is a verb. Love -- the feeling -- is a fruit of love the verb. So love her.
What do
Sacrifice.
Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?"
In the great literature of all progressive societies, love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling. They're driven by feelings. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are not responsible, that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe the reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to
do so.
Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving
of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured. 

 
"Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference."


Whether a problem is direct, indirect, or no control, we have in our hands the first step to the solution. Changing our habits, changing our methods of influence and changing the way we see our no control problems are all within our Circle of Influence.

 
The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness


"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."  


We are more in need of a vision or designation and a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a road map. We often don't know what the terrain ahead will be like or what we will need to go through it; much will depend on our judgment at the time. But an inner compass will always give us direction. 


Effectiveness -- often even survival -- does not depend solely on how much effort we expend, but on whether or not the effort we expend is in the right jungle.

 
No management success can compensate for failure in leadership. But leadership is hard because we're often caught in a management paradigm.

Mission Creed:


Seek and merit divine help.
Never compromise with honesty.
Remember the people involved.
Hear both sides before judging.
Obtain counsel of others.
Defend those who are absent.
Be sincere yet decisive.
Develop one new proficiency a year.
Plan tomorrow's work today.
Hustle while you wait.
Maintain a positive attitude.
Keep a sense of humor.
Be orderly in person and in work.
Do not fear mistakes -- fear only the absence of creative, constructive, and corrective responses to
those mistakes.
Facilitate the success of subordinates.
Listen twice as much as you speak.
Concentrate all abilities and efforts on the task at hand, not worrying about the next job or
promotion.