'Get in the Habit' with Dr Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of highly effective people; “achieving personal and interpersonal effectiveness from the inside out” explains how you need to improve your own personal characteristics in order to improve your personality. These posts will explain Covey’s theory and our experiences with the lessons we had at Florida State while studying them.

First we start out as dependent; as child to parent, friend to clique…etc. thinking more about ‘You’ but if we work to improve…
(1) Our proactivity
(2) Beginning with the end in mind
and (3) Putting first things first

Then we can achieve our own private victory and gain independence; thinking more about ‘I’. From there if we work to improve…
(4) Thinking win-win
(5) Seeking to understand then to be understood
and (6) Synergy

Then we can achieve a public victory and gain interdependence; thinking more about ‘We’. Finally after improving all 6 habits you must practice (7) Sharpening the saw, because if we don’t keep up with our progress we will become stale and revert back to our old ways.

Character vs. Personal Ethic

Our personality is what people first see about us. It's the techniques we've practised for personal gain, such as influence, persuasion and deceit. But underneath all those techniques is our character. It's made of principles we value, such as courage, justice, responsibility and integrity.

Covey explains how we should use the 'Inside-Out approach' which means to focuss on improving your character and core values before your techniques and effectiveness.

"That we should listen with the intent to teach, so that we learn on a deeper level - therefore when you teach you gain new insights and expand your learning."

Can you see he difference between your character and personality? Or your coworkers, family or friends?

See - Do - Get

Every one of Covey's habits has a principle and paradigm (meaning the expected way that we see, understand and interpret the world.) We 'see' the paradigm, 'do' the behaviour & 'get' the result in turn.

"The results we get in life depend on what we do. What we do in life depends on how we see the world around us."

When you have realized a deeper truth that is strong enough to change your behaviour you have experienced a paradigm shift. Such as being angry at a stranger for not controlling their children, only to find out they just came from the hospital where their mother passed away... Suddenly feeling empathy  for the stranger and realizing none of them know how to properly deal with the situation would be a  paradigm shift... Can you think of a time you ever had a paradigm shift?

Up Next: 'Get in the Habit' of Being Proactive