7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE
THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE
HABIT 1 : BE PROACTIVE
Your life doesn't just "happen." Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The
choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You
choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear.
Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you
a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results.
Habit 1: Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can't keep blaming everything on
your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are "response-able." They don't
blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they choose
their behavior. Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment.
They find external sources to blame for their behavior. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't,
it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as
stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power--you have the
freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you say. Your
language is a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses proactive language--I
can, I will, I prefer, etc. A reactive person uses reactive language--I can't, I have to, if only. Reactive
people believe they are not responsible for what they say and do--they have no choice.
Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive
people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and
opportunities we face fall into two areas--Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.
Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do
something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of
Concern--things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather.
Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming
proactive.
THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE
HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
So, what do you want to be when you grow up? That question may appear a little trite, but think about
it for a moment. Are you--right now--who you want to be, what you dreamed you'd be, doing what you
always wanted to do? Be honest. Sometimes people find themselves achieving victories that are
empty--successes that have come at the expense of things that were far more valuable to them. If your
ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.
Habit 2 is based on imagination--the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see
with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first)
creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building
follows a blueprint. If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in
