Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know. (20)

Part One: Paradigms and Principles

Inside Out

“Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.” -Psalm (28)

It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique.
To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.
Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm–to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. (30)

What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations technique or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. (30)

The word paradigm comes from the Greek. It was originally a scientific term, and is more commonly used today to mean a model, theory, perception, assumption, or frame of reference. In the more general sense, it’s the way we “see” the world–not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, interpreting.
For our purposes, a simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as maps. We all know that “the map is not the territory.” A map is simply an explanation of certain aspects of the territory. That’s exactly what a paradigm is. It is a theory, an explanation, or model of something else. (31)

Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.
And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions. The way we see things is the source of the way we think and the way we act. (32)

The influences in our lives–family, school, church, work environment, friends, associates, and current social paradigms such as the Personality Ethic–all have made their silent unconscious impact on us and help shape our frame of reference, our paradigms, our maps. (36)

This brings into focus one of the basic flaws of the Personality Ethic. To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow. (36)

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are–or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. (36)

We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the Personality Ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently.
It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
In the words of Thoreau, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, the is one striking at the root.” We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow. (39)

The Character Ethic is based on the fundamental idea that there are principles that govern human effectiveness–natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and arguably “there” as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension. (40)

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 the time?” (45)

The way that we see the problem is the problem. (48)

The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves. (51)

The 7 Habits — An Overview

“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” -Aristotle (54)

Habits have tremendous gravity pull–more than most people realize or would admit… Like any natural force, gravity pull can work with us or against us. The gravity pull of some of our habits may currently be keeping us from going where we want to go. But it is also gravity pull that keeps our world together, that keeps the planets in their orbits and our universe in order. It is a powerful force, and if we use it effectively, we can use the gravity pull of habit to create the cohesiveness and order necessary to establish effectiveness in our lives. (55)

For our purposes, we will define habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire.
Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three. (55)

[Effective Habits: Internalized principles and patterns of behavior
Venn Diagram of Knowledge Skills and Desire with Habits in middle.] (56)

Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own effort. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success. (57)

Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don’t have the character to do it; they don’t own enough of themselves. (59)

Effectiveness lies in the balance–what I call the P/PC Balance. P stands for production of desired results, the golden eggs. PC stands for production capability, the ability or asset that produces the golden eggs. (62)

One of the immensely valuable aspects of any correct principle is that it is valid and applicable in a wide variety of circumstances. (65)

There are organizations that talk a lot about the customer and then completely neglect the people that deal with the customer–the employees. The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
You can buy a person’s hand, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can’t buy his brain. That’s where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness.
PC work is treating employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that’s what they are. They volunteer the best part–their hearts and minds. (66)

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.” (70)

Part Two: Private Victory

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Principles of Personal Vision

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” -Henry David Thoreau (74)

We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world. Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we “see” ourselves–our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitudes and behaviors, but also how we see other people. It becomes our map of the basic nature of mankind.
In fact, until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective.
This significantly limits our personal potential and our ability to relate to others as well. But because of the unique human capacity of self-awareness, we can examine our paradigms to determine whether they are reality- or principle-based or if they are a function of conditioning and conditions. (75)

These visions [of ourselves from the social mirror] are disjointed and out of proportion. They are often more projections than reflections, projecting the concerns and character weaknesses of people giving the input rather than accurately reflecting what we are. (75)

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. (77)

Proactive Model (79)

Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us.
In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not. (79)

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of a proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values–carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.
Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response. (79)

It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place. (80)

It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all. 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. (81)

But that’s the difference between positive thinking and proactivity. We did face reality. We faced the reality of the current circumstance and of future projections. But we also faced the reality that we had the power to choose a positive response to those circumstances and projections. Not facing reality would have been to accept the idea that what’s happening in our environment had to determine us. (85)

The language of reactive people absolves them of responsibility. (85)

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. (87)

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase.
Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink. (90)

There are some people who interpret “proactive” to mean pushy, aggressive, or insensitive; but that isn’t the case at all. Proactive people aren’t pushy. They’re smart, they’re value driven, they read reality, and they know what’s needed. (95)

Anytime we think the problem is “out there,” that thought is the problem. We empower what’s out there to control us. (96)

There are so many ways to work in the Circle of Influence–to be a better listener, to be a more loving marriage partner, to be a better student, to be a more cooperative and dedicated employee. Sometimes the most proactive thing we can do is to be happy, just to genuinely smile. Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice. There are things, like the weather, that our Circle of Influence will never include. But as proactive people, we can carry our own physical or social weather with us. We can be happy and accept those things that at present we can’t control, while we focus our efforts on the things that we can. (97)

For those filled with regret, perhaps the most needful exercise of proactivity is to realize that past mistakes are also out there in the Circle of Concern. We can’t recall them, we can’t undo them, we can’t control the consequences that came as a result…
The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it. This literally turns a failure into a success. (98)

The commitments we make to ourselves and others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity. (99)

It is here that we find two ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately. We can make a promise–and keep it. Or we can set a goal–and work to achieve it. As we make and keep our commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods. (99)

We don’t have to go through the death camp experience of Frankl to recognize and develop our own proactivity. It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It’s how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It’s how we view our problems and where we focus our energies. It’s the language we use. (100)

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day will, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally “being lived.” They are acting out the scripts written by parents, associates, and society. (100)

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Principles of Personal Leadership

Exercise: What I’d like people to say about me at my funeral in 3 years
She was incredibly creative and tried to add color to people’s lives through creating lasting things for them, whether it be doodles or sending random quotes or just being happy around them. 
She always carried around different rocks, and always encouraged everyone to hold them and take in their vibes. She wanted other people to be interested and inspired about the magic and mysteries of life, the cosmos, and the silliness of the universe.
She was always learning something, always interested in finding out more about the universe and how life works. She always had a bunch of unfinished books and projects.
She compiled so much of the knowledge she knew in tangible forms such as her website and journals so that the information would be accessible to others; she tried to get all of the stuff in her head out on paper (or web) so herself and others could maybe one day understand life a little more.
She developed close, meaningful relationships with people. She wasn’t fake, and she really couldn’t fake interest in things. She wasn’t always the most attentive, but when she was interested and invested, she was a really great listener to the people she cared about. People learned not to take it personally when she needed to be doing something else in conversation to be more attentive (if she wasn’t on adderall), and she could give really great advice and feedback.
She made everyone laugh, whether just by making stupid jokes and laughing at herself or by genuinely being hilarious hahhaha. 
She was a disheveled but genuine person, and the dishevelment never negatively affected anyone–even if it was hard for some other people to understand. Her office and room were always a mess, as was her hair usually, but she learned that this was just her baseline and stopped trying to justify herself.
She loved her family and friends more than anything, and showed them in various ways how much she loved them, even if she wasn’t always the best at keeping up with communication. 
She was flakey, but not in a bad way. It was hard to get a hold of her time, but when you got it, she lit up your life.
She was obsessed with loneliness to an almost pathological degree throughout her life (as manifested in crying about inanimate objects), but she was able to incorporate that into a cohesive and compassionate view of the universe that lent value and credibility to everyone and everything, including rocks, animals, and people. She had so much empathy that she would cry when she saw two people together who looked like they were in love, and would also cry when she saw someone who looked lonely. She also cried at pigeons with hurt feet. Her empathy allowed her to understand people in a way that made them feel seen in the world. She was perceptive of the moods of others and always tried to heighten the spirits of those who seemed down, and especially wanted them to know that they were understood. 
She wasn’t afraid to be alone, and often preferred it to being with others. It wasn’t because other people weren’t valuable to her, but just because she had too much going on in her head at all times to be able to constantly communicate and express herself to people. She increasingly felt over time more selective about the social interactions she chose to participate in, mostly aiming to delegate her time to other people she found interesting, not just being social for the sake of sociality. 
She was in a constant state of wonder about the universe, love, life, and contentment. 
She helped other people understand their own lives, and tried to boost other’s self-efficacy and enhance their narratives so they could go on and do the same for themselves and others.
She really loved. She had a lot of love. And she loved in an uncontrollable, sometimes devastating way. But it was always felt strongly. And over time she learned to disentangle the past heartbreaks and disappointments of her parents and early relationships so that by the end, she loved without dependency or obligation. It was pure, and it flowed freely to whoever she aimed it at. She was tragic in her teen and early twenties, but in a way that made others laugh. By the end, she knew the value in having no expectations and being pleasantly surprised by everything that came to her. Her fantasies stopped limiting her capacity for true satisfaction once she realized that real satisfaction could only be found spontaneously through an open heart and mind. (a lesson from Missing out – Adam Phillips)

Although Habit 2 applies to many different circumstances and levels of life, the most fundamental application of “begin with the end in mind” is to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined. Each part of your life–today’s behavior, tomorrow’s behavior, next week’s behavior, next month’s behavior–can be examined in the context of the whole, of what really matters most to you. By keeping that end clearly in mind, you can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have of your life as a whole. (105) #stoic

“Begin with the end in mind” 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. (106) #missingout

It’s a principle that all things are created twice, but not all first creations are by conscious design. In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and do not become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances outside our Circle of Influence to shape much of our lives by default…
Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agendas, of circumstances, of past habits.
The unique human capacities of self-awareness, imagination, and conscience enable us to examine first creations and make it possible for us to take charge of our own first creation, to write our own script. Put another way, Habit 1 says, “You are the creator.” Habit 2 is the first creation. (107)

As we recognize the ineffective scripts, the incorrect or incomplete paradigms within us, we can proactively begin to rescript ourselves. (110)

I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to limitless potential instead of my limiting past. I can become my own first creator. (113)

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. (113)

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.
Security represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it.
Guidance means your source of direction in life. Encompassed by your map, your internal frame of reference that interprets for you what is happening out there, are standards or principles or implicit criteria that govern moment by moment decision-making and doing.
Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, an integrated wholeness.
Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.
These four factors–security, guidance, wisdom, and power–are interdependent. Security and clear guidance bring true wisdom, and wisdom becomes the spark or catalyst to release and direct power. When these four factors are present together, harmonized and enlivened by each other, they create the great force of a noble personality, a balanced character, a beautifully integrated individual. (118)

Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing–too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person’s capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart is unfulfilled. Where is the security, the guidance, the wisdom, and the power? At the low end of the continuum, in the pleasure of a fleeting moment. (122)

Malcom Muggeridge: “When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd.” (123)

Many divorced people fall into a similar pattern. They are still consumed with anger and bitterness and self-justification regarding an ex-spouse. In a negative sense, psychologically they are still married–they each need the weaknesses of the former partner to justify their accusations. (124) #relationships

The ideal, of course, is to create one clear center from which you consistently derive a high degree of security, guidance, wisdom, and power, empowering your proactivity and giving congruency and harmony to every part of your life. (130)

127-129: Table of Centers

By centering our lives on correct principles, we create a solid foundation for development of the four life-support factors.
Our security comes from knowing that, unlike other centers based on people or things which are subject to frequent and immediate change, correct principles do not change. We can depend on them. (130)

Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life.
Even in the midst of people or circumstances that seem to ignore the principles, we can be secure in the knowledge that principles are bigger than people or circumstances, and that thousands of years of history have seen them triumph, time and time again. (130)

Remember that your paradigm is the source from which your attitudes and behaviors flow. A paradigm is like a pair of glasses; it affects the way you see everything in your life. If you look at things through the paradigm of correct principles, what you see in life is dramatically different from what you see through any other centered paradigm. (131)

As a principle-centered person, you try to stand apart from the emotion of the situation and from other factors that would act on you, and evaluate the options. Looking at the balanced whole–the work needs, the family needs, other needs that may be involved and the possible implications of the various alternative decisions–you’ll try to come up with the best solution, taking all factors into consideration. (135)

The experiences you have as you carry out your decisions take on quality and meaning in the context of your life as a whole. (135)

In Frankl’s words, “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life… Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.” (136)

Our meaning comes from within. Again, in the words of Frankl, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.” (136)

A mission statement is not something you write overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce it in final form. It may take you several weeks or even months before you feel really comfortable with it, before you feel it is a complete and concise expression of your innermost values and directions. Even then, you will want to review it regularly and make minor changes as the years bring additional insights or changing circumstances.
But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life. (137)

I find the process is as important as the product. Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs. As you do, other people begin to sense that you’re not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you’re trying to do and you are excited about it. (137)

But if you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective-expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own. (139)

I can use my right brain power of visualization to write an “affirmation” that will help me become more congruent with my deeper values in my daily life.
A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it’s personal, it’s positive, it’s present tense, it’s visual, and it’s emotional. (140)

One of the main things (Charles Garfield)’s research showed was that almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind. (142)

Affirmation and visualization are forms of programming, and we must be certain that we do not submit ourselves to any programming that is not in harmony with our basic center or that comes from sources centered on money-making, self interest, or anything other than correct principles.
The imagination can be used to achieve the fleeting success that comes when a person is focused on material gain or on “what’s in it for me.” But I believe the higher use of imagination is in harmony with the use of conscience to transcend self and create a life of contribution based on unique purpose and on the principles that govern inderdependent reality. (143)

Just as breathing exercises help integrate body and mind, writing is a kind of psycho-neural muscular activity which helps bride and integrate the conscious and subconscious minds. Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts. (143)

You may find that your mission statement will be much more balanced, much easier to work with, if you break it down into the specific role areas of your life and the goals you want to accomplish in each area. (144)

Writing your mission in terms of the important roles in your life gives you balance and harmony. It keeps each role clearly before you. You can review your roles frequently to makes sure that you don’t get totally absorbed by one role to the exclusion of others that are equally or even more important in your life. (145)

Roles and goals give structure and organized direction to your personal mission. If you don’t yet have a personal mission statement, it’s a good place to begin. Just identifying the various areas of your life and the two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each area to move ahead gives you an overall perspective of your life and a sense of direction. (145)