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Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.
Conscience connects us with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart.
Independent will is our capacity to act.
Creative imagination is the power to envision a future state, to create something in our mind, and to solve problems synergistically.
But each of these endowments—and the synergy among them—is necessary to create quality of life.
Imagination without independent will can create an idealistic dreamer; imagination without conscience can create a Hitler.
The development of each of the four endowments and the synergy between them is the core of personal leadership.
Building these endowments is a process of nurturing and exercising them on a continuing basis.
Keeping a personal journal is a high-leverage Quadrant II activity that significantly increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them.
Keeping a personal journal empowers you to see and improve, on a day-by-day basis, the way you’re developing and using your endowments.
When most people get into their deep inner lives, regardless of their culture, upbringing, religion, or race, they seem to have a sense of the basic Laws of Life.
To hear conscience clearly often requires us to be “still” or “reflective” or “meditative”—a condition we rarely choose or find.
A highly educated conscience is much like any of these sets of hands. A great price has been paid to educate it. Sacrifices have been made and obstacles overcome.
an educated conscience impacts every aspect of our lives.
It’s not enough just to listen to conscience; we must also respond.
“disobedience to conscience makes conscience blind.”
As we connect with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart, we become less a function of the social mirror and more a person of character and conscience. Our security doesn’t come from the way people treat us or in comparing ourselves to others. It comes from our basic integrity.
One of the best ways to strengthen our independent will is to make and keep promises.
Each time we do, we make deposits in our Personal Integrity Account. This is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust we have in ourselves, in our ability to walk our talk.
It’s important to start small. Make and keep a promise—even if it means you’re going to get up in the morning...
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Be sure you don’t violate that commitment and be sure you don’t overpromise and underdeliver.
Don’t risk making a withdrawal from the Personal Integrity Account.
Build slowly until your sense of honor becomes greater than your moods. Think carefully about the full reality you’re in, and based on that careful thought, move into it and say, “...
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You keep the promise to yourself and your own integrity account goes up.
‘‘Your body is the only instrument through which you operate in life. If you don’t get control of your body, how can you control the expressions that come through your body and your mind?”
So don’t make a promise and break it. Start smaller.
But as he began the process of making and keeping small promises, his emotional life evened out.
“The greatest battles we fight are in the silent chambers of our own souls.”
You have the opportunity now to decide your response to all that has ever happened to you.
You have the power to look at your own involvement, to observe your response, to change it.”
Our lives are the results of our choices. To blame and accuse other people, the environment, or other extrinsic factors is to choose to empower those things to control us.
We choose—either to live our lives or to let others live them for us. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and to others, little by little we increase our strength until our ability to act is more powerful than any of the forces that act upon us.
It’s understanding and being able to apply principles in a wide variety of situations.
Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.
The process we suggest to help develop creative imagination is visualization—a high-leverage mental exercise used by world-class athletes and performers.
Set aside some time to be alone, away from interruptions. Close your eyes and visualize yourself in some circumstance that would normally create discomfort or pain. Something pushes your button.
Use your self-awareness to separate yourself from your normal thoughts and feelings the situation would create. In your mind’s eye, instead of seeing yourself react as you might normally do, see yourself act based on the principles you are convinced will create quality-of-life results. See yourself interacting with others in a way that combines courage and consideration. Use the MacGyver Factor to see how you might apply principles in different situations. The value of this exercise multiplies when you use it to internalize the principles and values in a powerful mission statement.
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
Out of the paradigm that principles exist—and that we’re only effective to the degree to which we discover and live in harmony with them—comes a sense of humility. We’re not in control of our lives; principles are. We cease trying to be a law unto ourselves. We cultivate attitudes of teachability, habits of continual learning.
Our security is not based on the illusion of comparative thinking—I’m better looking, I have more money, I have a better job, or I work harder than somebody else. Nor do we feel any less secure if we’re not as good-looking or have less money or prestige than somebody else. It’s irrelevant. Our security comes from our own integrity to true north.
When we fail or make a mistake or hit a principle head-on, we say, “What can I learn from this?”
Humility truly is the mother of all virtues.
With the humility that comes from being principle-centered, we’re empowered to learn from the past, have hope for the future, and act with confidence in the present. This confidence is an assurance, based on Law of the Farm evidence—across the globe, throughout history, and in our own lives—that if we act based on principles, it will produce quality-of-life results.
They’ve had some experience with the endowments that make it possible for them to align their lives with true north.
Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.
Bottom-line, the power to create quality life is not in any planner. It’s not in any technique or tool. And it’s not limited to our ability to plan a day. None of us is omniscient. We don’t know what opportunities, challenges, surprises, sorrows, or unexpected joys the next moment in our lives will bring. The power to create quality of life is within us—in our ability to develop and use our own inner compass so that we can act with integrity in the moment of choice—whether
To be effective, a tool must be aligned with that reality and enhance the development and use of that inner compass.
The key to quality of life is in the compass—it’s in the choices we make every day.
We have to water, cultivate, and weed on a regular basis if we’re going to enjoy the harvest.
Our lives will bring forth anyway. Things will grow. But the difference between our own active involvement as gardeners and neglect is the difference between a beautiful garden and a weed patch.
