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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ARISTOTLE
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.
Private victories precede public victories.
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.
Basically, there are three kinds of assets: physical, financial, and human.
The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
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.
“No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.”
Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.
Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment.
Proactive people can carry their own weather with them.
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.
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 uncons...
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It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.
A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world.
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.
Proactive people aren’t pushy. They’re smart, they’re value driven, they read reality, and they know what’s needed.
Anytime we think the problem is “out there,” that thought is the problem.
But we are responsible—“response-able”—to control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are.
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.
Our response to any mistake affects the quality of the next moment.
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.
The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness.
Try it in your marriage, in your family, in your job. Don’t argue for other people’s weaknesses. Don’t argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it—immediately. Don’t get into a blaming, accusing mode. Work on things you have control over. Work on you. On be.
Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It’s not what they’re not doing or should be doing that’s the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is “out there,” stop yourself. That thought is the problem.
APPLICATION SUGGESTIONS For a full day, listen to your language and to the language of the people around you. How often do you use and hear reactive phrases such as “If only,” “I can’t,” or “I have to”? Identify an experience you might encounter in the near future where, based on past experience, you would probably behave reactively. Review the situation in the context of your Circle of Influence. How could you respond proactively? Take several moments and create the experience vividly in your mind, picturing yourself responding in a proactive manner. Remind yourself of the gap between
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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.
To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination.
When you begin with the end in mind, you gain a different perspective.
“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.
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
We are more in need of a vision or destination and a compass (a set of principles or directions) and less in need of a road map.
I become reactive. And the way I interact with my children every day often bears little resemblance to the way I deeply feel about them.
To begin with the end in mind means to approach my role as a parent, as well as my other roles in life, with my values and directions clear. It means to be responsible for my own first creation, to rescript myself so that the paradigms from which my behavior and attitude flow are congruent with my deepest values and in harmony with correct principles.
also means to begin each day with those values firmly in mind.
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.
Rolfe Kerr, has expressed his personal creed in this way: Succeed at home first. 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
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A woman seeking to balance family and work values has expressed her sense of personal mission differently: I will seek to balance career and family as best I can since both are important to me. My home will be a place where I and my family, friends, and guests find joy, comfort, peace, and happiness. Still I will seek to create a clean and orderly environment, yet livable and comfortable. I will exercise wisdom in what we choose to eat, read, see, and do at home. I especially want to teach my children to love, to learn, and to laugh—and to work and develop their unique talents.
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It empowers individuals with the same timeless strength in the midst of change.
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.
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.
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.
Suppose tonight you have invited your wife to go to a concert. You have the tickets; she’s excited about going. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. All of a sudden, your boss calls you into his office and says he needs your help through the evening to get ready for an important meeting at 9 A.M. tomorrow. If you’re looking through spouse-centered or family-centered glasses, your main concern will be your wife. You may tell the boss you can’t stay and you take her to the concert in an effort to please her. You may feel you have to stay to protect your job, but you’ll do so grudgingly, anxious
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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.
First, you are not being acted upon by other people or circumstances. You are proactively choosing what you determine to be the best alternative. You make your decision consciously and knowledgeably. Second, you know your decision is most effective because it is based on principles with predictable long-term results. Third, what you choose to do contributes to your ultimate values in life. Staying at work to get the edge on someone at the office is an entirely different evening in your life from staying because you value your boss’s effectiveness and you genuinely want to contribute to the
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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.
