The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

BALANCE IN RENEWAL

The self-renewal process must include balanced renewal in all four dimensions of our nature:

the physical, the spiritual, the mental, and the social/emotional.

Although renewal in each dimension is important, it only becomes optimally effective as we

deal with all four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. To neglect any one area negatively

impacts the rest.

I have found this to be true in organizations as well as in individual lives. In an organization,

the physical dimension is expressed in economic terms. The mental or psychological dimension

deals with the recognition, development, and use of talent. The social/emotional dimension has

to do with human relations, with how people are treated. And the spiritual dimension deals with

finding meaning through purpose or contribution and through organizational integrity.

When an organization neglects any one or more of these areas, it negatively impacts the entire

organization. The creative energies that could result in tremendous, positive synergy are instead

used to fight against the organization and become restraining forces to growth and productivity.

I have found organizations whose only thrust is economic—to make money. They usually

don’t publicize that purpose. They sometimes even publicize something else. But in their hearts,

their only desire is to make money.

Whenever I find this, I also find a great deal of negative synergy in the culture, generating

such things as interdepartmental rivalries, defensive and protective communication, politicking,

and masterminding. We can’t effectively thrive without making money, but that’s not sufficient

reason for organizational existence. We can’t live without eating, but we don’t live to eat.

At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve seen organizations that focused almost exclusively on

the social/emotional dimension. They are, in a sense, some kind of social experiment and they

have no economic criteria in their value system. They have no measure or gauge of their

effectiveness, and as a result, they lose all kinds of efficiencies and eventually their viability in

the marketplace.

I have found many organizations that develop as many as three of the dimensions—they may

have good service criteria, good economic criteria, and good human relations criteria, but they

are not really committed to identifying, developing, utilizing, and recognizing the talent of

people. And if these psychological forces are missing, the style will be a benevolent autocracy

and the resulting culture will reflect different forms of collective resistance, adversarialism,

excessive turnover, and other deep, chronic, cultural problems.

Organizational as well as individual effectiveness requires development and renewal of all

four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. Any dimension that is neglected will create

negative force field resistance that pushes against effectiveness and growth. Organizations and

individuals that give recognition to each of these four dimensions in their mission statement

provide a powerful framework for balanced renewal.

This process of continuous improvement is the hallmark of the Total Quality Movement and a

key to Japan’s economic ascendency.

SYNERGY IN RENEWAL

Balanced renewal is optimally synergetic. The things you do to sharpen the saw in any one

dimension have positive impact in other dimensions because they are so highly interrelated. Your

physical health affects your mental health; your spiritual strength affects your social/emotional

strength. As you improve in one dimension, you increase your ability in other dimensions as

well.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People create optimum synergy among these

dimensions. Renewal in any dimension increases your ability to live at least one of the Seven

Habits. And although the habits are sequential, improvement in one habit synergetically

increases your ability to live the rest.

The more proactive you are (Habit 1), the more effectively you can exercise personal

leadership (Habit 2) and management (Habit 3) in your life. The more effectively you manage

your life (Habit 3), the more Quadrant II renewing activities you can do (Habit 7). The more you

seek first to understand (Habit 5), the more effectively you can go for synergetic Win/Win

solutions (Habits 4 and 6). The more you improve in any of the habits that lead to independence

(Habits 1, 2, and 3), the more effective you will be in interdependent situations (Habits 4, 5, and

6). And renewal (Habit 7) is the process of renewing all the habits.

As you renew your physical dimension, you reinforce your personal vision (Habit 1), the

paradigm of your own self-awareness and free will, of proactivity, of knowing that you are free

to act instead of being acted upon, to choose your own response to any stimulus. This is probably

the greatest benefit of physical exercise. Each Daily Private Victory makes a deposit in your

personal intrinsic security account.

As you renew your spiritual dimension, you reinforce your personal leadership (Habit 2). You

increase your ability to live out of your imagination and conscience instead of only your

memory, to deeply understand your innermost paradigms and values, to create within yourself a

center of correct principles, to define your own unique mission in life, to rescript yourself to live

your life in harmony with correct principles and to draw upon your personal sources of strength.

The rich private life you create in spiritual renewal makes tremendous deposits in your personal

security account.

As you renew your mental dimension, you reinforce your personal management (Habit 3). As

you plan, you force your mind to recognize high leverage Quadrant II activities, priority goals,

and activities to maximize the use of your time and energy, and you organize and execute your

activities around your priorities. As you become involved in continuing education, you increase

your knowledge base and you increase your options. Your economic security does not lie in your

job; it lies in your own power to produce—to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That’s true

financial independence. It’s not having wealth; it’s having the power to produce wealth. It’s

intrinsic.

The Daily Private Victory—a minimum of one hour a day in renewal of the physical,

spiritual, and mental dimensions—is the key to the development of the Seven Habits and it’s

completely within your Circle of Influence. It is the Quadrant II focus time necessary to integrate

these habits into your life, to become principle-centered.

It’s also the foundation for the Daily Public Victory. It’s the source of intrinsic security you

need to sharpen the saw in the social/emotional dimension. It gives you the personal strength to

focus on your Circle of Influence in interdependent situations—to look at others through the

Abundance Mentality paradigm, to genuinely value their differences and to be happy for their

success. It gives you the foundation to work for genuine understanding and for synergetic

Win/Win solutions, to practice Habits 4, 5, and 6 in an interdependent reality.

THE UPWARD SPIRAL

Renewal is the principle—and the process—that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of

growth and change, of continuous improvement.

To make meaningful and consistent progress along that spiral, we need to consider one other

aspect of renewal as it applies to the unique human endowment that directs this upward

movement—our conscience. In the words of Madame de Staël, “The voice of conscience is so

delicate that it is easy to stifle it: but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.”

Conscience is the endowment that senses our congruence or disparity with correct principles

and lifts us toward them—when it’s in shape.

Just as the education of nerve and sinew is vital to the excellent athlete and education of the

mind is vital to the scholar, education of the conscience is vital to the truly proactive, highly

effective person. Training and educating the conscience, however, requires even greater

concentration, more balanced discipline, more consistently honest living. It requires regular

feasting on inspiring literature, thinking noble thoughts and, above all, living in harmony with its

still small voice.

Just as junk food and lack of exercise can ruin an athlete’s condition, those things that are

obscene, crude, or pornographic can breed an inner darkness that numbs our higher sensibilities

and substitutes the social conscience of “Will I be found out?” for the natural or divine

conscience of “What is right and wrong?”

In the words of Dag Hammarskjöld,

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your

right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn’t reserve

a plot for weeds.

Once we are self-aware, we must choose purposes and principles to live by; otherwise the

vacuum will be filled, and we will lose our self-awareness and become like groveling animals

who live primarily for survival and propagation. People who exist on that level aren’t living; they

are “being lived.” They are reacting, unaware of the unique endowments that lie dormant and

undeveloped within.

And there is no shortcut in developing them. The law of the harvest governs; we will always

reap what we sow—no more, no less. The law of justice is immutable, and the closer we align

ourselves with correct principles, the better our judgment will be about how the world operates

and the more accurate our paradigms—our maps of the territory—will be.

I believe that as we grow and develop on this upward spiral, we must show diligence in the

process of renewal by educating and obeying our conscience. An increasingly educated

conscience will propel us along the path of personal freedom, security, wisdom, and power.

Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit, and do on increasingly higher

planes. We deceive ourselves if we think that any one of these is sufficient. To keep progressing,

we must learn, commit, and do—learn, commit, and do—and learn, commit, and do again.

APPLICATION SUGGESTIONS:

1. Make a list of activities that would help you keep in good physical shape, that would fit

your life-style and that you could enjoy over time.

2. Select one of the activities and list it as a goal in your personal role area for the coming

week. At the end of the week evaluate your performance. If you didn’t make your goal, was

it because you subordinated it to a genuinely higher value? Or did you fail to act with

integrity to your values?

3. Make a similar list of renewing activities in your spiritual and mental dimensions. In your

social-emotional area, list relationships you would like to improve or specific circumstances

in which Public Victory would bring greater effectiveness. Select one item in each area to

list as a goal for the week. Implement and evaluate.

4. Commit to write down specific “sharpen the saw” activities in all four dimensions every

week, to do them, and to evaluate your performance and results.