The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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

As you read this book, try to stand apart from yourself. Try to project your consciousness upward

into a corner of the room and see yourself, in your mind’s eye, reading. Can you look at yourself

almost as though you were someone else?

Now try something else. Think about the mood you are now in. Can you identify it? What are

you feeling? How would you describe your present mental state?

Now think for a minute about how your mind is working. Is it quick and alert? Do you sense

that you are torn between doing this mental exercise and evaluating the point to be made out of

it?

Your ability to do what you just did is uniquely human. Animals do not possess this ability.

We call it “self-awareness” or the ability to think about your very thought process. This is the

reason why man has dominion over all things in the world and why he can make significant

advances from generation to generation.

This is why we can evaluate and learn from others’ experiences as well as our own. This is

also why we can make and break our habits.

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. Selfawareness

enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we “see” ourselves—our selfparadigm,

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.

THE SOCIAL MIRROR

If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror—from the current social

paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us—our view

of ourselves is like the reflection in the crazy mirror room at the carnival.

“You’re never on time.”

“Why can’t you ever keep things in order?”

“You must be an artist!”

“You eat like a horse!”

“I can’t believe you won!”

“This is so simple. Why can’t you understand?”

These visions 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.

The reflection of the current social paradigm tells us we are largely determined by

conditioning and conditions. While we have acknowledged the tremendous power of

conditioning in our lives, to say that we are determined by it, that we have no control over that

influence, creates quite a different map.

There are actually three social maps—three theories of determinism widely accepted,

independently or in combination, to explain the nature of man. Genetic determinism basically

says your grandparents did it to you. That’s why you have such a temper. Your grandparents had

short tempers and it’s in your DNA. It just goes through the generations and you inherited it. In

addition, you’re Irish, and that’s the nature of Irish people.

Psychic determinism basically says your parents did it to you. Your upbringing, your

childhood experience essentially laid out your personal tendencies and your character structure.

That’s why you’re afraid to be in front of a group. It’s the way your parents brought you up. You

feel terribly guilty if you make a mistake because you “remember” deep inside the emotional

scripting when you were very vulnerable and tender and dependent. You “remember” the

emotional punishment, the rejection, the comparison with somebody else when you didn’t

perform as well as expected.

Environmental determinism basically says your boss is doing it to you—or your spouse, or

that bratty teenager, or your economic situation, or national policies. Someone or something in

your environment is responsible for your situation.

Each of these maps is based on the stimulus/response theory we most often think of in

connection with Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. The basic idea is that we are conditioned to

respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus.How accurately and functionally do these deterministic maps describe the territory? How

clearly do these mirrors reflect the true nature of man? Do they become self-fulfilling

prophecies? Are they based on principles we can validate within ourselves?

BETWEEN STIMULUS AND RESPONSE

In answer to those questions, let me share with you the catalytic story of Victor Frankl.

Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that

whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs

your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can’t do much

about it.

Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi

Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we

shudder to even repeat them.

His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except

for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable

indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if

he would be among the “saved” who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so

fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called

“the last of the human freedoms”—the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They

could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Victor

Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement.

His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect

him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or

power to choose that response.

In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances,

such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe

himself in the classroom, in his mind’s eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning

during his very torture.

Through a series of such disciplines—mental, emotional, and moral, principally using

memory and imagination—he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and

larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to

choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his

options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped

others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

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.

Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In

addition to self-awareness, we have imagination—the ability to create in our minds beyond our

present reality. We have conscience—a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, of the

principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions

are in harmony with them. And we have independent will—the ability to act based on our selfawareness,

free of all other influences.

Even the most intelligent animals have none of these endowments. To use a computer

metaphor, they are programmed by instinct and/or training. They can be trained to be

responsible, but they can’t take responsibility for that training; in other words, they can’t direct

it. They can’t change the programming. They’re not even aware of it.

But because of our unique human endowments, we can write new programs for ourselves

totally apart from our instincts and training. This is why an animal’s capacity is relatively limited

and man’s is unlimited. But if we live like animals, out of our own instincts and conditioning and

conditions, out of our collective memory, we too will be limited.

The deterministic paradigm comes primarily from the study of animals—rats, monkeys,

pigeons, dogs—and neurotic and psychotic people. While this may meet certain criteria of some

researchers because it seems measurable and predictable, the history of mankind and our own

self-awareness tell us that this map doesn’t describe the territory at all!

Our unique human endowments lift us above the animal world. The extent to which we

exercise and develop these endowments empowers us to fulfill our uniquely human potential.

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.

“PROACTIVITY” DEFINED

In discovering the basic principle of the nature of man, Frankl described an accurate self-map

from which he began to develop the first and most basic habit of a highly effective person in any

environment, the habit of proactivity.

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you

won’t find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as

human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions,

not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the

responsibility to make things happen.

Look at the word responsibility—“response-ability”—the ability to choose your response.

Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances,

conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious

choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling. 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 their 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.

Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When

people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective.

Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the

weaknesses of other people to control them.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the 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.

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” In the words of

Gandhi, “They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.” 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.

I admit this is very hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of

explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else’s behavior. But until a

person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made

yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”

***

Once in Sacramento when I was speaking on the subject of proactivity, a woman in the audience

stood up in the middle of my presentation and started talking excitedly. It was a large audience,

and as a number of people turned to look at her, she suddenly became aware of what she was

doing, grew embarrassed and sat back down. But she seemed to find it difficult to restrain herself

and started talking to the people around her. She seemed so happy.

I could hardly wait for a break to find out what had happened. When it finally came, I

immediately went to her and asked if she would be willing to share her experience.

“You just can’t imagine what’s happened to me!” she exclaimed. “I’m a full-time nurse to the

most miserable, ungrateful man you can possibly imagine. Nothing I do is good enough for him.

He never expresses appreciation; he hardly even acknowledges me. He constantly harps at me

and finds fault with everything I do. This man has made my life miserable and I often take my

frustration out on my family. The other nurses feel the same way. We almost pray for his demise.

“And for you to have the gall to stand up there and suggest that nothing can hurt me, that no

one can hurt me without my consent, and that I have chosen my own emotional life of being

miserable—well, there was just no way I could buy into that.

“But I kept thinking about it. I really went inside myself and began to ask, ‘Do I have the

power to choose my response?’

“When I finally realized that I do have that power, when I swallowed that bitter pill and

realized that I had chosen to be miserable, I also realized that I could choose not to be miserable.

“At that moment I stood up. I felt as though I was being let out of San Quentin. I wanted to

yell to the whole world, ‘I am free! I am let out of prison! No longer am I going to be controlledby the treatment of some person.’”

***

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.

Frankl is one of many who have been able to develop the personal freedom in difficult

circumstances to lift and inspire others. The autobiographical accounts of Vietnam prisoners of

war provide additional persuasive testimony of the transforming power of such personal freedom

and the effect of the responsible use of that freedom on the prison culture and on the prisoners,

both then and now.

We have all known individuals in very difficult circumstances, perhaps with a terminal illness

or a severe physical handicap, who maintain magnificent emotional strength. How inspired we

are by their integrity! Nothing has a greater, longer lasting impression upon another person than

the awareness that someone has transcended suffering, has transcended circumstance, and is

embodying and expressing a value that inspires and ennobles and lifts life.

***

One of the most inspiring times Sandra and I have ever had took place over a four-year period

with a dear friend of ours named Carol, who had a wasting cancer disease. She had been one of

Sandra’s bridesmaids, and they had been best friends for over 25 years.

When Carol was in the very last stages of the disease, Sandra spent time at her bedside

helping her write her personal history. She returned from those protracted and difficult sessions

almost transfixed by admiration for her friend’s courage and her desire to write special messages

to be given to her children at different stages in their lives.

Carol would take as little pain-killing medication as possible, so that she had full access to her

mental and emotional faculties. Then she would whisper into a tape recorder or to Sandra

directly as she took notes. Carol was so proactive, so brave, and so concerned about others that

she became an enormous source of inspiration to many people around her.

I’ll never forget the experience of looking deeply into Carol’s eyes the day before she passed

away and sensing out of that deep hollowed agony a person of tremendous intrinsic worth. I

could see in her eyes a life of character, contribution, and service as well as love and concern and

appreciation.

***

Many times over the years, I have asked groups of people how many have ever experienced

being in the presence of a dying individual who had a magnificent attitude and communicated

love and compassion and served in unmatchable ways to the very end. Usually, about one-fourth

of the audience responds in the affirmative. I then ask how many of them will never forget these

individuals—how many were transformed, at least temporarily, by the inspiration of such

courage, and were deeply moved and motivated to more noble acts of service and compassion.

The same people respond again, almost inevitably.

Victor Frankl suggests that there are three central values in life—the experiential, or that

which happens to us; the creative, or that which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, or

our response in difficult circumstances such as terminal illness.

My own experience with people confirms the point Frankl makes—that the highest of the

three values is attitudinal, in the paradigm or reframing sense. In other words, what matters most

is how we respond to what we experience in life.

Difficult circumstances often create paradigm shifts, whole new frames of reference by which

people see the world and themselves and others in it, and what life is asking of them. Their larger

perspective reflects the attitudinal values that lift and inspire us all.

TAKING THE INITIATIVE

Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon. As well as enabling us to choose our

response to particular circumstances, this empowers us to create circumstances.

Taking initiative does not mean being pushy, obnoxious, or aggressive. It does mean

recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.

Over the years, I have frequently counseled people who wanted better jobs to show more

initiative—to take interest and aptitude tests, to study the industry, even the specific problems the

organizations they are interested in are facing, and then to develop an effective presentation

showing how their abilities can help solve the organization’s problem. It’s called “solution

selling,” and is a key paradigm in business success.

The response is usually agreement—most people can see how powerfully such an approach

would affect their opportunities for employment or advancement. But many of them fail to take

the necessary steps, the initiative, to make it happen.

“I don’t know where to go to take the interest and aptitude tests.”

“How do I study industry and organizational problems? No one wants to help me.”

“I don’t have any idea how to make an effective presentation.”

Many people wait for something to happen or someone to take care of them. But people who

end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems

themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct

principles, to get the job done.

Whenever someone in our family, even one of the younger children, takes an irresponsible

position and waits for someone else to make things happen or provide a solution, we tell them,

“Use your R and I!” (resourcefulness and initiative). In fact, often before we can say it, they

answer their own complaints, “I know—use my R and I!”

Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming. Proactivity is part

of human nature, and, although the proactive muscles may be dormant, they are there. By

respecting the proactive nature of other people, we provide them with at least one clear,

undistorted reflection from the social mirror.

Of course, the maturity level of the individual has to be taken into account. We can’t expect

high creative cooperation from those who are deep into emotional dependence. But we can, at

least, affirm their basic nature and create an atmosphere where people can seize opportunities

and solve problems in an increasingly self-reliant way.