The One You Feed - Mini Episode- Excerpt from 7 Habits Course

Episode Date: November 23, 2014

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And there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. It's Eric from The One You Feed with another mini episode. And this week's mini episode is going to be a short excerpt from the next part of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People course, which is coming out on November 26th. And the section that I've got here is a section within the Habit 2 section. And Habit 2 is Begin with the end in mind. So I hope you enjoy it.

And if you are interested in getting the whole course, make sure that you are signed up for our email list at oneufeed.net. You can sign up there and you will be sent a link for the course when it's ready. So thank you. Hope you enjoy and talk to you soon. The next principle that he talks about in this habit is the principle that says all things are created twice. So basically we have a

first creation that happens in the mind and then a second creation that happens in the world. And again, a lot of analogies in here that he uses and it's to building a house, right? First you sit down, you draw the blueprint, you come up with exactly what you want to do. Then you go and build the house. If you just start building, you're likely to have some challenges. And he mentions that old carpenter's rule of measure twice, cut once. And he says that all of our lives are, all things in our lives are created twice, either by design or by default. And he says, we reactively live the scripts handed to us by family, associates, other people's agendas,

the pressure of circumstances, scripts from our early years, from our training, from our conditioning. Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation in 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, or past habits. I certainly know that there are parts of my life that that has been exactly the case, that what my life has been, or parts of it, or directions of it, have very much been determined by other people's agendas, by the circumstances that show up, and unfortunately, often by past habits. So, in the first chapter, we talked about being proactive and that we had the power of imagination and of conscience and these different things. And what he's saying here is that we can use that to think through what we want our life to be. He goes on at this point to make a distinction,

and The Seven Habits is widely known as a business book, and there is some conversation in it about the business world, about leading organizations, about leading families. He brings up the idea of personal leadership, which is really about leading ourselves, which is plenty for a lot of us to take on. And he has a line in there, and he borrowed it from Peter Drucker and some other famous management leaders that says, management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. And I think this is really a critical distinction in thinking about the two ways and maybe two modes that we lead our lives in. One is a management mode, which is making sure we're doing things right.

But the other is that we've got to take time to be in a leadership mode where we really are conscious of what are the things that we are focusing on. What are the right things to do? He says, 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. Then, as the vicissitudes, as the challenges come, I can make my decisions based on those values. I can act with integrity. I don't have to react to the emotion or the

circumstances. I can be truly proactive, value-driven, because my values are clear. One of the things that he recommends doing is creating a personal mission statement. And organizations have mission statements. We all know businesses do. He talks about creating one. And the point is, I think it's easy to be cynical about those things, particularly when they're created by corporations. But his point is it's a way to examine what's most important to you, what your

values are, and then it can be used like the Constitution. You know, in this country, ideally, we go back to the Constitution, and it helps us decide what's the right thing. It helps us to frame up challenging circumstances or decisions. And a personal mission statement can work the same way. We can take any decision we're faced with in life, any circumstances, and we can take it back to that personal mission statement and get a sense of, okay, how do I behave based on what I've laid out as my most important values? And he talks about the ability to live with change. And he says, people can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside of them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who

you are, what you are about and what you value. Now, again, some of this stuff is slightly challenging because I believe very much in our ability to change kind of what's inside of us. But I think what Covey's getting at of what's inside of us. But I think what Covey's getting at is there's lots of things that can change. Our habits can change. Our attitudes can change. But if we, deep inside, have a sense of what's most important to us, what our values are, what principles we stand by, then those things remain constant and things can change around those.

And it makes that change a lot less frightening and, a lot of cases a lot easier to do when our behavior and our actions and our attitudes are out of line with what those are. Thank you.