Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Book Summary

Seven Habits of highly effective people

Author: Dr Stephen Covey. He remains a hugely influential management guru. The book has sold more than 25 million copies in 40 languages worldwide became a blueprint for personal development. He has laid down a remarkable set of inspirational and aspirational standards for anyone who seeks to live a full, purposeful and good life, and are applicable today more than ever, as the business world - and life beyond business and work - become more attuned to humanist concepts. U.S. President Bill Clinton invited Covey to Camp David to counsel him on how to integrate the book into his presidency.

Book size       : 372 pages

Summary size: 13 pages

HABIT 1 – BE PROACTIVE

The book opens by explaining how many individuals who have achieved a high degree of outward success find themselves still struggling with an inner need for developing personal effectiveness and growing healthy relationships with other people.  

Covey believes the way we see the world is entirely based on our own perceptions. In order to change a given situation, we must change ourselves, and in order to change ourselves, we must be able to change our perceptions.

In studying over 200 years' worth of literature on the concept of "success," Covey identified a very important change in the way that humans have defined success over time.

In earlier times, the foundation of success rested upon Character Ethic (things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule). But starting around the 1920s, the way people viewed success shifted to what Covey calls Personality Ethic (where success is a function of personality, public image, attitudes and behaviors).  

These days, people look for quick fixes. They see a successful person, team, or organization and ask "How do you do it? Teach me your techniques!" But these “shortcuts” that we look for, hoping to save time and effort and still achieve the desired result, are simply band-aids that will yield short-term solutions; they don't address the underlying condition.

"The way we see the problem is the problem," Covey emphasizes. We must allow ourselves to undergo paradigm shifts - to change ourselves fundamentally and not just alter our attitudes and behaviors on the surface level - in order to achieve true change.  

That's where the seven habits of highly effective people come in:

Habits 1, 2, and 3 are focused on self-mastery and moving from dependence to independence.

Habits 4, 5, and 6 are focused on developing teamwork, collaboration, and communication skills, and moving from independence to interdependence.

Habit 7 is focused on continuous growth and improvement, and embodies all the other habits.

The first habit is “Be Proactive”

We choose the scripts by which to live our lives. Use this self-awareness to be proactive and take responsibility for your choices.  

The first habit that Covey discusses is being proactive. What distinguishes us as humans from all other animals is our inherent ability to examine our own character, to decide how to view ourselves and our situations, to control our own effectiveness.  

Put simply: In order to be effective, one must be proactive.  

Reactive people take a passive stance - they believe that the world is happening to them. They say things like:

 "There's nothing I can do."  Or “That's just the way I am."  

They think the problem is "out there" - but that thought is the problem. Reactivity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and reactive people feel increasingly victimized and out of control.

Proactive people, however, recognize that they have responsibility - or "response-ability" - the ability to choose how you will respond to a given stimulus or situation

"It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happened to us in the first place."

In order to be proactive, we must focus on the Circle of Influence that lies within our Circle of Concern - in other words, we must work on the things we can do something about.

The positive energy we exert will cause our Circle of Influence to expand.

Reactive people, on the other hand, focus on things that are in their Circle of Concern but not in their Circle of Influence, which leads to blaming external factors, emanating negative energy, and causing their Circle of Influence to shrink.

Practice Success Habit 1:

Challenge yourself to test the principle of proactivity by doing the following:  

1. Start replacing reactive language with proactive language. 

Reactive = "He makes me so mad."
Proactive = "I control my own feelings."

2. Convert reactive tasks into proactive ones.

HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

For the rest of the summary please ping me your full name on my WhatsApp no. +91 9594700077