"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" is a best-selling book by Stephen Covey. He worked for 25 years with successful people to discover the facts behind their achievements. He worked hard and studied many books about self-improvement, self-help, and psychology.
Here we will explore the purpose and key findings of this amazing book to learn more about.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Summary
His purpose for this study was to learn about the thoughts of great achievers. It is worth noticing that during his research he noticed a contrast in two types of success.
This contrast is between before and after the First World War. Before the First World War success was allocated to an individual’s ethic in his character. Humility, justice, courage, and integrity were the main characteristics of a successful man.
After the war according to Covey, the meaning of success was changed and shifted from ethic in character to personality ethic. Personality ethics included skills, behaviors, and public image. Covey did not agree with the afterward meanings of success. According to him, these traits did not have any worth. You should build a strong character to make yourself prominent in a better way.
This book is based on the concept of “Character Ethic”. This motivates the readers to make their characters strong with the traits of integrity and maturity instead of focusing on outer personality. According to Covey if you have good character, it is the main key to your success and effectiveness.
In this book writer gave a detailed introduction of 7 habits to improve your thoughts. These seven habits are principles of character on which your happiness and achievements are based. This book will help you to improve your approach to both personal and interpersonal effectiveness rather than your outer personality and behavior.
With the help of these seven habits, you can motivate yourself to move from dependence to independence and then interdependence. Interdependence is the more advanced and mature concept of working with other people which gives great results in the form of success.
Key Lessons to Learn from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
If you want to reach a good level of interdependence you should deeply study these seven habits which are mentioned in this book. These seven habits mentioned in this book are:
Be proactive in Your Commitments
Experiment to Keep the End in Mind
Prioritize Your Tasks
Think Win/ Win
Practice to Understand First, Then to Be Understood
Learn to Synergize
Sharpen Your Saw
We will discuss each of these traits here so that you will be able to improve yourself. These traits will be helpful for you to get the strength to achieve your goals.
Be Proactive in Your Commitments
The most fundamental trait that effective persons have is to be proactive in their commitments. You should have the courage to take responsibility for your life. As a result, you can accept the results of your decisions.
Instead of blaming external factors, you should own the results based on your conscious choice. Proactive individuals use their values to be strong.
On the other hand, reactive people are driven by their feelings and have no control over their lives. They always make excuses for their decisions. They always blame external factors for their failure.
External factors can be the cause of pain and damage to your mental state, your inner character should not be damaged. You can easily check your ability of proactivity by sticking with your commitments. It is necessary for your self-growth and self-improvement.
You can improve your proactivity by setting small goals and observing your sticking ability with them.
Gradually, you can increase your integrity which will help you to improve your ability to take responsibility.
Covey also suggests a 30-day proactivity test by making a series of small commitments that will help you in self-observation.
Experiment to Keep the End in Mind
Covey invites you to make an image of your funeral in your mind to understand the second effective habit more clearly. He tells us to imagine the things that we want our loved ones must remember about us. He also convinced you to think about how you will make a difference in their lives.
You can learn about some key points of your inner personality that can improve your behavior through this experiment.
In this way, you can easily target your life goals. You will able to handle your worst conditions too.
Set clear goals in light of your thoughts and stick with them proactively.
Begin with the end in mind means you should set a clear target that will be accomplished under your values.
Your values decide your actions and you can lead your life more effectively.
Prioritize Your Tasks
Put first thing first means you should know the priorities of your life. You should know the most important things that are on top of your routine and the things that can be done later. You must do your tasks proactively and keep your values in mind to fulfill your tasks.
According to this habit, you can have clear time management about your important commitments. Most of the time you have to say “no” in certain situations. You should know how to say no at the right time. You can easily become aware of your willpower by making your own decisions.
If you have strong willpower it means you are independent in your life for your decisions. Your integrity is also based on your timely decision-making ability. Your integrity allows you to make your commitments according to your priorities and fulfill them by putting first things first. This habit is necessary to follow to make your results and relations better not for saving your time.
Think Win/Win
Covey in his book talks about the win/win philosophy which encourages you to make mutually beneficial decisions. This habit will help you to improve your interpersonal leadership skills. You can keep people around you satisfied with the agreements and results with this mindset.
When you make a decision involving different parties around you, its outcome must make a winning impact on all of them. In this way, you come to know that life is an act of cooperation instead of competition.
Covey gives you some more impactful points to pursue win/win leadership qualities.
First of all, you should build a strong character on which a win/win mentality is based. It includes integrity and maturity.
The second point is relationship which is based on trust. If People around you trust your decisions, you can easily achieve win/win agreements.
The next point is about your agreements. When you make agreements, you must keep the benefits of all parties in mind around you.
Supportive system is another key element of win/win leadership. People around you must be trustworthy and supportive of your decisions.
In last all processes are taken for win/win outcomes.
Practice to Understand First, Then to Be Understood
Next, you must listen to others patiently without interrupting while communicating. Your intention to listen to others is to understand their point of view. In this way, you can improve your interpersonal relations. Covey also states that during your learning period of reading, writing, and speaking you must have some time for training in listening.
Listening to others carefully and without interrupting also shows your trust and respect for others. Using this habit of listening you give a chance to yourself to understand others in a better way.
You can convey your point of view more effectively after understanding others' points of view.
Once you understand others' thoughts now it is your turn to be understood according to the next person's thoughts.
Now you have clear thoughts to convey your thinking according to your listener's perspective. This increases the stability and effectiveness of your ideas for the people around you.
Learn to Synergize
When you learn synergy, it also makes your personality more prominent and effective. This habit helps to make successful collaborations among people with different mindsets.
When you value differences and work according to other people's abilities, it is a great thing to connect with people. This trait is very helpful for growing relations and it gives you desired results in teamwork.
Sharpen Your Saw
This 7th habit of Covey's book is based on four aspects of renewal of your life.
First of all, it includes physical renewal which means you should keep your body fit with exercise and a good diet. You also need to know to manage stress for better health of your mind.
The second one is social renewal which means you should participate in social activities. Make interactions and attend social parties to fulfill your emotional desires.
Thirdly you should maintain your mental health by reading, planning, writing, and visualizing. It helps in educating you continuously and in expanding your mind.
Lastly, you should focus on your inner feelings. Spiritually you will be strong and through meditation, you can come closer to your inner values.
These all aspects help maintain this habit. This habit is as important as above all. It focuses on your physical, mental, social, and spiritual health. If you will not take care of yourself, it is difficult for you to fulfill your commitments.
Conclusion
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey Stephen is very helpful in building an ethical character. Above all seven habits are not easy to maintain. If you believe in character building you can include them in your daily routine to level up your commitments. After reading this article you can easily understand these seven habits in a short time and make your life better.
