The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey is a great book about personal development
Introduction
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a self-help book by Stephen R. Covey and this article is an overview of the book and what to expect from it. In this book the author is distilling down ideas and concepts that he learned from other book or from his own personal experience to lead an effective life.
The book discusses two areas of success, character ethics and personality ethics. Character ethics is personal and includes traits like integrity, humility, courage, justice etc. Personality ethics is interpersonal and includes things like public image, attitudes and behaviors or skills and techniques used to interact with others. To lead an effective life you need success in both. Out of the two, character ethics is much more important because it is the foundation from which success in personality ethics comes from. This is because our personality stems from our character. In other words the source of our attitudes, behaviors and actions, or personality, is our personal values, beliefs etc. As an example think about a person who has flaws in character traits of integrity and honesty. The person wants someone to like them. In order to do that they fake their interest in the other person’s hobby. They can fake their interest only so much. When, let’s say, they are taking part in the hobby together, the lack of interest and genuineness may come through as lack of patience, boredom, wanting to get it over with etc. The other person may get the feeling that something is off. With a lack of trust there is no chance of a long term successful relationship. The relationship cannot flourish because trust is a foundational aspect of interpersonal relationships. Foundational to trust is character traits or values of integrity and honesty. In essence a successful personality can only stem from a solid foundation of character strength.
The author lists 7 habits to internalize in order to become more effective in life. The first 3 are about developing the self, the next 3 are about developing our interpersonal relationships and the last one is about maintaining our body and mind. Some of the ways listed in the book to maintain our body and mind is eating healthy, exercising, pursuing hobbies, reading books or going to a concert. The book has a lot of details and stories to demonstrate these 7 habits in concrete terms along with the shift in mindset needed to foster them. The following paragraphs include some more information on the first 6 habits divided into two sections based on whether it is character focused or personality focused.
Developing character strength
Habits 1 to 3 are be proactive, begin with the end in mind and put first things first. These are focused on mastery of the self. Internalizing these help us in being proactive, taking responsibility, having a plan for ourselves or prioritizing and taking action to advance our goals with a focus on things that are in our control. It moves us from dependence to independence. Dependence in this case is when we are focused on others for validation and solutions. Dependence manifest as blaming others for our problems or wanting others to fix things for us. Independence is being responsible, having a belief in ourselves or being self-reliant. These habits help in cultivating independence. The mindsets shared in these sections and the stories demonstrating it is very helpful in understanding the concepts and putting them into practice.
Developing a better personality
Habits 4 to 6 are think win/win, seek first to understand, then to be understood and synergize. These are focused on improving our interpersonal relationships. These habits help in cultivating collaboration and in being more effective in our communications. Internalizing these helps us move from independence to interdependence. To be interdependent means having the skills to work with others and understanding that we together can achieve things greater than what any single individual can achieve alone. You need to be independent first to be able to be interdependent. It is because success in interpersonal relationships cannot happen without a foundation of character strength. In short these habits help you improve your personality and get you further along in being an effective human.
Conclusion
This book is a guide on how to lead an effective, happy, purposeful and fulfilling life. The ideas in it are great. The practical advice about having a better mindset is great. The use of examples and stories to explain the concepts in the book makes it an interesting read too. It helped me a lot. I would recommend it to you as a book to help improve your life.
Book discussed
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey