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高效能人士的七个习惯的第一个习惯摘要如下:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” –Thorea
We have uniquely human ability of self-awareness or the ability to think about your very thought process. Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we “see” ourselves—our paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness.
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.
There are three social maps – genetic determinism, psychic determinism, and environmental determinism. Each of these map 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.
Victor Frankl 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.
Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.
Proactivity means as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decision, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.
Responsibility is the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize their responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their won conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feelings.
“No one can hurt you without your consent.” “They cannot take away our self- respect if we do no give it to them.” “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.”
It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.
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. The highest of the three values is attitudinal, in the paradigm of reframing sense. What matters most is how we respond to what we experience in life.
Taking initiative means recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.
“Solution selling” is a key paradigm in business success.
Because our attitudes and behaviors flow out of our paradigms, if we use our self-awareness to examine them, we can often see in them the nature of our underlying maps. Our language, for example, is a very real indicator of the degree to which we see ourselves as proactive people. So listen to our language and look at where we focus our time and energy.
Proactive people focus their efforts in the circle of influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their circle of influence to increase. As long as we are working in our circle of concern, we empower the things within it to control us. We aren’t taking the proactive initiative necessary to effect positive change.
Proactive people have a circle of concern that is at least as big as their circle of influence, accepting the responsibility to use their influence effectively.
The problem we face fall in one of three areas: direct control (problems involving our own behavior); indirect control (problems involving other people’s behavior); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities).
Direct control problems are solved by working on our habits. They are obviously within our circle of influence. These are the “private victories” of habits 1,2 and 3. Indirect control problems are solved by changing our methods of influence. These are “public victories” of habits 4, 5 and 6. No control problems involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom on our face—to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them. “Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Changing our habits, changing our methods of influence and changing the way we see our no control problems are all within our circle of influence.
It is inspiring to realize that in choosing our response to circumstance, we powerfully affect our circumstance.
The proactive approach is to change from the Inside-Out: to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what’s out there—I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.
We are responsible to control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are.
We can be happy and accept those things that at present we can’t control, while we focus our efforts on the things that we can.
The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill and desire are all within our control.
Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Work on things you have control over. Work on you. On be.
Look at the weakness of others with compassion, not accusation.
We are responsible for our own effectiveness, for our own happiness, and ultimately, I would say, for most of our circumstances.
“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”
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