Write on the front
The book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" was something I stumbled upon, and when I read other books, I saw a recommendation for this book, and someone once said that a good book can bring you another good book, and now it seems to be true.
When I opened the first page of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", "Words of Praise", I decided that this should be a good book, and many executives of multinational large enterprises have recommended it, adding up to a total of 70 or 80 executives, such as Xu Da, chairman of Shanghai Mobile, Ye Jian, general manager of China Hewlett-Packard Co., Ltd., Liu Yan, dean of Siemens School of Management, and so on.
Because of curiosity, I looked up the information about this book on the Internet, and I didn't know it, and I was a little annoyed that I had only read this book now. The book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" has sold over 100 million copies and has been translated into many languages (28 and 32) and is well known around the world. Forbes named the book one of the 10 most influential management books of all time, and even Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the book.
Stephen Covey, author of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", was born in 1932 and died in 2012, and was selected by Time magazine as one of the "25 Most Influential Americans" and a mentor of human potential.
The author divides the first 6 habits of the 7 habits of highly effective people into 2 parts, namely the successful habits of the personal field and the successful habits of the public domain, of which the successful habits of the personal field can make people change from dependence to independence, namely: proactive, starting with the end, and the success of the public field makes people move from independence to mutual dependence, including win-win thinking, knowing each other, integrating and integrating effects, and the last habit is constantly updated.
Today's article is going to talk about the first habit of solving success in the personal field: being proactive.
Being proactive is about not giving up on your choices
When it comes to being proactive, no one feels strange, from childhood to adulthood, we have always been told that we must be proactive in doing things. It probably means preparing and acting in advance, taking an offensive approach in a posture rather than a defensive position, and not being pushed by people and things. But the authors argue that this is only part of what being proactive means, not what it means to be proactive.
Readers who have read the book "The Meaning of Living Life" should know the tragic experience of the author Frankl in Auschwitz, as a Jew, who was stripped of his property and dignity by the Nazis during World War II, just like millions of Jews, and even his life could be taken at any time. This experience of life in the camp gave him another meaning of being proactive, which is that people have their own choices in any situation.
Yes, Dr. Covey proposed in the book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" that the key to being proactive is not to give up your choices at any time, no matter what the external environment is, your own behavior is the result of your own choices, not that others can impose, only by recognizing this can you truly take responsibility for your own life.
We often say: I have to do this, they forced it, I don't have time, I can only do this, etc., these words without exception all push the responsibility to the external environment, when we do this, we give up our own choice. When we are scolded, we will scold back, traffic jams on the road, we will lose our temper, these are direct reactions to the external environment, it is a reaction to emotions, rather than our active choice. In fact, if others don't get our car in the middle of the car, we can also not be angry, because it is not you who make the mistake, but we should be happy.
One might say that you have your own choices because you haven't faced extremely difficult situations, and in difficult circumstances, you can't choose both ways. In response to this statement, I would like to cite the poor Jews in the Nazi concentration camps described in "The Meaning of Living Life", even in the case where their lives were not guaranteed, some Jews chose to become Nazi minions and help the Nazis slaughter their own compatriots, while others chose to share their own meagre food and encourage and support each other.
When we realize that in addition to the formal attitude, it is more important that no matter how bad the external environment is, we do not easily give up our choices and bravely take responsibility for our own lives, rather than complaining about others, shirking responsibility, and always playing the role of victim to obtain pitiful sympathy.
The advantage of looking at things with a proactive attitude is that they are not easily disturbed by external conditions, are not swayed by emotions, and all decisions and reactions to the external world are made according to their own values. And those who give up the right to choose are very easy to be affected by the outside world, even if it is a look of others, a casual attitude will trigger a huge fluctuation in their emotions, such people are giving their control to others, that is, living in a relationship of dependence mentioned earlier, and being proactive can achieve true personal independence.
Freedom of choice is composed of four innate qualities peculiar to human beings, namely self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will. These gifts enable man to transcend the constraints of instinct, the acquired environment, and collective consciousness.
Self-awareness and conscience allow us to self-examine and believe that we need to improve, and then the gifts of imagination and independent will will work with self-awareness to help us make commitments, set goals and achieve them.
Circle of attention and circle of influence
When we have the freedom to choose, we should also know how to choose. Some of the things that happen to us or around us are something we can control, some are things that we can't control, and the things that can be controlled are called the circle of influence by the author, and the things that cannot be controlled by the author are called the circle of concern.
If we focus on the circle of influence and start with what we can, we can continue to expand our circle of influence. And to focus on the circle of attention, to complain about things that we can't control, to play the role of victim, but to avoid talking about how to improve the situation, this negative thinking is contrary to the above-mentioned initiative, although also made their own choices, but such a choice is to reduce efficiency rather than increase efficiency.
People are generally faced with three kinds of things, the first is directly controllable, which can be solved by cultivating habits, and the second is indirectly controllable, which can only be solved by exerting influence. The third is uncontrollable things, for which we must learn to smile and accept. Only in this way will we not be swayed by problems.
Accept the results of your choice with confidence
Man has the right to free choice but equally cannot escape the results of free choice. No one can guarantee that every choice they make is correct, even if the choice is based on the values that are incomparably correct, but the external environment is also changing dramatically, and failure cannot be completely avoided.
Finding that your choice is wrong, there is no need to be too surprised and remorseful, admitting and accepting failure, learning from experience, and avoiding mistakes from continuing to affect the future is the right way to open up to mistakes. Shouldering mistakes as a burden, and focusing too much on this immutable circle of attention will only make us lose more opportunities to create the future.
Write at the end
Being proactive is asking yourself to make choices and bear the corresponding results, not easily handing over the choice to the external environment (whether it is a parent, friend or dilemma), not complaining about others, not following the voice, and having independent values. At the same time, focus your main energy on the circle of influence, start from what you can do, and adopt an accepting attitude towards those things that you can't control.
Only by establishing a proactive mindset can we learn to be a candle that illuminates others, not judges of right and wrong; to lead by example, not to nitpick, to solve problems instead of creating trouble.