7 Habits You'll Want to Pick Up

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has published one of the best pieces of literature I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

A good friend and mentor recommended this book to me a while back when he introduced Habit #5 (Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood) as apart of his leadership development presentation to myself along with my fellow student government cabinet members. Ever since, I've been anxious to get my hands on a copy so that I could absorb as much knowledge from it as possible.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is about focusing on paradigms. Our paradigms often hinder us from successfully performing tasks, completing projects, and managing human relationships to the best of our abilities. Covey explains that we often try to solve problems without analyzing the symptons to provide an accurate diagnosis. Before we fully understand the delimma we automatically shift responsibility on others. Our paradigms however, are frequently the issue and they simply need maintenance to eliminate and prevent future issues. We can alter our paradigms by improving our habits. This book outlines 7 effective habits to succesfully enhance our paradigms.

Habit #2 talks about "Beginning with the End in Mind". To know the end, you have to know where you going; therefore, Covey includes an exercise that involves visioning your own funeral. While reading this book, I did practice this activity. I imagined myself driving to my funeral, noticing who attended, observing their facial expressions, and listened to Eulogies from friends, family, co-workers, and church members. I even approached the casket to see myself lying there lifeless. The objective is to listen to the eulogies to determine what the end is, in other words our deepest goals. This exercise will then help you to develop your own personal mission statement. I haven't written mine yet, but I will publish it as a blog post as soon as it is finalized. This was just one of the many interesting activities this book has to offer.

I encourage you to purchase this book to not only read for yourself, but to keep in your personal book collection for reference and review. There is so much knowlege in 7 Habits for Highly Effective People that you will want to read it multiple times.