habits

Communication is the most important skill in life

People usually are trying so hard to be understood, so they totally forget to just listen. Even if they do listen, they are preparing for speaking, they listen with the intend to reply. The conversations between people feels more like monologues. Don’t rush things up, don’t try to fix it or give an immediate advice. First, completely understand the problem.

If you want to interact with people effectively, if you want to influence people – you need to understand them. You have to build the skill of empathetic listening and you have to gain trust. 

There are 4 levels of listening:

1. Ignoring
2. Pretending
3. Selective Listening
4. Autobiographical Listening
5. Empathic Listening

When we listen autobiographically we:

1. Evaluate (agree or disagree)
2. Probe (asking questions from our own frame of reference);
3. Advice (give advice based on our own experiences);
4. Interpret (we try to explain people’s feeling and behaviors based on our own experiences);

Listening empathetically means seeking first to understand, to see the world the other person sees it, to understand how he/she feels. You need to understand what is really happening in another  person’s head and heart. It’s a communication of souls.

There are 3 stages of listening empathetically:

1. Mimic. It is also called active or reflective listening. You simply listen to the words the other person says and you repeat them.
2. Rephrase. Same as previous, but you rephrase the content.
3. Reflect Feelings. You’re not paying as much attention to what is being said, but to the feelings of other person. You rephrase the content and adding the feelings. Put to the side your own experiences and try to understand the real issue.

People want to be understood, people want to be heard. No matter how much time time it takes to truly listen and understand another person, it will bring greater returns. The person will feel relieved and deeply understood. You will build trust.

Every person’s world perception is different. You might be living through the family-centered glasses; I might be living through the money or self-centered glasses. We both lived this way for years and totally convinced that its the only right way to live. When we begin interacting, working with other people that have different perspectives on life, we face misunderstanding.

Here is how using the approach of empathetic listening can help you to develop trust and understanding when negotiating or trying to make a Win/Win deal:

1. Go over the material (contract, agreement, proposal etc.).
2. Rephrase the content.
3. Reflect the feelings. Make sure you understand what’s important to the other side.
4. Explain concerns and feelings from your side.
5. Come up with the solution that will benefit both sides.

Seeking first to understand also makes you a good presenter. There are three key parts to making an effective presentation:

1.  Ethos. The trust and appreciation people have towards you. It’s your character and relationships with people.
2. Pathos. The way you make other people feel.
3. Logos. Logic and reasoning behind the information you present.

You need to learn to present your ideas clearly, specifically, visually and in the context of other people’s objectives, feelings, concerns. Put away your own autobiography, experience and seek to understand other people first, see the life through each other’s lenses.  

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

“The greatest asset you ever had and will have is YOU!

The single most powerful investment you can ever make is investment in yourself.”

Sharpening the saw means mastering and renewing all main pillars of your life regularly and in wise, balanced way. We are our own instruments for achieving everything in life, and to be effective we need to take time regularly to sharpen saw in all four dimensions:

1. Physical. Exercise regularly: do aerobic exercises to rush the blood around the body and keep your heart healthy; stretch, do some yoga; do strength training. Stay on top of your nutrition: eat real food that nourishes your body; stay away from sugars and trans fats. Sleep well, don’t stay up late and rest for at least 8 hours daily. Let your mind and body to rest and release the stress.
2. Mental. Don’t let your mind atrophy. Read a lot, read daily, read broadly, read serious literature, explore new subjects, think analytically. Expose yourself to great minds. Set yourself a goal of at least one book a month, then two, three. Write, write critically or in a way that tests your mind, learn to express yourself clearly. Keep the journal of thoughts, experiences, insights and ideas. Education – continuing education, continuing expansion of mind. Plan and organize. Strengthen the power of your mind by practicing visualization. See the entire journey from the beginning, dream. Spend at least one hour a day sharpening your mental skills.
3. Spiritual. Meditate, listen great music or immerse into great literature. Learn and practice breathing techniques. Get outdoors and communicate with nature. Pray, keep the journal of gratitude. 
4. Social. Serve, help other people in a meaningful ways.

“If you want to live a long life, focus on making contributions”

Dr. Hans Selye

“Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth”

N. Eldon Tanner

Sharpening your saw needs to be balanced between all four dimensions. It is in fact synergetic – the more you sharpen one thing, the more impact it has on others dimensions. Your mental health is dependent on your physical condition as well as your spirituality depends on your social/emotional strength. 

Being physically sharp improves your personal leadership and discipline. You become more proactive, you get empowered to act instead of being acted upon.

Being developed spiritually allows you to recognize and change the personal paradigms and scripts that don’t serve you. It allows you to live your life in harmony with your core values, which results in greater personal security as you get your strength from within.

Being mentally sharp helps to maximize the use of your energy and time. It helps you to organize your life in effective manner and execute only the activities that have high priority.  If you continually invest in improving your mental capabilities you brake free from the influence of circumstances and situations. You don’t depend on your boss’s opinion of you, you become economically independent. Being sharp mentally improves your most important financial skill – your capacity to earn.

“Your economic security doesn’t come from your job, it comes from your own power to produce  – to think, to learn, to adapt”

“The true financial independence means having the power to produce wealth. It’s intrinsic”

Stephen R. Covey

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”

Aristotle

The idea behind synergy is that relationship between two or more elements that generates the outcome is more than the sum of their parts taken separately. This idea is in the essence of nature, where everything is related to everything else. Two plants planted together improve the quality of soil and grow stronger if they would be separated. If you burn two two big firewoods close together, they will last longer, then if you burn them one after another. When man and women synergize, they make a new human. It is impossible to make a baby just by yourself. 

Interdependence is in the core of synergy. The elements within a positive synergy are interdependent, meaning they have to each perform different functions or roles with respect to each other. Football team works synergistically, because each player performs his own specific role within the whole organization (team).

Synergy between people can’t just happen as it requires proper environment, the right set of minds. Trust, thinking Win/Win and trying to understand fist creates the platform for synergetic interaction. 

Positive Synergy

In the process of brainstorming to come up with new ideas. The more process diversified, the more different ideas come up, the more successful outcome will be. Positive synergies in group decisions include generation of more ideas, creative solutions, a greater acceptance of diversity, acceptance of the decision by team members and a greater capacity to work together towards the same goal. The human body can perform hundreds of functions because of both the extremely high level of differentiation between its parts (interdependency) – and its capacity to integrate them together. The same would apply to a production process or a technology. A modern car has much greater functionality than the 40 years old one because a car today has about 30,000 parts, which are all well integrated. The combination of differentiation and integration creates positive synergies and creates the functionality that adds value to the whole. 

“Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy – the mental, emotional, psychological differences between people. And the key to valuing those differences is to realize that all people see the world, not AS IS, but AS THEY ARE”

S. Covey

Negative Synergy

On another hand, negative synergy is interaction where the combined outcome is less than the sum of the parts taken separately. Arms race is a good example, where two parties interact that we get the overall outcome that is counter-productive and detrimental to all. Another example of a negative synergy would be two lions fighting over the same territory. Insecure and dependent people create negative synergy. They think they see the world the “right” way and it’s the only way. They are not even attempting to understand another point of view and neglect the differences. 

The next time you realize the other person sees the situation differently than you, say: Good! You see it totally differently than I do. Help me to see it with your eyes.

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

Win/win philosophy teaches us that the life in not competitive area, but cooperative. There is plenty for everyone and one person’s success is not being achieved at the expense of someone else’s. 

If you can’t find a solution that we both will benefit from, we call it No Deal and pass on the opportunity. 

To adopt this philosophy, you have to develop a character that is defined by the following qualities:

Integrity. You need to know what is your life’s mission, what are your core principles and values. 

Maturity. According to Hrand Saxenian, emotional maturity – is the ability to express one’s own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feeling of others.

Abundance Mentality. There is plenty out there for everyone.Such mentality requires you to be confident in yourself, with a strong sense of personal worth and security. 

Relationships. You need to build relationship of trust, where you feel safe and confident.

In order to develop a Win/Win solution you should:

1. See the issue from another point of view. Really try to understand the other person.
2. Identify the main blockers/concerns.
3. Determine what results are trying to be achieved and would benefit both parties.
4. Develop solutions to achieving those results.

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

You are the manager of your life and to manage your life effectively you need to learn to put first things first.

You also a leader that needs to learn how to set priorities, deciding what those “first things” are.

Mr. E. M. Gray dedicated his life searching for that one thing that all successful people share. Guess what is it? While you’re thinking, I can tell you what it’s not: hard work; good luck; being extraordinary smart; being gifted in some way; human relations… the list goes on. Putting first things first – is what he found to be that one thing.

“True discipline means channeling our best hours into first order objectives”

Time Management

Over the years, time management tools and methods evolved from simple organizers and to do lists to more complex systems. Up to this date there are 4 generations of time management tools:

1^st generation is when people recognized the power of effective time management. It was the very first attempt to get more control over people’s lives by utilizing such simple tools as notes and checklists.

2^nd generation – calendars and appointment books.

3^rd generation – is what mostly used nowadays and in addition to the tools that were used in two previous generations it identifies the importance of prioritization, setting values and goals. It prioritizes the activities based on the person’s values.

Time management approaches focus only on things  and time. They don’t take into account unexpected events that arise daily, making people too restricted, too controlling, too scheduled. When something happens in a given day and the person is getting thrown behind his schedule, it creates a lot stress, anxiety and feeling of failure.

4^th generation instead of focusing on things and time, it focuses on managing ourselves, creating and improving relationships while accomplishing results.

Urgent & Important

Activities and problems that we face daily for the most part are urgent and important. They can be divided into 4 types:

I. Urgent & Important. This are the fires that arise during the day and require our immediate attention. If we focus every day on managing only this type of problems, we often find ourself stressed, anxious and burned out.

II. Not Urgent, but Important. This is were you should be spending most of your time and energy. Example of type II activities: reviewing & planning, exercising, meeting new people and building relationships, writing personal mission statement. Basically its the staff that we know is really important, but we can’t find the time or motivation for it. Activities of this type, if we did on a regular basis, would change our life. Also, the 80:20 rule applies here.

“Effective people are not problem-minded; they are opportunities-minded”

Peter Drucker

III. Urgent & Not Important.  People react to the urgent, but not important problems, setting aside the important staff. Focusing on this type of issues makes us feel like the victims of circumstances and out of control. We sacrifice our values and priorities, spending time here.

IV. Not Urgent & Not Important. Watching TV, constantly checking email, spending hours talking on the phone, scrolling through Instagram or Facebook newsfeed, basically time wasting.

To be effective we need to spend more time dealing with type II activities and learn how to set priorities and say no to the things that don’t matter. We need to learn how to put first things first. 

A lot of people use 3rd generation time management approach to stay effective. They prioritize their daily problems and activities in accordance with goals and values. This time management approach lacks creativity, realism, turning people into robots. When things do not go as planned, it results in frustration and feelings of failure. 3rd generation tools help ONLY to organize critical problems and busy work.

“The key is NOT to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities”

Covey, 1996

You need to create your own time management tool that will organize your life in the context of the week. 

The tool should be:

1. Balanced. It has to balance all the aspects of your life, like health, relationships, career, hobbies, experiences etc.
2. Coherent. It has to have a place for your mission statement. It should use your mission and vision as a guidance for setting short and long-term goals.
3. Flexible. It should serve you, not the other way around.
4. People Factor. It should you to have flexibility to deal with people and unexpected things that arise daily.
5. Portability. The tool should be easily portable and always by hand when needed. 

In order to develop the tool that will allow you to manage your time and energy effectively you need to:

1. Identify your Roles. What are the key roles you performing in your life? You can be a husband, a son, an engineer at work, a cyclist or runner at the gym.
2. Set the Goals. Each role you’re playing has to have a set of goals you want to accomplish in that part of your life. As a triathlete you may want to break your PR in marathon running or finish 1st in your age group at the Ironman race. As a professional, you may be striving to get promoted etc…
3. Plan the Week. Look at the next weeks schedule and distribute your goals throughout the week. There should be logic thinking and convenient approach applied, as would make more sense to do certain things on certain days.
4. Plan the Day. Your daily planning should be flexible, based on priorities, unanticipated events and relationships. 

Now you have your personal management tool that:

• Creates balance between different roles of your life. You grow in all areas of your life that important to you, succeeding in all directions;
• Gives your more freedom and greater context. By planning weekly, instead of planning daily you become more flexible and less stressed. You now see a broader picture and when unexpected arise you get more freedom to creatively address that issue;
• It allows you to make quick decisions, sort the tasks by priorities and values that are important to you. By constantly having your core values and principles in check, you can sort out non-important things and free more time for the staff that matters. It also defines your life’s mission and aligns everything you do with it.

Your tool evolved from being just a To Do List to being your compass.

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

At the billionaire’s funeral:

– How much did he leave?

– He left it all…

Have you even been to the funerals? If so, you know how the coffin looks. Close your eyes and imagine that big black box, with the lid opened, sitting at the age of the grave, waiting to be berried. You come closer and you see yourself laying inside, with your eyes closed and the hands folded on your chest. You turn around and you see your friends and family members standing around all dressed in black. What will each one of them have to say about you? What kind of person were you? Have you made any difference in the world, in someones life? Have you achieved anything significant in your life? How were you different that any other human on the planet? 

Every day you wake up, you need to have a crystal clear vision of where you are going and what is deeply important to you. No matter who you are, how you label yourself, we are all traveling to the same destination – the graveyard.  

Everything is created twice

First is the mental creation, second is the physical creation. The building of the house begins from detailed construction plan outlined on the paper, before you even take the hummer in your hand. Starting a business is another example. Building successful company begins from clear definition of what you’re trying to achieve, a business plan.  

To begin with end in mind means to approach my role as entrepreneur or athlete, a professional at work, a writer, a son or brother  with my core values and clear direction. 

 Personal Mission Statement

The world and people around us are constantly changing and it’s hard to navigate to your destination without reliable compass. You need to develop your personal mission statement  – the constitution that is based on your core principles, goals and values. 

 “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Viktor E. Frankl

To create a mission statement you need to find out what lays in the center of your life. How do you look at world, through what lenses? People rarely centered on just one thing and their securities, wisdom and power come from different places. Depending on external factors, one center start taking too much of the focus and sets the rest to the back. What glasses are you looking through a world?

Spouse Glasses

If you get centered on your spouse or partner, you become too vulnerable to the feelings, moods and behaviors of your partner. You become emotionally dependent. When the other person doesn’t treat you the way you want, you get hurt. The more you get hurt, the more you feel the need to protect yourself from future emotional injuries. This leads to disappointment and you adopt sarcasm, criticism, cutting humor. They serve you as a shield that helps to hide that tenderness within. Below are the most common ones:

Family Glasses

People who put family at the center of their lives are too sensitive to any changes in family traditions,  culture and reputation. Family centered parents usually overreact to their kids bad behaviors by yelling or screaming at them or even overreacting with bad temper. They put the conditions on their love to the kids. I love you if you … 

Money Glasses

This is the most common one. People that are money centered, get their sense of worth from their employment and income. They looks at the world and others through the money lenses, often put family and friends aside. 

Work Glasses

This are the “workaholics”. There is no distinction between work and life. Those people work so hard, that they sacrifice some important aspects of their lives, such as health and relationships. The only thing that matters is work, and those are the people that commit suicide after they get fired.

Possession Glasses

Cars, clothes, homes, boats, fame, glory, social recognition are the driving forces for people centered on material, not always tangible things. They are very protective over those things and constantly trying to increase the amount of staff they own. Possession centered people get their sense of worth from material things they have ownership over and extremely sensitive to loosing them.

Pleasure Glasses

Person that is centered on getting pleasures is constantly in a search for more and more fun and pleasure. They get bored too soon with everything that offers “fun” and always cry for more. Bigger, better, more exciting! Such people are often narcissistic, looking at the wife from perspective of getting as much pleasure as possible.

Enemy & Friend Glasses 

It’s really common for young people to be friend-centered. It becomes really important to be a part of some group and they are very vulnerable to the attitudes, feeling and behaviors or other people. Spouse/partner centeredness is similar to this.

People that are enemy centered, often put the person they’re in the conflict with in the center of their lives. They are very reactive to the actions and attitudes of the other person. Many divorced couples are so consumed with the anger and hard feelings to each other, so they remain psychologically married even after divorce. 

Self Glasses

Selfishness. Many people are self-centered in their approaches to self-fulfillment and growth. “What I want? What I need? What’s in it for me?” are the questions self centered people often ask themselves. They view the world by how different circumstances, decisions or events will affect their person lives. The right way to look at self development is to improve one’s ability to serve other people, to create, to produce, to contribute into the world in meaningful ways.

Principle Glasses

If we loyal to our principles, they provide us with a sense of security. They don’t treat us differently, they don’t change their minds or get mad, they don’t fire us or run away with another man. Principles are greater than people and circumstances. 

“By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective”

Covey, S. R. (2014), p. 131

Mission Statements is not something that is being written overnight. It takes a lot of energy, time, analysis and thoughts to create your personal constitution that will express your core values and principles. As we change, our principles change and writing the MS becomes a continuous process, where we adjust it in accordingly. 

Identify your Roles and Goals in life.

You wear a lot of hats. At work, you may be an engineer, a banker, a writer. At home, you are a husband, a father, a neighbor or a son. You may wear a heat of a triathlete, a cyclist, a football player. Braking down your life into the roles and goals you have for each one, makes it easier to write a mission statement. After you clear on your roles, answer to yourself, what do you want to accomplish in each role. Focus on the end result, visualize it. Collect the notes, ideas, quotes that found reflection within yourself. Use them as resource in creating your personal mission statement.

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

You are the creator. You are in charge

You are not your feelings. You are not your mood. You are not your thoughts.

You’ve been given one of the greatest gifts  – self-awareness. This is what separates you from the animals. It allows you to think about your thinking, to looks at yourself from perspective.

The Social Mirror

How do you see yourself? How does your family see you? How does you friends see you?How does your co-workers see you? How different or a like those images are?

Stimulus & Responce

Self-awareness is one of our greatest powers that allow us to be an observer of the what is happening to us. It allows us to decide what is going to affect us and what’s not.

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power – the freedom to choose.

In that freedom we can operate with imagination – the ability to transfer outside of our minds, the present moment. Conscience – an understanding of what’s right or wrong, based on our principles. The will – ability to act.

This unique super-powers  allow us to reprogram our instincts and reactive responses. This is what makes human potential unlimited.

Reactive or Proactive?

When you realize that you are the only one responsible for your own life, you become proactive. Responsibility literally means “response-ability” – the ability to choose your response to the stimulus.

Stop blaming other people, circumstances and conditions. Don’t empower external things to control you, don’t be reactive. It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.

No one can hurt you without your consent. They can not take away our self respect if we don’t give it to them . Eleanor Roosevelt

Proactive people’s language:

• Let’s choose a different approach;
• Let’s search for alternatives;
• I control my feelings and emotions;
• I will choose appropriate response;
• I don’t know how, but I will make it happen;
• I choose;
• I decide;
• I will…

Reactive people are affected by the weather. I don’t feel good, because the weather sucks today. They affected by other people, the social environment. No one loves me, so I feel sad. External factors do not matter, your response is what you should focus on.

Reactive people’s language:

• There is nothing I cad do;
• I am not responsible;
• That’s just the way I am;
• He makes me so mad;
• They won’t allow that;
• I will be happy when … ;
• If I only had … ;
• I have to do that;
• I can’t;
• I must;

Listen to your language and choose the words carefully. Don’t empower the external things to control you. Listen to your thoughts and every time we think the problem is “out there”, that thought is the problem. Think proactively and switch to thinking inside-out: I can be smarter, I can be more resourceful, I can be stronger, I can be more disciplined … Work on be. It is so easier to blame everyone and everything around you for your own failures. But you are the only one responsible for everything that happens to you, remember? And more important, you are response-able. If you really want to change something in your life, you have to work on the main thing you always have control over – yourself.

Reactive people make the love a feeling, as they are driven by feelings.

Love is a verb.

Serve, sacrifice, listen, appreciate, affirm, empathize, love your partner.

Initiative

It takes the initiative to improve your life. It takes the effort to recognize, eliminate the habits that don’t serve you and develop the one that improve the quality of your life.

Do you let the circumstances and conditions act on you or you will take the initiative and be proactive. Ask yourself: How do I want to respond to this? What am I going to do about it? How can I be proactive in this situation?

Don’t focus on the things that you have no control over, but work on the things that you can do something about.

There are three types of problems depending on how much control we have over them:

• Direct control (problems that are caused by our own behavior);
• Indirect control (other people caused it to happen);
• No control (they probably already happened in the past or will in future). Smile, accept and learn to live with them;

Commitments

All the commitments and promises you make and keep, are the clear indication of the level of your proactivity. As you become more conscious and self-aware, you discover your own weaknesses and areas that need to be developed.  You start making promises, setting goals. If you keep those promises, if you work hard and achieve the goals you set – you build the character.

The fastest way to to put yourself in control of your own life is to make a promise and keep it; set a goal and accomplish it. This gives us power over our lives and the things that we experience in it.

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press. 

Leaders are made not born. Leadership is a set of skills that can be learned by training, perception, practice and experience over time.

As human beings we all face the same basic challenges in our lives:

• Fear. We fear for the future, for loosing a job, for loosing the ability to feed ourselves and our families.
• Hopelessness. We believe we are victims of circumstances and we loose hope for better lives, better future. It sets us into depression and cynicism. 
• I want it right here and right now. I want a big house, a fancy car, a model girlfriend or wife. I want it all right now and I sure deserve it.
• Lack of balance in life. We struggle to manage our time, or energy, our lives. Go in earlier, stay later, work harder, sleep is for weak, sacrifice your health, forget your family.
• Selfishness. What is in it for me? How can I get the most our it? Life is a race, a game, a competition and you better come to the finish first, no matter what the cost is.
• Fighting differences. They think differently, they’re wrong. The way I think and see the world is the only right way, let me teach you. We simply assume the way we see things is the way they really are and the way they should be.
  
  

We must look at the glasses through which we see the world, and the actual world we see. That glasses shape how we perceive and interpret the world and everything that happens to us. We see the world not as it is, but as WE ARE. The more aware we become of our paradigms and assumptions, the more responsibility we can take for our actions and our lives. Our paradigms, no matter if they’re correct or not, are the sources of our behaviors and habits, our relationships with other people. If we want to become more effective in life, if we want to become great leaders, we need to make significant change in our basic paradigms, the way we perceive the world. We need to develop fundamental principles and habits that will improve our personal effectiveness. Its a long and difficult process without any possible shortcuts. 

Habits are very powerful factors in our lives. They are consistent, unconscious patterns that make us effective or ineffective. If we want to change a habit, we need to have theoretical knowledge, know how, and know why. It’s a painful process.

Studying and implementing the following habits into your life, will give you a strong lift-off boost to brake free from the pull of your old, ineffective and harmful habits and adopt new ones that will improve your personal effectives and make dramatic positive shift in your life.