Category Archives: Rants

Posts about petty annoyances as they relate to The Three RResolutions

Seven Habits Review: Day 0. Introduction.

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

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I have written before about how many people confuse The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with being a business book. It isn’t, never was. What it is, is a book about living effectively as an individual and as part of any relationship. It is not about fame or success, per se, but about living a principled life, which in turn can lead to those things – if they are what you want. But let’s be frank – most of us don’t want them or don’t see them as important as being a good person doing good work for the people they care about, while enjoying life – which this book promotes in spades.

I recall once attending a meeting of personal development teachers preparing to deliver the Seven Habits material to schools with the overall aim of teaching ‘leadership’, and I opined that what we would be teaching was  self-leadership, and this was even more important because while everyone has the potential to be ‘a success’ and a ‘boss’ the vast majority of young people would be the staff, the workers, the led – and they should be trained to be the best they could be at those things, too. Leaders – self-leaders – make great followers.

The Seven Habits are (and I quote) A principle-centred, character-based, inside-out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

Let’s break that down a bit.

Principle-Centred. We like to think we can control events, but while we can control what we do, principles (sciences, incontrovertible truths, systems) decide the results. I’ll get deeper into that in future articles but for now I’ll explain that it means that instead of letting fame, wealth, family, church, peers, friends, pleasure, friends, enemies or work dictate how we think and behave, we let principles lead our decisions and resulting actions.

Character-Based. Our personality is what we show other people deliberately, but our character is what we really are. Personality tends to make us follow fashions and popular thought and ‘the latest thing’ so that we can fit in and benefit from that fitting in. Character, on the other hand, requires sacrifice, work and effort. But it lasts well beyond fashion, fame and money.

Inside-Out Approach. There is a tendency for folks to wait for their external world to change so that it suits them, instead of either changing it for the better themselves by changing their approach towards the changes needed. In 2020 we see protest after protest of people demanding other people change to suit their agenda – then they go home and wait for it to happen instead of engaging those in power in an effort to persuade and influence the change they want. The Inside-Out Approach is about looking into yourself and deciding what you need to change in yourself and how you need to change your approach, in order to achieve what you seek. Waiting for ‘them’ to change is ineffective.

Personal and Interpersonal Effectiveness. Effectiveness is not ‘just ‘success. Effectiveness is getting the results you want in such a way as to get them consistently – not once, but as long as they are needed. And it is not just about ‘you’ – it’s about effectiveness with and through other people, too. I have often said ‘Everything we do, we do with, for or because of other people – everything.’ So relationships are important enough to pursue with diligence. Including those we have with ourselves.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, then, are about taking responsibility for making things happen for the benefit of all those you love or serve, including yourself, while acting with good character and respecting the realities of the world.

Over the next 17 days (long story*) I intend to expand upon Stephen Covey’s work with a view to encouraging any reader to take up their own study of The Seven Habits so that they can benefit, as I have, from a better self-understanding and an improved recognition of what is going on around them, how they can respond to the challenges of the modern world – and do so without offending or being offended.

A word of warning, though – as you understand the lessons Covey taught you will start to recognise how many people are trying to tell you how to live. Covey’s main lesson is that you have that choice and it need not be imposed upon you. Reading the book will make you aware of how the world is trying to condition you – not necessarily out of malice but out of a desire to make you agree with ‘them’. After reading it, you may still agree with ‘them’. But it will be a conscious rather than popular agreement.

In the end, a major tenet of this book is this.

You can live your life or your life can be lived for you.

I hope you enjoy the work to follow.

 

(* Michael Heppell, personal development coach, has proposed a 17 day project for his Facebook Group and this is mine. That wasn’t as long a story as I thought.)

Habit 5 – The Bit We All Missed

28 Thursday May 2020

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I have been studying Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits for a quarter of a century, as have many of those with whom I have connected on LinkedIn. The recent 30th Anniversary Edition hit my hallway floor last Saturday – actually, it hit the outside step as the delivery person stood safely distant –and I am deep within its pages again. I have already discovered a few missed nuggets. Including today.

Habit 5 – Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood – has been a familiar tenet in the corporate world, I am sure. I have read that chapter many times, and always sworn to try to apply it in testing or inquisitorial conversations. The book itself describes its use in many such instances, using examples from the perspective of the lives of individuals in their personal and working lives to illustrate how verbal conversations can be improved through application of the aforementioned Habit..

Today, I found a bit I missed and, according to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (if my experience is anything to go by), so have a lot of other people. And possibly the reason I missed it is because this nugget was detailed not in Habit 5’s chapter, but in Habit 7’s, on renewal.

He wrote about great literature that ‘(reading in various fields) can expand our paradigms and sharpen our mental saw, particularly if we practice Habit 5 as we read, and seek first to understand.’

That was a AHA! moment. Or indeed a DUH! moment. I’d never thought about that, even if I’d exercised it. ‘Seek First to Understand what we READ’. It isn’t just a conversational model.

Realising that, and recognising its importance, led me to ask the question, “If people read the news with an enquiring rather than an assumptive mindset, would most of the rubbish on social media go away?’

Yes. People would read the allegations, check the facts, research any science or laws applicable, review the political past of the reporter/witness/commentator and eventually, perhaps, come to a less) emotional, ideological or ill-informed conclusion. And then shut the hell up.

(Of course, it might wind them up even more…..)

At the moment, we are witnessing a change in the reportage of the media. They have gone from just reporting, worked through and past analysis, and on to out-and-out commentary. Unfortunately, this is proving to be commentary without real, deep, objective or unbiased analysis.

It’s as if the middle bit is a bar to profit for the printed and commercial media, and a bar to fame and notoriety for the public-broadcaster’s employees who are all vying for a better position, or their own programme. The objective is no longer balanced reportage – it is fame and/or profit through a ‘shock-jock’ style approach..

(The last time newsreaders did something outside simple news-reading for fame, they dressed as sailors and did flick-flacks for Morecombe and Wise.)

Where have the Paul Foots and the Martin Bells and the Michael Buerks gone? They all reported injustice and societal disasters without the need for constant personal attack or self-importance. Even the famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward now seems to be left-biased, and only appears when the right is to be attacked. (I would’ve said criticised but they’ve all gone way past that.)

But more to my point – why have we, the public, stopped putting in the effort and started to just accept what is thrown at us by the media without asking ‘Is this true, exaggerated, misunderstood or made up?’ Why have we omitted that step and then just lost our sanity and sense of calm over what we have not checked is worth that effort?

Habit 5 – Seek First To Understand is a sensible, reasoned, objective and intellectually satisfying approach to news, documentaries and other sources of information. The counter to Habit 5, Seeking First to Assume, makes an – well, you know.

Don’t be one of those.

I’ve heard it before. Stop re-posting.

26 Thursday Mar 2020

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There is a tendency in all of us, and I say that because it is in me (and ‘what is most general is also most personal), to listen and understand only what we want to hear.

Evidence – the response to COVID-19.

I am avoiding news broadcasts because I do not want to hear the daily countdown to my own tragic death, and that of my loved ones. I am avoiding Twitter as much as I can because of the apparent glee with which some people speak of it, and the preaching from those who wrongly consider it their job to tell me what to do. The Government can do that for them. It’s in their Circle of Influence. Nobody else’s. How I respond is in mine. Everything else is outside, in the Circle of Concern. Including death tolls.

That said, I am grateful for the fact that HMG has started to use my mobile number to text me important updates, and Facebook for the unusually real updates.

What I am fed up with is everybody else’s reposting of the same posts I’ve had 10 times from someone else. If someone posts ‘how to wash your hands’ one more time I swear I’ll practice hand-wringing on their necks!

But these are strange times. There is, among the best of us, a willingness to comply for the better good. And the intent behind such posts is well-meant.

Unfortunately, and I refer back to my opening paragraph, there are those who understand only that 2m (what happened to 6 feet??) is the gap we should keep between us, so that means a 2m gap into which we can impose ourselves when jumping a queue. Those of us who think that it is noble to protect one’s family by behaving in a way that threatens another’s. And such people will, rest assured, find the evidence to justify what they are doing through reference to some nonsense that a moron has posted onto social media with the title ‘This is true!’, when it patently isn’t authoritative, responsibly sourced or cross-referenced.

At the same time, trotting out doctors to tell us we’re all going to die makes sobering, and therefore emotionally-avoided reading.

Which is why I have kept my reading about the virus to Government broadcasts and briefings. The rest is fluff and nonsense as far as I’m concerned.

Good ideas on the challenge in terms of how to Keep Calm and Carry On are great. Selfish preaching that points at me and says ‘IT’S ALL DOWN TO YOU’ – not so much.

Think about what and why you are posting. Has it been posted elsewhere, more authoritatively and widely? Is it in your area of expertise? Is it in the right Circle?

If the answers are Yes, No and No – don’t post.

Please.

Awaken The Woke!

07 Friday Feb 2020

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I have a huge, qualified distaste for ‘woke’. Every time I hear someone doing something that sits squarely under the ‘woke’ headline, I cringe.

I don’t cringe because of the motive behind Woke. The motives are, on the face of it at least, generally positive. There is nothing wrong with accepting diversity (but why do we have to ‘celebrate’ it if the desire is to make it the norm?), gentle environmentalism, respect for other cultures. But how it’s executed is often extremist, and therefore annoying – even alarming. In the examples below I am speaking of the Extreme Woke, not (for example) the lady who challenges a sexist comment.

In the field of coaching, and more specifically in the field of Seven Habits coaching, there are some presuppositions, just as there are in NLP training. Presuppositions are the ‘unquestioned’ bases for the philosophy being promoted by the coach. I put unquestioned in quotes because one of the presuppositions is that only Principles are undeniable – everything else is up for debate.

The pre-suppositions include:

The Concept of Paradigms. The Woke do not believe that any other ways of seeing things exist but their own. They cannot be wrong. They cannot even be partly mistaken. They are already right. End of.

Circles of Concern. The Woke have a Circle of Concern that envelopes everything. They have an opinion on everything despite rarely being expert in anything. In fact, they believe their Circle of Influence dwarfs their Circle of Concern, such is their Wokeness.

Taking Responsibility. The Woke thinks that everyone else around them should take responsibility for the feelings of The Woke, and they must bend over backwards to serve The Woke’s sensibilities. Safe spaces, FGS.

Be Proactive. This is where we take a moment between stimulus and response to choose – yes, choose – our response. Many of The Woke just seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to any questioning of their thinking and consider shouting down and interruption to be their right. A right that they do not provide to others, who must be non-platformed just for thinking a different way.

Seeking First to Understand. The Woke have their conclusions and they will not be questioned or asked to explain. If someone dares to do so, they conduct a metaphorical ‘hands over years, nah nah nah=nah-nah’ technique to drown them out.

Think Win-Win. The Woke believe in their way, or the highway.

The Concept of Service. The Woke have a concept of service that stops at protestation. They write, they march, they shout, then they go home. By virtue of their youth or position they are usually unable to actually do anything about a problem BUT demand someone else solves it. Preferably with someone else’s money and time. Oh, and it must be done NOW.

The Seven Habits philosophy is about taking responsibility for the things you can and should do something about. They are about having a sense of mission that creates results. They are about understanding other ideas without necessarily agreeing with them, and they are about serving others using our talents and skills. Paradoxically, they are also about listening to the Woke.

If The Woke started applying the Seven Habits, I suspect they’d be (a) less loud and (b) more successful.

Do please pass this on to any Woke that you know. You can often recognise them by the way they take huge, fuax-offence at things that have nothing to do with them.

 

 

Results take time to measure.

13 Friday Dec 2019

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Okay. Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way.

Not that long ago, I published a blog on The Circle of Influence. The message was that effective people spend their time focused on doing the things that they can do something about.

Yesterday, there was a General Election. This morning my brothers (love ‘em to bits), all being left like m’Dad (who wasn’t all that left but read the Daily Mirror) have started discussing their disappointment that they didn’t win.

Well, technically. I say technically because one of them did. He lives in a ‘safe’ Labour seat, presumably voted Labour and Labour stayed in. Nevertheless, they’re all ‘scared’ (FFS) about the future.

Here’s the thing. We do not elect the Prime Minister. We only elect a local representative. Therefore we have little to no influence over who governs the country because we do NOT have a vote in the other 600+ seats, and it’s that number which decides a government. Which means that the winner of a GE lies solely in our Circle of Concern.

Get out of there!

Next, they’ve also discussed the right-wing, pro-Brexit bias of the media.

Talk about ideological myopia!

The media has been fairly consistent in its desire for Brexit to stop, and Channel 4 has admitted as much. The political interviewers have bashed everybody of all persuasions over what they said when they said it years ago. (In fact, as a criminal interviewer I would say that the manner of their interviews would be described as unprofessional at best, and illegal and oppressive at worst, in all cases.)

The media particularly lied when they showed the evidence of people doing what they denied they’d done, the bar stewards! How very dare they.

Anyway, I’ve left the brothers’ Messenger group for a week while they get it out of their system.

Doris Day said it best when she sang, “Que Sera, Sera.” Whatever will be, will be. Over time, the electorate will see what happens, and then they will either be proved right, or be proved wrong. Hyrum W. Smith expressed it in a similar fashion when he suggested that we only know whether something serves us if we measure the results over time. I’ll go with that.

But I must admit I want to say something political. I respect the general membership of the Labour Party, brothers. They mean well, even if (like all sides) they’ve adopted the aggressive rhetoric of the US.

But think about this. Jeremy Corbyn has supported the IRA, Palestinian terrorists, and Russia (in terms of the Novichok incident).

Brothers – between 1980 and even up to now, to a degree, the people he defends would happily have killed me, as a serviceman and policeman. Not in a war, mind – most likely by planting an IED that would also have indiscriminately killed anyone near me regardless of their status. Or shooting me as I, unarmed, got into my car.

He supports the people whose actions could have resulted in you quietly escorting a plastic bag in a sealed coffin to a local graveyard.

Quite how you could support a man who’d welcome my violent death disgusts me. But I still love you all.

“It’s the most ‘orrible time of the year. (Ding Dong!)”

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

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14 sleeps.

Yes, two weeks tomorrow, it is Christmas Day. Many have been planning it since July. Christmas movies have been accompanying those who have been planning for Christmas since the start of Summer. My wife is watching one now. 10p says the girl’s cured of cancer after a last minute scare, the split family gets together and the choir wins. Or all three, and more.

The celebration, the Feast of Stephen as it were, consists of a birthday party for Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding the present giving to everyone but Jesus, part of the day is given over to a celebratory dinner. Turkey with all the ‘trimmings’, an expression that no-one can define.

Think about that for a second. A Christmas Dinner. ‘A’. Signifying ONE dinner.

Why is it, then, that right now thousands of people are clogging up the local shopping centre car parks in a mad panic to buy enough food to serve HMS Queen Elizabeth’s entire crew for a 6-month cruise around the equator?

Why is it that they are buying so much food in one go, knowing:

  1. It’s for one day’s celebration (really):
  2. They will eat it all because it’s there:
  3. With the exception of a very small percentage, it’s all over-salted or over-sugared, non-nutritional crap; and
  4. They know will later bitch about the weight they put on while eating that ‘one’ meal twice daily for about 7 days? Excluding between-meal nibbles.

How much money are they spending and how much time are they taking that could (in both cases) be better used?

How about next year (“It’s too late for me, save yourselves!”, they cry) you decide what you are going to eat on the day, buy that and get it delivered, and then glory in the way you feel better than everyone else when you go back to work?

In other words, plan the celebration and manage your time in its regard, with your common-sense personal value system dictating what you do, instead of complying with Christmas ‘conventions’ and (occasionally) a desire to compete to see who can demonstrate the most largesse and/or stupidity over Christmas.

Not to mention that, at THE most expensive time of the year, everyone wants to have an expensive works ‘do’ where you spend more on a three hour party than you will on your own present. Where people buy rounds all hoping you get as much as you give and that no-one abuses the ‘system’ – which, if you think about it, would happen if you just bought your own drinks.

And don’t forget! Most important of all!!

All that food you don’t eat, which you won’t eat because of the weight you gained and the fact that you’re starting that diet ‘tomorrow’?

Don’t forget to take it to work to valiantly, considerately and generously help all those doing and feeling the same???

 

Happy Christmas.

Who are YOU to Leave a Legacy? Read on…..

24 Saturday Feb 2018

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After a 45-minute spin session on my clothes horse this afternoon, watching Dr Covey training large groups of the wise, I found a YouTube video of a gentlemen in heavy facial tattoos having a go at the book First Things First. (I’ll come to those tattoos and why I mentioned them later.) Of course, I was always going to defend the book, but the focus of this post is one criticism that the vlogger made.

He suggested that the book was great for high-earners and those in powerful positions, but (to paraphrase) ‘the guy struggling to make ends meet is never going to be interested in leaving a legacy’.

How patronising. For a start, why shouldn’t the guy struggling to make ends meet want to leave behind something important when he’s gone ? From something as simple as a loved child, through to some magnificent contribution that changes the lives of millions, why is it that this vlogger thinks that the remit to leave a legacy is only within the power of the wealthy, the super-clever or the unbelievably talented?

A legacy isn’t necessarily a Microsoft, an Apple, a World Cup or other personal title. A legacy is positive contribution that lives in the memory of those left behind, whether it is a stadium-full of happy football fans or the spark of love remaining in the hearts of your children and grandchildren. It exists when a professional remembers a teacher that had faith in them when they doubted themselves. It exists within a charity worker who holds a child until it realises that people love it, and that life is worth pursuing. It exists within an author who writes a book that informs or entertains.

It exists within YOU. But it is only you who can bring it out into physical existence. You can leave a positive legacy, a bad legacy, or none at all. Those who feel they have nothing to offer live homelessly on our streets, abuse alcohol or drugs, or mope from day to day with no concept of meaning. And many die as a direct result of that sense of meaninglessness.

That’s why I promote The Three Resolutions and that is why I wrote the books. I believe that people who live in their accord – knowingly or not – live happy lives of competently executed purpose and service, resulting from a sense of self-discipline and great personal character. And in doing so they will all leave a legacy, similar to those described above. Even if they don’t realise they have done so – they have. I remember teachers, role models, trainers, writers and others that have had faith in me and whose example have made me what I am. (It’s me who hasn’t quite fully capitalised on their faith!) I bet you remember such people, too.

Leave a Legacy. PLAN to leave a legacy. It’s a lot more fun to plan one that leave one by accident.

Anyway, back to the tattooed vlogger.. I don’t like excessive tattoo-ery but those are my values in action. He has every right to have a tattooed visage if he wants one.

The reason I mention it is not to criticise, but to ask this.

If he doesn’t think leaving a legacy is important, why is he vlogging and why is he raising his individuality and sense of self-esteem by painting his face?

To leave a legacy, that’s why.

Bloomin’ hypocrite.

Bullying is not legitimised because of your target. It’s STILL bullying.

09 Sunday Jul 2017

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As there appears to be little to say ‘different’ on a daily basis, let’s just pause the daily updates on the 100-Day Challenge and get back to philosophisin’.

What do you call it when a person of power constantly picks at and picks on a person whose ability to reply is compromised? I believe in the world of work, school and society they call this bullying.

Now, when the person of power is the press or a comedian, and the person they are picking on is a politician, celebrity or athlete, you might be forgiven for saying it is different, because the politician (etc.) has power. I, on the other hand, disagree – conditionally.

First of all, I am not talking about reasonable criticism or analysis. That’s fair comment by any party. However, when the ‘criticism’ gets personal (appearance, language, verbal slips), or uses abusive language (idiot, idiocy, fool, disgusting, stupid, etc.), or is unendingly repetitive – then a line has been crossed.

The reason I say this is because the politician (etc.) has no right of equivalent reply, because the second they respond using the same kind of language they get attacked for that, as well. It is ‘unseemly’ or (the latest one) ‘unpresidential’. And no media outlet ever accepted they were wrong when they were wrong, in the history of ever. They just do it a bit more.

A bit like that bully who kept picking on you at school. The more you cried, the harder they hit. That is why I believe some press coverage amounts to bullying. From all sides and towards most politicians.

Poor old Diane Abbott made a right noodle of herself over policing costs, and the bullying went on for days. Part of that is because every different media outlet to which she spoke afterwards covered it, but in my view, they (a) asked the questions again and again and again and (b) weren’t remotely interested in her answer. I do not like the woman or her politics, but what the media did – and then those so-called liberal comedians who espouse ‘fairness and tolerance for all’, did – was to bully her.

And I have to ask whether that kind of bullying is made easier because we like it. We like it because the person being bullied is someone who we dislike or don’t agree with. Or we like it because they have money and we don’t, or they want our money and we don’t want to provide it. In sports, it’s because they aren’t ‘our’ team and therefore it’s okay to be nasty. Or we like it because it isn’t us.

In the final analysis, too many of us – and far too many so-called journalists – are just flipping kids.

Just for fun, this week.

30 Sunday Oct 2016

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I love the telly, ‘cos it makes me laugh. The devices they use to enable quick resolution of a plot, which they then DON’T use in later episodes because they need to string things out. And other foibles. For example, a recently bought laptop has a geolocator in it, so they can find it in seconds. Next week, they can’t even open its hard drive. This week facial recognition works on a blurry pic, next week a perfect resolution shot baffles the system. And DNA can be done in a minute, not to mention (a personal favourite) a quick telephone call from NCIS to get a bug in a Mosque – I’d love to see the paperwork needed to get THAT done in less than ‘ever’.

This week, I watched an action programme I won’t be watching again. The good guy had one hour to get from an office in central Las Vegas to kill the bad guy. The lift would’ve taken 20 minutes to get to the front door of the skyscraper he was in, for a start. Never mind his lack of available transport. They also glossed over the fact that when the hour was set they had no idea where the bad guy actually was. Strike 1.

That wasn’t the whole howler for that episode. There was the bit when the ever-present access-from-anywhere CCTV hacked into by the goodies said, “They’re heading south on the Strip!” with a bleeping blob where they were – well south of Las Vegas. Good guy set off and caught up with them at Fremont Street (the famous part of old LV where they filmed the car chase in Diamonds Are Forever) – which is NORTH, and completely the other side of the city. Strike 2.

Final nail in that coffin was when the good guy got the the aforementioned unknown airfield, where bad guy was taking off in a decommissioned C130 Hercules transport plane, built in the 60s-70s would be my guess. Pre-internet/Wi-Fi. Good guy’s IT woman said, “I can’t get into the telemetry to switch it off, but I can get into the hydraulics’, so she opened the door for good guy to run up to the moving ‘plane, and jump on.

Telemetry – implies ‘transmission of data’. Hydraulic systems are independent units with fluid controlled operating systems. How the hell could she NOT do ‘telemetry’ but COULD do hydraulics? Even assuming she could do either? Strike 3.

(Not to mention how Good Guy shot the pilot dead and then bad guy jumped out with the only parachute, so good guy jumped out after him. Me, I’d have got in the pilot seat and hit bad guy with the ‘plane, then landed it with ATC assistance……)

I know that this is all cobblers, really I do. But my experience in the police shows that the general public actually believes this stuff is do-able, so when I can’t detect their crime in 20 minutes, including ads for a cuppa, they go all ballistic on me. And given HM Government’s belief that a computer-centred enquiry can be done with a 28-day bail period indicates that they have been watching the same programmes, where Good Guy deals with one thing at a time and concludes it (a) quickly and (b) before other problems arise.

On the other hand, I do laugh at these script devices, and that is something.

Now, is the ‘Detect Crime’ button to the left or right of ‘Ctrl’?……

bullshit