Interim blog this week, just to keep you all refreshed.

The company that owns the intellectual property rights to The Seven Habits®, FranklinCovey, currently utilises an interesting diagram to illustrate a ‘process’ through which people can come to properly apply the 7 Habits Principles in their circumstances.

That diagram is this:

(Copyright © 2016 FranklinCovey, Inc)

I absolutely endorse and believe in the process that this diagram so beautifully illustrates, and suggest that whatever life philosophy you choose – and I recommend the 7 Habits® as a great one, and the Three Resolutions® as a viable alternative – this process is the method you should use to properly adopt that ‘new way’.

First, as with any philosophy or plan, you have to truly decide, genuinely and freely commit to whatever you have elected to apply. Without that commitment there will be no success, only something you can ‘talk’ about but which you don’t walk. (Yes, I know………)

Then, apply Jack Canfield’s Principle ‘Act As If’, and start to model fully what it is you tell others you ‘are’. This is where integrity is born. This is where, even if you wander off the chosen path, you recognise that there is a path and you want to be walking along it. You ‘do’ what you have elected and promised to do, even if while doing it you feel as though there is a secret, internally felt element of pretence about what you are doing. You “fake it ‘til you make it”, but you do so specifically in order to make it, not to just seem to be making it. If that makes sense. (It does to me.)

That Modelling of your ideal ‘you’ is then reinforced until you are no longer faking it – you are doing it, you are doing it consistently, and people around you can see just how committed you are. In fact, they might not see it because they have accepted that it IS you. There is no change evident – you have arrived, so to speak.

But nothing happens without first making that commitment, so the advice I give in my book The Three Resolutions remains valid – do not commit until you are truly willing to put everything into your performance of your adopted philosophy.

And once you have done that – remember the above illustration.

If you haven’t done so yet, please visit Amazon HERE and ‘Look Inside’ to see more about The Three Resolutions and how it might change your life on your own, better terms.