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THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

~ Your Personal Mission Controller – Self-Leadership That Works

THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

Tag Archives: stephen covey

Believe everything you hear? I hope not – for your sake.

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Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence, Discipline

≈ Comments Off on Believe everything you hear? I hope not – for your sake.

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7 Habits, Abertillery, competence, domestic violence, fake news, integrity, media, objectivity, poverty, seven habits, statistics, stephen covey, time management

Today, I want to write about objectivity. Objectivity is a discipline, and one that is not easy to execute because we are all biased by our experiences, upbringing and value systems. What we see, we see through a lens that has been fogged to some degree, unless we occasionally choose to clean it in an effort to ensure that some clarity is possible. I raise this issue because what I see going on around the world is, it appears to me, the result of deliberate fogging of lenses by interest groups that have become so powerful because of social media that we risk going down a path that could so easily be avoided if we just asked better questions when ‘facts’ are trotted out for us to gullibly accept.

I heard a statistic the other day. The speaker (a socialist) was upset that 1 in 5 children lived below the poverty line. I thought, “Is that possible? That would require 8 houses in my street to be ‘in poverty’, and for every street that had no poverty there would have to be streets with massively more than one in five.

Of course, if you conclude that children don’t earn any money, and that relative poverty is defined as poverty created when people earn less than 50% of the average wage, then that statement could be true – but the kids weren’t necessarily poor or living in a poor household.

Another one – According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales year ending March 2020, an estimated 5.5% of adults aged 16 to 74 years (2.3 million) experienced domestic abuse in the last year. Extrapolated, that means that domestic violence takes place in two houses in my street, or more in other streets. Or is it more likely that the same victims are being abused by the same perpetrators and this isn’t reflected in that figure? A third – and a remarkably consistent one – is that 250,000 people go missing from home annually. When I was a cop, the same girl went missing from a children’s home every day – are those separately counted, or is each a separately counted incident?

Of course, I don’t know. I do know that figures can be warped; as I say, I was a copper and crime figures – well, least said, soonest amended. The COVID stats are hilariously warped – crushed by rocks but died within 28 days of a positive covid test? Boom, another covid death. And more justification for lockdowns and other restrictions on freedom. (The Sue Grey Report came out yesterday. Ironic.)

So the discipline I invite people to consider is this: to question what you are told, and not blindly accept everything you hear. I say this because I see the anger, ire, combativeness and hatred created by facts that simply aren’t yet verified.

This week, a child reported he’d been racially abused, chased, and lost a finger having climbed a fence to escape. I don’t want that to be true – the thought of kids that age being racist in 2022 is sad. If it is true, let punishment follow. But years of child abuse input (and some personal experiences) state that a child should not be interviewed by untrained staff, nor asked repeatedly what happened, because of the risk of accidental embellishment if they feel they’re being challenged.

Yet the press, celebdom and interest groups have all had their bandwagon launched, and statements have been demanded and occasionally delivered from those in authority, all of whom are angry and incensed – before any police investigation has even started. And all of them are supposed to be intellectual and objective. Their bandwagon behaviour suggests otherwise. It means either they’re not astute enough to wait for the facts to be fully provided (bad) or it suits their agenda to spout (really bad and malevolent).

So my plea today is to wait. Use the gap between stimulus and response to decide if you have enough data to believe what is being put to you.

Because that’s exactly what you’d hope would happen if YOU were the subject of conjecture, wouldn’t you?

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You Have A Legacy To Leave – Your Own Story

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Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence, Uncategorized

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biography, character, competence, covey, leadership, legacy, life story, service, seven habits, stephen covey, stephen r covey, three resolutions, values, writing

Like many of you I am an unremarkable person. That sounds modest, but I mean it in the sense that I am no celebrity – I am just one of millions of people who do their ‘thing’ on a daily basis, and that ‘thing’ is fairly normal, certainly to those in the same industry and related fields. Such people tell stories to each other and never consider whether, or how much, people outside their fields will find their lives interesting. But we all have a story to tell.

Recently it occurred to me that as much as I loved and respected my father, and we had a very good relationship, my knowledge of who he was “pre-DC” was lacking. I knew he served in WWII as an aircraft mechanic on a Typhoon squadron, and I knew he’d been an electrical engineer with a power supplier until he retired. I had heard a couple of amusing stories, but he died many years ago and I realise I knew less than I should.

I have five beautiful grandchildren. I had my own kids when we were young and they pretty much experienced a lot of my policing life with me, but none of them know the full story. So I decided to write an autobiography. I knew I had a few funny stories to tell and I figured they might find them amusing. So I began. I am 100 pages of A4 in, and I am only up to 1990 – 28 years old. Most of what I have written is based on memory and from before I kept a real diary, so the remaining 32 years are going to fill a lot more pages because i am diarised up the wazoo. And every memory disclosed sparks another tale, regardless of the records, so I keep having to go back and fill an older chapter with a new tale of derring-do – or embarrassment.

And I realised that this is not just an ego-trip – it’s my legacy. Every story can, in some way, provide a life lesson to my descendants.

People tend to provide life lessons when a situation demands, but wouldn’t it always be better to provide the lessons in advance of the challenges they can solve?

This book – which I will publish on Amazon but only so that I can give hard copies to my family, you can ignore it if you want! – will be an opportunity to give my kids the wisdom it took me 60 years to learn. Yes, The Three Resolutions book contains my philosophy on life from which they can learn, but the autobiography will be the background detail as to why I needed them!

My suggestion this week, therefore, is that you consider writing down your own life story so that those who you love, and will love, and who will wonder who you are and what you did, won’t have to listen to vague recollections of others – they can have a first-hand account.

If that isn’t a Legacy, I don’t know what is.

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Advanced Driving Makes Me A Better Grandad.

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Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence

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Chauvin, competence, disipline, metpolice, personal development, policing, self help, seven habits, stephen covey, Super League

Do you put as much into your pastimes as you put into your work? Alternatively – do you put as much into your work as you put into your extra-curricular activities?

The Three Resolutions ethic suggests that you should seek to be equally competent in both, and that the levels of competence you seek should be the highest possible. Note that is use the word ‘seek’ – it would be unfair to suggest that you all have the time and resources to succeed at the highest level, in everything, all of the time. But you should do the best you can with the time and resources available.

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, touched on this. He suggested that many people think in silos, not deliberately but because that’s just the way society developed, in that there is a time for work, a time for play, a time for worship, and so on. Each was seen to be separate from the other. But in the 21st century, those boundaries slipped away. Now you have a work AND personal social media strategy to consider, work is a 24-hour focus (you are contactable constantly, and shifts and home-working are common), and self-directed personal and professional development is the norm. and you have to manage it, not your supervisors.

Next Monday, I will be engaging myself in my hobby, advanced driving. Not on the road, but on a racetrack. I’ll be driving my own road car, but I will be unfettered by speed limits. My intention, therefore, is to go as fast as I can and out-drive other people in faster cars. My experience in more controlled conditions has been that there are many folk out there with spectacularly powerful and beautiful motor cars who have no idea how to drive them the way they were intended. In two racetrack experiences, despite being up against Teslas, Jags, Porsches and BMWs, my Ford Focus has been let by and I’ve been passed once, because the instructor told me to let someone by when we were held up by a Tesla.

Yes, I’m clearly boasting. But it illustrates, to me, how some people aren’t seeking, or don’t appear to be seeking, the excellence that their resources will allow them to demonstrate. They’re settling for less than they can be. Yes, there may be other factors at play – I might just be reckless in exploring the outer limits of my ability and they have too much to lose – but as an illustration this example has merit.

How good are you at what you are not being paid for – and could you do it better?

I also write, I am a public speaker, and I am a cyclist, and in all three I try to be as good as I can get within the parameters that life presents.  I also try to be a great grandad and husband. No resources needed there, but ‘me’.

Strive to learn, strive to be your best. Returning to the Covey description, when we exceed expectations and capabilities in one are of our lives we can also improve our abilities and capacities in the other areas. Every improvement in one area creates improvements elsewhere.

But you must take care not to be like the excellent lawyer, who goes home and questions her family, seeking evidence for everything they tell her. Horses for courses – it’s the mental approach to excellence I’m proposing, not the ability to use the wrong tools in the wrong situation!

I do try to be ‘my best’ in everything I do. I frequently disappoint. But by seeking excellence in everything I am easily better than I would have been if I hadn’t even tried.

And another hint – if you teach as you learn, you actually create a personal and social obligation to be better all the time. Which those you serve will love.

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Stephen Covey taught me Scepticism… (bear with me).

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Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence

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character, competence, cynicism, discipline, hyrum w smith, learning, objectivity, purpose, scepticism, service, stephen covey

I have always been ‘intelligent’ in the sense I could pass examinations, but I don’t think I became really intelligent until I started studying the works of Stephen Covey. He didn’t make me any cleverer in IQ terms, but he did open my eyes to a new mental approach to things. He showed me how people – you, me and an awful lot of politicians and celebrities – are psychologically flawed, and in recognising those flaws I realised just how much what we are told is ideologically biased. Not necessarily on a political ideology – just a set of ideas about which the speaker feels certain, even though they have no empirical, objective evidence for the firmness of that certainty. It is, to use a Markleism, a ‘lived truth’ and is therefore subjective.

I hear a ‘fact’ now, and I realise that it is rarely factual. It is routinely an opinion. It is an opinion honestly held in the sense that the person stating it (usually) genuinely believes it, but it is rarely an absolute, objective truth. I now question everything I hear, because I know about Values. They believe what they are saying because they want it to be true. And anything which challenges that ‘truth’ is not only wrong, it is an absolute lie!

Attaching emotion to an argument colours it, so when I hear emotion – anger, passion, hate, fear – then I also hear bias. And just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I am right, either. Objectivity requires acceptance that you may also be biased.

Covey taught me many things, but one of them was to see things not through ‘my eyes’ but through ‘principles’. The main principle of debate and learning being – ‘have we heard ALL the facts?’ So I accept nothing, believe no-one and check everything.

For example, when I hear someone on one side of the political divide start insulting the other,  I remember Desmond Tutu’s advice that when in debate, instead of raising your voice, raise the quality of your argument. Try explanation and a quiet, considered voice – and I’ll hear you.

When I hear ‘There is no evidence to show …….. (whatever the speaker does not wish to believe)’, I ask, “Have you even looked?”

When I hear ‘something terrible IS going to happen’ (e.g. Brexit), I recall Hyrum W. Smith (author of What Matters Most) saying ‘ Results take time to measure’ and recognise none of us can tell the future. Try ‘might’ happen – and I’ll listen.

When I hear ‘you MUST do it this way’, I look at the background material and frequently find that ‘this way’ is not the ‘only way’. Indeed, it is occasionally the wrong way. Question what you are told – even if the answer remains the same, you will understand it to a far more informed degree.

When I hear talented actors, who I’ve watched grow up from their first childhood films to mature individuals, telling me their opinions about politics I ask, “When exactly did you do your—–ology degree?” They have a right to an opinion – but all too often they have no ‘authority’ behind it. (And as I get the impression that ‘creatives’ are almost consistently left-wing, I also ask how that stands up, statistically?).

And when I hear an academic’s opinion that is based on their expertise, I remember that they may have found the evidence they sought, but was it objectively tested? And you can get a degree with a 40% pass mark, by the way. Having letters after your name may just be confirmation of a bias!

In essence, what I am promoting, here, is to live a life of healthy cynicism, where you question what you hear – even your own experiences. The last thing this world needs is to move from objective reality to ‘lived truths’.

Listen, but assess. Could they be wrong – because if they are and you act on that, you’re wrong too.

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