Tag Archives: Stephen R Covey”

Wipe away the Tiers with Proactivity

17 Thursday Dec 2020

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What a mess we are in, and what a mess the authorities seem to be creating. I don’t know whether they are right to create fear about a virulent flu that is a threat, whether this is a gross over-reaction to an annual event (and will happen every year for the foreseeable future), or whether it is a failing effort to reduce greenhouse gasses using the annual plague as an excuse. All I do know is that it is creating havoc for people, like me, who ‘make plans’ only for the prevailing rules to change 24 hours later. And I am lucky – I have no business or formal employment to worry about.

I don’t want to get caught up in the stats and how they are skewed and interpreted to suit. An increase in ‘cases’ resulting from an increase in ‘positive tests’ which results from massive testing doesn’t tell you/me how many cases have required action above going to bed for a few days. No, this blog is about how to respond to these inconveniences.

Proactively.

Whatever kind of challenge presents itself, it creates a psychological anguish that is representative of the gap between ‘what should have been’ and ‘what now is’. It means that we believe that what we had under control is, for the moment, outside of our control. The key to an effective response is to decide to act within that gap, using our God-given personal endowments.

You see, whatever happens, we can control our response if we decide to do so. We tend to default to ‘Poor Little Old Me’ (PLOM) in the first instance because the change imposed upon us creates work, in the sense that as we can’t do what we intended, we have to apply mental effort – and occasionally physical effort – to regaining the control we had. But that’s life. We do it every day, but most days we are immune to the PLOM effect because we are familiar with that particular inconvenience.

Three days ago I booked an event in Kent which I know would go ahead because despite that area’s Tier3 status they were still holding events of the kind I’d booked. Then yesterday, the local authority where I live changed its rules and threatened to cock things up here, instead.

Initially, despondency. Then a moment of clarity and the decision to explore with the event’s organisers whether I can change my date and pay a slightly increased fee for a later, less threatened date. If they say No, I have a choice – wait and see what happens the week before the event (when the Tier gets reviewed as planned) and comply. Or, yes, I can choose to go in any case. If there are penalties, then I can choose to pay them. It’s up to me.

And that’s the other abiding truth. We can decide how to respond to any imposition or event that affects us. But we can’t choose the consequences. They are outside our control. We can anticipate and plan for the consequences we reasonably expect will occur as a result of our choice, but we can’t guarantee them. So (for example), in the event that I would have to bend the law to execute on my plan and go anyway, I can choose to risk the authorities’ wrath. Or I can decide to comply, wear the relatively cheap cost of not being able to go, and start a revolution instead. (I am soooo miffed.)

If you think you have lost control of events, simply decide to take it back.

Look at the event and consider alternatives. Talk to people, ask questions, and despite advice to the contrary look for loopholes that will enable you to come through on what you intended. That’s why they are there – to exercise the mind, to beef up your initiative, to make you better.

Or you can just be miserable. ‘Cause that’s easy.

By all means. explore the purchase of my book. No pressure.

When over-focusing won’t work.

08 Thursday Oct 2020

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“The key to meeting an unmet need is in addressing, not ignoring the other needs.” Stephen R Covey.

It is widely acknowledged that we humans have four needs. Various writers have jiggled with them, added some, changed the terminology and so on, but for the purpose of this article I’ll use Covey’s four – the physical (food, drink, rest, exercise), the social-emotional (relationships), the mental (intellectual growth) and the spiritual (meaning). Covey opines that so often, when one of these needs is unmet we tend to address that gap it by only focusing on that area – for example, by exercising passionately when we need to lose weight. This can work, of course it can, but what about the other needs that are being minimised or even ignored while you sit and sweat on the exercise bike? Are you ignoring your spouse? Are you moving forward on your other, important goals? Are you ignoring professional development? Are all these areas suffering because of your manic focus on the ‘one problem’ you have identified? The answer is often Yes.

To the same degree, I decided to explore The Three Resolutions. In my book I describe how they present a progressive self-development from self-discipline and self-denial, through competence and character, to the achievement of a self-identified purpose through service to others.

I consider they confirm Covey’s thinking. My life’s experience is full of examples of people who focus in one or two areas identified in the Resolutions, and yet remain oblivious to the fact that their singular focus in one area prevents them becoming the best that they could be. (Of course, I also have examples of great successes who, coincidentally, demonstrate compliance with all three.) Athletes who excel – and then we find they used performance enhancing drugs. Amazing singers – whose hypocrisy about green issues gets laid bare when they buy a plane ticket for their hat. Dedicated politicians – whose expense claims render them untrustworthy.

For me, as for Covey – and I’ll be candid and say I ain’t no perfect example either – the finest expression of greatness is seen when all Three Resolutions are addressed, and when all three are addressed simultaneously. When we utilise our self-discipline to empower our competence, which is founded in great personal character, and serve others for a worthwhile purpose.

You can train in each area separately, but success in each enables success in all of the others.

So, just as Covey suggests with his needs, consider this: when you have a problem or personal challenge, don’t just think which ONE of the Three Resolutions you need to address: think how you could address that issue with all three.

Not fit enough? Don’t just hit the bricks (discipline) – research fitness (competence), train with and help others (service), and do so with dedication (character).

Don’t know enough? Don’t ‘just’ study (discipline) – carefully identify what you need to learn and set about it (competence), resist others’ invitations to take unnecessary breaks (character), and teach as you learn (service), which enhances that learning.

Want to serve others but don’t know how? Consider and understand your needs, capacities and competencies (character/competence), identify what service you can provide (purpose) and then learn ways of using that before allotting time (discipline) to providing the optimum service to the best effect.

You can be the buffest, prettiest, strongest, fittest, shiniest narcissist in the gym – but you won’t get the respect you’ll get if it’s all about you.

Exercise all the Resolutions. The best among us have shown you this works.

7 Habits Day 1 of 17 – Paradigms

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

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Before he got into the Habits themselves, Stephen Covey laid a foundation, a core set of bases for understanding what was to follow. One of my recent discoveries on my 25th year of study was just how much what mattered at the start, mattered at the finish. And in the part between.

The primary, possibly most powerful tenet of The Seven Habits Philosophy is that of personal responsibility. Make sure you understand that. Everything that we do about what happens to us – is our fault. I should emphasise, given a participant’s interjection that ‘not everything is our fault’ that not everything that happens to us is our fault – the tenet doesn’t say that. It states that what we do about it is our fault.

Which means that when events pressurise upon us, when we want things to change, when we realise we don’t know or understand something, then responsibility for addressing those challenges lies not with Mum, friends, the government or the media. It lies within us. We are responsible.

This is almost too much to bear for some people, and for some vulnerable people it is nigh on impossible. Understanding personal responsibility can be a curse as much as it is liberating, when it comes to judging situations. “Why don’t you just DO something?” is easy for one to say, hard for another to do.

Which brings us to the first idea we have to understand if we are to understand the remainder of the Habits, and life in general. (Incidentally, reading the book will raise your levels of understanding of psychology as well as philosophy.)

The first concept to understand is that of Paradigms. In essence, and to quote Dr Covey, it is summed up in the phrase, “How we see the problem, is the problem.”

Paradigm is based on a Greek word, Paradigma, meaning pattern. If you consider (my understanding of) Gestalt Theory, it means we see and assess things based on a pattern that our experiences have formed. Paradigms are why we pull on some door handles and push on door plates – our experience instantly tells us which we are approaching and we act accordingly. That is at a basic level, but at an advanced level it is why we judge people and situations – our upbringing, state of mind, prior experience and judgements all inform us and we usually assess and act without further thought.

In demonstrations, Covey asks half of his audience to look at a picture of a woman’s face while the remainder close their eyes. Then the audience changes places and he shows a picture of a saxophone player. Then the pictures close and all open their eyes. Then a third picture is shown, which to those in the know is a composite, a drawing utilising the same line structure but slightly changed detail, and the audience is asked to discuss. Half insist it is a girl, the other half a saxophonist. Debate takes place an eventually all see both.

This is where it gets interesting. Think on the idea that how we see things influences what we do about it, and that our past experience influences how we see things. This has two effects.

First,  if we see things differently from others, we act differently and if we see the wrong thing, we do the wrong thing. That is not too sinister. But secondly, we can be directed to see things a certain way – and therefore act as we have been ‘told’ to see.

What does this mean?

It means that it does not take long, or very much, to direct people’s thinking.

Advertisers do it. We know that. But the media does it, too. How often have you been told that ‘outrage’ has been caused by something a politician has done, when if you were to step away from being told that you are outraged to realise that only the Opposition has ‘been outraged’ – surprise – and what has happened is really quite insignificant. But the media primes the reader to be angered using adjective and adverb to exaggerate factual content.

Not only is it true that “How you see the problem is the problem,” but “How you are told to see the problem can cause problems.”

A lot of people I speak to are quite defensive when I speak of the 7 Habits. What I find from what they say is they haven’t a clue what they’re defensive about – but their experiences and paradigms are telling them that this is religion/psychobabble/not relevant/I’m nuts.

In essence, understanding Paradigms lets us ask ourselves several question about our issues, challenges and problems. They are:

  • “How do you see yours?”
  • “Am I seeing the situation correctly?”
  • “Does it really matter? And
  • “What am I going to do about it? If anything.”

Tomorrow we’ll look at the Personality and Character Ethic, and how even that influences how we see and act.

Resistance is still futile.

29 Monday Jun 2020

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Since last month’s release of the 7 Habits 30th Anniversary Edition I have read it twice. Added to the 25 years or more of reading, courses and observations I have already learned and made, you may be forgiven for thinking ‘Why?’ Fair comment.

However, what I have found is that when reading this timeless book there is always something new to discover, to understand, or to interpret in a new, more modern context. This time I read every chapter, then read each again while I made notes. I made 295 separate observations, and that is far from the full number of lessons in this classic if you consider that some of my notes were ‘I know this…’ I also made new connections – correction, I recognised the connections I’d missed before – between the lessons in the early pages and their relevance to those in the middle and end of the book.

As I did for so long, I suspect that a lot of people will perceive the 7 Habits as a sequential list of things to apply to life, when in fact that is very far from the whole story. The Habits are sequential in the sense that they address the roots, shoots and fruits of effective living in first the personal and then the public senses of existence. They are easier to learn and understand in sequence, too.

And yet, this 25th year’s reading identified to me the depth of thinking that Covey put into this work over 20-plus years, because I started to discover for myself the intricate web, the extensive inter-connectedness of the 7 Habits. I saw the way each singular element impacts, underpins, and has synergy with all the others. There are no contradictions between what is said on one page, and what you find anywhere else. All is in synch with everything else. This book has an ecology of its own that is a complete parallel with nature’s own ecology. Everything in The 7 Habits ‘library’ works with, and because of everything else. And any failure in one area compromises success elsewhere.

I suspect that recognition of this ecology is why I also enjoyed his later works. They, too, extend the ecology of the original, iconic work. Just as reading the 7 Habits in its laid-out sequence enhanced my ability to understand what could be quite an intellectual work, reading the following books in sequence underpinned and extended one’s understanding of the first as much as reading the first underpins reading of the rest. It may sound a little conceited but I credit understanding this book with an increased awareness and understanding of everything I have experienced in life. Yes, it made me clever. I never wrote like this before 1995.

In moving forward from The 7 Habits, Stephen Covey gave us First Things First (Habits 2 and 3 in more detail), The 3rd Alternative (Habits 4-6 in detail), Principle-Centred Leadership and later The 8th Habit (personal and interpersonal management and leadership in detail) and reading them all – and applying the learning – covers all the principles a manager, leader and individual needs to know in life. Not just for work, and not in terms of ‘do this, do that’. Technique and processes are situationally specific but the philosophy, understanding and execution of principles, as espoused in these books, apply everywhere all the time, and these books are where you come to realise this.

Some resist reading these books, and the original in particular, because they don’t understand what they are about, possibly because they are often mis-filed in bookshops as business books. They aren’t.

They are, without a dount in my experience and opinion, the most essential personal effectiveness books you will ever read.

Anyway, to assist you in realising this and in order to enhance my own deeper understanding, I am going to spend a lot of July writing about some of the 295 sentences in my notes.

Strap in, and maybe I will convince you, too.

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What the 7 Habits Did For Me.

01 Monday Jun 2020

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I came to the Seven Habits later than I’d have liked, but since they weren’t published until 1989 and I was already 37 years old that’s not really surprising. I discovered the book in 1995 after I’d read Stephen Covey’s time management epic First Things First and realised that I enjoyed his writing style and presentation as much as I did the content.

In retrospect the book changed me in many positive ways, ways I wish to put on record and ways that I would encourage others to explore, if not adopt. I won’t look at the Habits themselves, as that would lengthen this article too much. I’ll just focus on their effect.

In reading The Seven Habits (and Covey’s other works):

  • I discovered that people allow themselves to be influenced, even created by their surroundings, and that I could decide that my surroundings would not affect me. We are all Pavlov’s Dogs, if we allow that to happen.
  • I discovered that the best way to achieve anything is to put myself forward rather than rely on things to happen in a way that suits me.
  • I realised that now and then it is better to just say nothing rather than express an opinion that will upset someone else, especially when there was no perceivable positive outcome to such expression.
  • I discovered that what was being presented to me by others is frequently coloured, flowered with opinion rather than objectivity, and designed to tell me what they want me to think, rather than what is actually unbiased and true. It made me question everything rather than just accept. Professionally, it made me a better investigator.
  • I noticed just how much time and effort is wasted on ‘things done the way they’ve always been done’ and without proper, considered thought. It made me challenge demands on my time – some I won, some I lost, but all taught me new ways to approach people whose demands challenged me.
  • I stopped challenging processes until I truly understood their objective, thus recognising what worked and what didn’t, so that I could influence effective change.
  • I started to think about my future and started developing and executing a plan that made my desired outcomes come into being.
  • I found that reading the book, with its considered prose, well-argued observations and incredible wisdom, made me more intelligent. It made me want to seek more knowledge, higher-level qualifications and challenging opportunities.
  • I decided that I wanted to teach this to others, and so I sought out the experiences, training and opportunities to do so. I even funded its availability in my local comprehensive.
  • I recognised that I have made many, many mistakes, but that they do not define me.
  • And many mooooorrrreeeee.

In conclusion, reading that book arguably made me a more productive employee, parent, husband and trainer. Yes, I still make mistakes but it is usually despite my knowledge rather than because of it. The principles apply – it’s my failure to apply the principles (on occasion) that influenced my personal errors. And given Covey’s confession that even he had trouble with them, I can live with it.

The book has sold 40 million copies, has just been re-issued as a 30th anniversary edition, and still surprises me with my recognition of bits of information that tweak my knowledge of the material and how it applies to my life.

I really, emphatically and enthusiastically recommend it. If nothing else, reading it led to some truly impactive self-discovery and personal growth. The hardback costs less than 10 pints and has a longer-term effect.

Or you can choose beer. Make the better choice.

Stretch yourself – be like Pregnancy Pants.

27 Friday Mar 2020

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“Sometimes things can go right only by first going very wrong.” Edward Tenner

And here we are. We exist at a time where the whole world has come to a grinding crawl, with the retail and hospitality industries taking a big hit. Which means that we, the citizens, denied our access to the dopamine of retail therapy and the opportunity to get away from it all suddenly find we have to find some other way of feeling good and ‘finding ourselves’.

Charles R Hobbs, of the original, non-Brian Tracy title TimePower, observed that when we go on holiday, the first thing we do on arrival is recreate the Comfort Zone that is home. First, we check the TV channels, and then we find out the wi-fi password. Is he right? Be honest.

Today, the comfort zones of shopping and the workplace have been denied to many, and to be fair that has resulted in a lot of imagination being utilised to cope with new challenges, which is arguably Mankind’s greatest skill. And as one esteemed philosopher put it, Mankind’s development has been the result of Challenge – Response.

The Challenge today is how to live in a confined space and feel happy, secure and productive for the period of the Lockdown. Of course, the nature of this lockdown is, shall we say, a bit like pregnancy trousers – there’s a bit of leeway that will expand and contract as needs demand.

Notwithstanding the ability or otherwise to do your paid work, we have a twenty-day window to:

  • Discover Kindle e-books, which can be in your lap in seconds and can feed your mind on a subject of interest to you.
  • Access on-line courses which can make you more employable.
  • Do all those jobs around the house that have needed doing. (My kitchen FINALLY looks organised.)
  • Talk to your partner and kids.
  • And your neighbours, whether they work for the NHS or not.
  • Telephone friends, neighbours and workmates using those unlimited minutes you’ve paid for.
  • (Personal favourite) Study The Seven Habits, First Things First and Principle-Centred Leadership and discover new ways of thinking – how to think, not what to think – an important distinction. All available on Kindle and, if you’re clever, very cheaply.
  • Read my blogs more often.

All of the above ideas, and any you can discover for yourself, will mean that you come out of the other side of this a better person, more organised, and possibly even more productive than before.

But, above all, doing something like those things will absolutely, unarguably and without fail MASSIVELY increase your sense of self-esteem – the value you place on yourself.

Go on – don’t just be a public hero like everyone else. Stretch yourself.

Win a Private Victory as well.

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered. Or Beguiled?

23 Monday Mar 2020

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When I have promoted my works and offer training in the realms of personal development, I often find resistance not to the time or costs, but to the very idea of the material. I wrote in Police Time Management why I think this is in respect of that particular field of knowledge, but today I listened to a lecture by the late, great Jim Rohn and I think he hit the nail on the proverbial.

He spoke of the Sermon on the Mount and described how the response was reported in the Bible as being divided into three types – the perplexed, the mockers and the believers. Hence my title this morning.

Let’s have a think about all three, and their motivations.

The Perplexed. They don’t know what you’re talking about. These people are the ones in the Unconscious Incompetence bracket of Noel Burch’s model. They don’t know what they don’t know and are equally unable to comprehend that what they don’t know will serve them. They’ve likely already concluded it’s too hard to understand so they don’t bother trying.

The Mockers. These are the ones who know it all, or think they do. They don’t see that there is an alternative way of thinking to the one they’ve already decided is best. And rather than articulate that because they know it to be a stupid position or can’t face the work involved, they attack the idea. It’s easier than knuckling down and listening.

The Believers. Now, here we have to be careful because there are actually three strands. There are the Believers who believe regardless of the efficacy of the argument, so they’ll believe no matter what is said, if they are convinced by the speaker. Then there are Believers who are the Consciously Incompetent, who know that there is something that they don’t know – and want to know it. And the final subset are the ones who’ve had the training and have applied it to the degree that they know it to be good stuff.

That last set is very present on LinkedIn, but there’s something they could do that they aren’t doing. They aren’t letting anyone else know that the stuff is good.

Some possible reasons. They are naturally well-organised ‘time-managers’ and don’t realise that others need this input. Or perhaps they think it’s a great secret and don’t want anyone to know because it makes them appear really effective. Or they think that the cost of training their peers and staff in such material isn’t cost-effective.

So they are Believers but not Advocates. I like the by-line I use for my LinkedIn page – Advocate of the Seven Habits – because it underlines my willingness to communicate something I believe in. I would ask others to do the same, but not only in terms of their chosen profession.

I would encourage people to look at the provision of training in the sub-skills of ‘work’ – sector specific or in a more general sense – like communications, self- and time-management, administration practices, even mindfulness (ugh) if it makes their staff more productive and less stressed.

As the greats have said (and I paraphrase) – Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll produce enough fish for his employer to sell at a massive profit through enhanced effectiveness and efficiencies.

Go on. Train your staff or just buy them a book about ‘stuff’. Many have, and many have benefited as a consequence.

Be the right kind of Believer.

Now, more than ever – Plan Your Future.

13 Friday Mar 2020

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Okay, yesterday I said I’d only do one pandemic post, but circumstances change and so does our approach. Here is take 2. It’s more important than yesterday’s.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to the concentration camps in WWII. Famously, he was academically interested in why some people survived the camps, and others didn’t. notwithstanding the misfortunes of selection and random execution, the ones who weren’t so unfortunate either died, or they did not.

To cut a long story to the chase, Frankl concluded that the ones who lived were those who had a firm vision of their future. For Frankl himself it was a vision that he would teach what he’d learned to students, with a view to it never happening again.

Norman Cousins was a man who, according to Wikipedia, used his mental faculty to overcome a debilitating condition. It is said he made laughter one of his main medicines, along with a personal determination to overcome his personal, physical challenges – and he succeeded.

We live at a time when a virus threatens the existence of those physically unable to fight it. I’ll admit it plays on my mind, as I have what may be one of those pre-existing medical conditions. But it isn’t just about me – I have two beautiful grandchildren, four lovely kids and a beloved wife. I can’t conceive of life without any of them, particularly the young. But that also means if I’m gone, I don’t get to see them grow. So it is me, but it’s them too.

So now, more than ever, I think it is time to consider positivity, laughter, and a firmly envisioned plan for the future that will provide hope for us as individuals and, in the end, for all of us.

I have no doubt that despair does not serve the physical body, and I firmly believe that some people who died did so because they lacked hope, or a sense of purpose. They thought, “I’m done here.” Which in the case of the elderly may, for them, have a been some kind of satisfaction. It’s not cruel or judgemental to say that. If it was, then the person who thought of the term for the dying of ‘Blessed release’ is equally evil. It is just a belief, no more.

Anyway, like Hemingway, I want to die only when I am all used up, and that isn’t yet.

Today is the day I carry out my planning for the week, and part of that plan will be to consider my long term future. What do I want to create in this world, what legacy do I wish to leave for those kids? How am I going to achieve that? Not just in terms of tasks but in terms of the way I conduct myself – hopefully with integrity, with the fullest congruence between my values and my behaviours.

I’ll ask you all to do the same. Design your future as if all will pass as well as it can, for you.

At the same time, I will tie up my camel by ensuring that my immediate family is cared for, provided for, supplied and kept as healthy as they can so that if it does strike, they can be part of the 80% who just get a sniffle. But not, I hope, at the expense of anyone else. I will get enough for our needs, and no more. those who are stockpiling a year’s worth of soap for the 14 days they may have to stay at home are selfish. No question.

Plan a spectacular future. See it in your mind’s eye and start working towards achieving your dream and towards leaving your legacy. Review and recommit to your Mission. Frankl and Cousins need your support. And your health and welfare may depend on it.

And if fate should decide otherwise, let me face it with integrity and set a good example.

Age = Wisdom, Youth = Vitality. Let the young have both, instead.

12 Thursday Mar 2020

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A few weeks ago I wrote this blog on why I thought material of the kind espoused in The Seven Habits and my own book was ignored by so many for so long, suggesting that people tend to arrive at an age when they suddenly seek meaning rather than stuff.

Today, I put a new spin on this not by looking at why the older ‘do’, but on why the younger ‘do not’.

Reading Stephen Covey’s anthology of first drafts and first thoughts, from the book ‘Primary Greatness’, I read this sentence.

“I maintain that humility is the mother of all virtues, because humility helps us centre our lives on principles.”

Young people are – or want to appear to be – confident individuals. They are fit, recently educated, fashionable, invincible. They tend, therefore and without judgment on my part, to be incredibly egotistic. They are finding their way and have yet to realise that life isn’t one long party – or that if it is a party, it eventually ends when they discover the responsibilities they didn’t possess in their teens and twenties.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Perhaps later wisdom is intended to be delayed until people are ready for it, or until their proverbial wild oats are sown. I have no idea, because I am not the font of all wisdom. By any stretch!

This is why, perhaps, the young resist the wisdom literature. They don’t need it because they know better. They see things ‘as they are’ through interested, open eyes – whereas we old fuddy-duddies see things through experience gained by making mistakes. And having made mistakes we older ones seek to redress them, whereas the young are still learning from theirs.

But imagine if the young were taught that you can be humble and still have fun? That you can leave a legacy of forty or fifty years foundation rather than just for that night or weekend? That they are still learning, and that they could direct and control that learning if they just gave more thought to the longer-term. To their whole lives instead of the now.

Covey goes on to add, “I would then say that courage is the father of all virtues.”

Of course, another influence on the young is the peer group. Which means that Covey’s second quote reveals something which the young tend to lack. Not physical courage – they seem to have that in abundance, as a rule. But courage born of a properly considered and congruent values system, where they act in accordance with their conscience and what they know, deeply, to be true – and yet what those around them are trying to convince them is just ‘boring old stuff’.

This is what should be taught in school, not environmentalism and ‘social justice’ and ‘rights of the individual’ (without responsibilities of and towards the individual).

Kids need to be shown that courage does not mean lack of consideration. That wisdom is not a downer but a path to ‘better’. There are schools out there that do this, but they’ve had to initiate and fund this training themselves.

Wouldn’t it be better if it was a state-funded part of the curriculum? Instead of Welsh.

Principles – the Greatest Lens Cleaner.

09 Monday Mar 2020

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“You never find yourself until you face the truth.” Pearl Bailey

I have probably listened to or read Stephen Covey on Paradigms a million and three times. (How specific is that?) For any new readers, a paradigm is the way we see things and this view can be easily influenced by our upbringing, and our beliefs.

Which is why, today, I announce a new learning despite all that previous study.

In the shed where I store the world’s cr4p and my spin-cycle (why do people buy Peloton when they can do it for free), I was sat astride the offending clothes-horse as part of my Private Victory and re-watching an oft-watched video in which the Good Doctor Covey was espousing about Centres. He reminded me about how we see things through our Centres – if we are spouse centred we put their needs before others, including work: if we are work-centred she can bog off. You get the idea?

To be true to ‘life’, he advised that instead of seeing life through centres such as spouse, family, work, money, church, possessions, friends, enemy and self, we should instead see life through principles. Got that? Good.

He then suggested some principles, such as truth, contribution, integrity, and so on. He opined that seeing life through principles rather than centres provides for a more holistic, objective and effective way of living. So when it’s a choice between wife and work, we don’t just plump for ‘work’ because we always do – we look at the situation and make an objective, right decision. Got it so far? Marvellous.

But today, for the first time, I heard him address his audience and say, “Right now, you are even looking at principles through the paradigm of your centres.” AHA!

In other words, he said we look at Principles and ask, “What would my wife think?”: “How can I make this fit work?”: “Is this a way to make money?”: “What is in this for me?”

This is a default position for most people, and that includes you and me. Now, it may not always be a default acted upon, because context also has an influence on our decision-making, but it made me think.

Do I/we often make choices based on convenience, to avoid conflict, to make a fast buck and so on, when we could make better decisions if we just gave the situation a little more thought? Of course we do. We do it all the time. We know this because now and then we regret the decision we made, and not because the situation changed but because something happened that we could have known if we’d given thought to it, or which we did know about but we ignored in the moment because we weren’t being objective.

Yesterday, The Guardian published a cartoon of an Asian politician, depicting her as a pig with horns. They probably, in the moment, thought it would be funny. They looked at the situation through their Left-Wing ideology, concluded that all things Right-Wing are evil, and printed away.

Then some other people reminded them that they were supposed to be an anti-racism publication and depicting a Moslem as a pig was highly offensive: and, given the Guardian’s claim to be accepting of all races and ardently pro-diversity – clearly racist.

Looked at through a left-wing ideological paradigm, this was ‘good’. Looked at it from another paradigm, it was ‘bad’.

Looked at from a Principled Paradigm, it was plainly unnecessary.

Look through a Principle Centre – take a moment, think about what you’re about to decide, and then commit to principled action.

Because your Paradigms are a two-way lens – people can see the real you through them, too.