How to Apply Stephen Covey's Seven Habits: Get Control of Your Mind

Stephen Covey's most fundamental habits, to my mind, are as follows:

- TAKE A LONG, HARD LOOK AT WHAT YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE

- PUT THESE IN A HIERARCHY, MAKE THEM PRIORITIES IN ORDER OF THIS HIERARCHY, AND MAKE SURE ALL OTHER CONCERNS ARE SUBORDINATE TO THESE PRIORITIES

- ACT UPON THE FRAMEWORK SET OUT HERE ABOVE, IE., DO THINGS, EVERY DAY, TO WORK TOWARDS YOUR GOALS, IN ORDER OF THE PRIORITIES YOU HAVE DEEMED TO BE MOST IMPORTANT.

This procedure, however, is based on having sound psychology. In other words, you need to have control of your psychological and emotional levers in order to accomplish these three steps.

Therefore, for me, the first area in which you need to Be Proactive (Covey's first habit), is that of your mind, your emotions, your brain, and your nervous system.

We are all bumbling along inside a vehicle called the brain-and-nervous-system. Fortunately, this is a machine that can produce results for us. HOWEVER, we need to LEARN how to operate this great and complex machine.

In terms of American psychological tradition, the first wave of thought in regard to how the mind works was that promoted by B. F. Skinner and behaviourism. That is, Skinner and many others emphasized that we associate to things other things that occur repeatedly in proximity to that first thing, and also that our basic drives are towards pleasure and away from pain.

Needless to say, while this model worked well for the study of pigeons (a favourite subject in behavioural experiments), as soon as you get into more complex animals, things are not so simple. Indeed, anyone who has lived with a cat, for example, knows that complex animals are not simply motivated by pain and pleasure, but have all sorts of more complex "thoughts."

Enter the so-called "cognitive revolution." This new wave of theory emphasized that there are sentences, bits of sentences, ideas, beliefs, values and all sorts of other "meaningful symbol systems" going on in the brain of any animal with a complex forebrain. That is, yes, obviously, we all know that pain and pleasure motivate us, but this is not the whole story. For example, while young children may in general get some kind of basic pleasure from learning their mother tongue (or, at least, presumably feel no pain associated with doing this), there is a whole lot more to explain when answering the question as to how they actually accomplish this.

Now, then, and particularly perhaps in therapeutic circles, the dominant model of the mind is that of cognitive-behaviourism. This is a marriage of the observation that we associate things, that pleasure and pain motivate us, on the one hand, and that our experience becomes encoded in symbol systems as we go through life.

For example, a child who is scalded by a hot kettle will learn to avoid this experience in the future, but if someone conveys, using language, that the kettle is safe if you approach it in a specific manner, the child can learn this, via the symbol-system of language, which becomes encoded as a belief, and thus neutralizes his avoidance-behaviour of kettles.

In any case, cognitive-behavioural theory is a bedrock of modern psychology. There are, in addition to this, many more approaches to the mind, some of them more helpful than others (see, for example, http://stopbadtherapy.com ). Nevertheless, the point is, to begin a search for how the mind works (see also Stephen Pinker's book How the Mind Works), is to Begin with the End in Mind).

Begin with the End in Mind: Got to Say It Again

Stephen Covey has divided up the tasks of life into Seven Habits.

Covey's foundational habit, however is to "Begin with the End in Mind."

Covey states, not illogically, that before we begin anything, and this includes the rest of our lives(!), then we need to ponder, to examine, what it is we are aiming at. In other words, where are we pointed: we need to "begin with the end in mind."

Covey points out that this applies on two levels: for each of the domains of life, what ends to we want to achieve, but also, when examining all of our goals, how can we put these in a hierarchy; how can we put them on a scale.

For example, for me personally, having children is not high on the list. In fact, it comes under the "maybe" heading. Frankly this goes also for having a relationship (or at least a life-long relationship). Similarly, I am not looking for a better job, because I have employment I enjoy. Nor is home ownership particularly important to me.

On the other side of things, I belong to a family that is not particularly taxing, by which I mean, there are few if any complicated games going on between participants, few complex political ballet dances... Equally, no-one in my family is sick, or needs help in any dire sense, and all are thriving more-or-less.

The details of my life dictate, then, to a great degree, where my priorities lie. In my case, I have very few pressing "needs."

This, then, leaves me with a large amount of room for pursuing my desires. Now Covey also emphasizes the needs of conscience, by which I mean our obligation, morally, to help others, and to seek to alleviate suffering.

But here is a question I would ask:

- IS there a conflict between seeking to alleviate suffering in the world, and seeking to fulful desires.

For me, the answer is, on the contrary, to alleviate suffering IS ONE OF MY DESIRES.

So, to begin with the end in mind, to put my desires, and the goals that grow out of those desires, in a hierarchy, would involve goals to help suffering.

With this in mind, one of my "ends" is to promote awareness about Third World poverty. I have opened a Twitter account under the name NotforProfitOrg, and I invite you to follow me.

Beginning with the end in mind is essential. We don't get much time in this earth, so use what time you have properly.

Follow me here: http://twitter.com/NotforProfitOrg

You've Only Got x Years Left

Apologies in advance to anyone who may find the post I am about to write morbid, but I think the issue I am going to discuss is a very important one.

Based, in my case, on the fact that the average male, at least in the United States, lives to be 75, and given that (a) if there is a heaven, then I won't be on earth once I am there and (b) if reincarnation exists, I won't exist AS ME, once that has occurred, then the clock is ticking.

Need this be a dreadful thing? No, on the contrary, this is a call to squeeze the juice out of life to the greatest degree possible, because you ain't got much of it!

Equally, it is a call to take care of your body, as well as those of your children, because a life plagued with health problems is a very different experience from a life lived in a healthy, alert, body.

It is also a call to get yourself fit psychologically. By this I mean that most of us tend to assume that whatever personality traits we have, we are stuck with. We assume this. And that is important, because to assume something is true is to believe it without having studied it.

If we examine, however, what we know about life, we know that we are not who we were (usually), ten years ago. Certainly we are not who we were when we were teenagers. So, personality can be changed.

Stephen Covey's book emphasizes one important point in regard to this: EITHER YOU CHANGE ACCORDING TO YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES, OR YOU CHANGE YOURSELF WILFULLY, DELIBERATELY, TO BE THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE.

This is no small issue. As I say, you only get a finite amount of time on this earth, as the "you" that you are. And it really is not very long.

You must therefore decide what is important to you, and then pursue that. And often, to pursue such goals, you will need to change aspects of your personality.

The question, then, is that of how you change yourself to pursue those goals that you have decided are important. At the moment I am exploring "NLP". It sees promising. I encourage you to look it up on Google. Or, you could check out "Mark Shepard" "NLP". I am reading his material at the moment, and they strike me as having promise for changing those aspects of yourself that you want to change.