I choose
During my journey to improve my effectiveness I listened to “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. Although this book originally came out in 1989, the content is timeless and it really hit home for me. In the next few articles I will share a little of what I’ve learned. I highly encourage you to choose to listen to the whole book.
The first habit Dr Covey talks about which is fundamental to everything else is “Be Proactive“. For me it means saying “I choose“. It’s fundamental to understand and believe that we have the freedom to choose our actions. While that is true we do not get to choose the consequences of our actions.
For example, Sue said, “my boss is terrible, he keeps making my life miserable. It’s all his fault and nothing I can do.” Is this true? No, of course not, Sue has the choice to confront her boss and point out the behavior and not accept it, and of course she always has the choice of leaving the job. She might say
“I can’t leave my job, I need the money”.
She still has the choice to leave her job.
“I choose to stay in my job even though my boss mistreats because I want the salary”.
Notice that its the same situation but the second one makes it clear that Sue understands it is her choice and she can as easily make a different choice and one that likely will also provide a salary.
I’ve also learned that taking ownership of mistakes is part of “I choose”. It is often tempting to blame some person or circumstance for your problems. e.g. “John is making my life miserable”, “The kids are driving me crazy”, “Bob caused the problems in the product we are developing”. By blaming others we give control and chain ourselves to those people for our situation.
On the flip side, “I am annoyed by John’s actions”, “I am getting frustrated with the kids behavior”, “I take responsibility for the problems in our product”
Notice that all the “I” messages now allow me to act. Since I have taken responsibility for these situation, I can act to change and improve. Its amazing how freeing I felt the day I started taking responsibility and realized how empowering that was.
Being proactive and understanding we can choose our actions and act is the first step and habit in improving our effectiveness.
