7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Chapter 3 Overview
Chapter 3 is the last piece of the puzzle on your way to achieving your own personal victory. Habit 1 shows us that we are in charge of our own destiny. It empowers you to change your program that may have been in place since childhood. The second habit starts the process of identifying what it is you want to be through your powers of visualization. This is the mental creation of the end you want. Habits one and two are the prerequisite for chapter three that will put your mental creation into a physical force. It is the daily action that you must take. With the foundation in place, you will be able to practice effective self-management through your principled lifestyle.
The successful person tends to do what other people do not. Not that they necessarily like it, but their strength of purpose will outweigh the doubts. The chapter gives you an opportunity to critically examine where you spend your time. There are 4 quadrants to choose from and your answers may surprise you. Is your day consumed with urgent matters? Is everything you do classified as important? Are you one of the many who are inundated on a daily basis by what is called “crisis management”?
You will gain an excellent understanding of what effective people do to manage their time. Habit 1 suggests that you are the programmer, habit 2 sheds light on how to write the program, and habit 3 is about running the program, or actually “living the program.” Living the show is not something we do from time to time. If it is in line with our principled path, our program becomes the way we live our lives day after day. How we spend our time is absolutely paramount to our levels of success. The chapter moves toward the beginning of “public victories” with a closer look at the P / PC balance and a concept that was completely new to me called “The Emotional Bank Account.”
The emotional bank account is a metaphor for something that describes the amount of trust that has been built in a given relationship. Courtesy, kindness, and honesty are examples of deposits into a bank account, and rudeness, cutting, and disrespect are withdrawals that can drain your account. Without a positive emotional bank account that has established a trend of continuous deposits, withdrawals will tend to have a compounding and negative effect.
This concept can be adapted to every relationship you have, be it personal or business, the power of a positive account will always increase your level of trustworthiness and integrity. Learn, understand and implement the content on these pages and you will not only change your life, but you will be truly ready for the public victories that are about to follow.