In Leadership 10, I have been assigned the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey to read in my own time, and post reflections here on my blog regarding the each of it’s sections.
Get in the Habit
The first chapter of the book acts somewhat as an instruction manual. It talks about how the book should be used to garner its greatest effect, and lays out the seven habits in a tree diagram. It talks about what a habit is, how they are formed, and in what order the instructions in the book should be taken. For me, this chapter was a good sign, as I enjoyed the author’s conversational tone, and I appreciated the effort that he had put into making the book easy to understand and engaging.
Paradigms and Principles
The next chapters concerned defining paradigms and principles. It conveyed the idea that it is dangerous to centre your life entirely around things such as friends, family, possessions, or school. Instead, to make oneself more balanced and open, they should live their life by being principle centred; you make decisions based off of a consistent and though-through moral compass composed of knowledge, morals, and ideals. In doing so, you make sure that you are always taking a path in life that represents who you really are, and you are able to change your ways based on new things you learn.
The Personal Bank Account
The mantra of this chapter was to work on yourself before turning towards others. The Personal Bank Account (PBA) is an analogy for the sum of all of your self respect, trust, ego, and more. By extension, doing things that betray any of these things (being selfish, lying, not keeping promises to yourself) acts as a withdrawal from said account, and doing things that help them (acts of kindness, keeping promises to yourself, exercising) acts as a deposit. I really found this chapter agreeable, as it affirmed a lot of the things I do already, and justified why it felt good to do them. Having the analogy of the PBA is just another reason to go through my head whenever I need to decide to do something to better myself.
Habit 1 – Be Proactive
The first of these seven classics is indeed a classic; being proactive. I have heard many a time the lecture of being proactive over reactive, and this rendition of it was extremely effective at conveying the general points. I found the specific examples sent in by students my own age especially helpful, as it really put into perspective the breadth of how this mentality can affect your decision making and behaviour.
