Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

In developing our own self-awareness many of us discover ineffective
scripts, deeply embedded habits that are totally unworthy of us, totally
incongruent with the things we really value in life. Habit 2 says we don't have to
live with those scripts. We are response-able to use our imagination and
creativity to write new ones that are more effective, more congruent with our
deepest values and with the correct principles that give our values meaning.
Suppose, for example, that I am highly overreactive to my children. Suppose
that whenever they begin to do something I feel is inappropriate, I sense an
immediate tensing in the pit of my stomach. feel defensive walls go up; I prepare
for battle. My focus is not on the long-term growth and understanding but on the
short-term behavior. I'm trying to win the battle, not the war.
I pull out my ammunition -- my superior size, my position of authority -- and
I yell or intimidate or I threaten or punish. And I win. I stand there, victorious, in
the middle of the debris of a shattered relationship while my children are
outwardly submissive and inwardly rebellious, suppressing feelings that will
come out later in uglier ways.
Now if I were sitting at that funeral we visualized earlier, and one of my
children was about to speak, I would want his life to represent the victory of
teaching, training, and disciplining with love over a period of years rather than
the battle scars of quick-fix skirmishes. I would want his heart and mind to be
filled with the pleasant memories of deep, meaningful times together. I would
want him to remember me as a loving father who shared the fun and the pain of
growing up. I would want him to remember the times he came to me with his
problems and concerns. I would want to have listened and loved and helped. I
would want him to know I wasn't perfect, but that I had tried with everything I
had. And that, perhaps more than anybody in the world, I loved him.
The reason I would want those things is because, deep down, I value my
children. I love them, I want to help them. I value my role as their father.
But I don't always see those values. I get caught up in the “thick of thin
things.” What matters most gets buried under layers of pressing problems,
immediate concerns, and outward behaviors. I become reactive. And the way I
interact with my children every day often bears little resemblance to the way I
deeply feel about them.
Because I am self-aware, because I have imagination and conscience, I can
examine my deepest values. I can realize that the script I'm living is not in
harmony with those values, that my life is not the product of my own proactive
design, but the result of the first creation I have deferred to circumstances and
other people. And I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my
memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past. I