Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

and a deep sense of high intrinsic worth and personal security on the other end.
Your guidance ranges on the continuum from dependence on the social mirror or
other unstable, fluctuating sources to strong inner direction. Your wisdom falls
somewhere between a totally inaccurate map where everything is distorted and
nothing seems to fit, and a complete and accurate map of life wherein all the
parts and principles are properly related to each other. Your power lies
somewhere between immobilization or being a puppet pulled by someone else's
strings to high proactivity, the power to act according to your own values instead
of being acted upon by other people and circumstances.
The location of these factors on the continuum, the resulting degree of their
integration, harmony, and balance, and their positive impact on every aspect of
your life is a function of your center, the basic paradigms at your very core.
Alternative Centers
Each of us has a center, though we usually don't recognize it as such. Neither
do we recognize the all-encompassing effects of that center on every aspect of
our lives.
Let's briefly examine several centers or core paradigms people typically have
for a better understanding of how they affect these four fundamental dimensions
and, ultimately, the sum of life that flows from them.
Spouse Centeredness. Marriage can be the most intimate, the most satisfying,
the most enduring, growth-producing of human relationships. It might seem
natural and proper to be centered on one's husband or wife.
But experience and observation tell a different story. Over the years, I have
been involved in working with many troubled marriages, and I have observed a
certain thread weaving itself through almost every spouse-centered relationship I
have encountered. That thread is strong emotional dependence.
If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our marriage, then we
become highly dependent upon that relationship. We become vulnerable to the
moods and feelings, the behavior and treatment of our spouse, or to any external
event that may impinge on the relationship -- a new child, in-laws, economic
setbacks, social successes, and so forth.
When responsibilities increase and stresses come in the marriage, we tend to
revert to the scripts we were given as we were growing up. But so does our
spouse. And those scripts are usually different. Different ways of handling
financial, child-discipline, or in-law issues come to the surface. When these
deep-seated tendencies combine with the emotional dependency in the marriage,
the spouse-centered relationship reveals all its vulnerability.
When we are dependent on the person with whom we are in conflict, both
need and conflict are compounded. Love-hate overreactions, fight-or-flight