Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

lost or stolen or devalued. If I'm in the presence of someone of greater net worth
or fame or status, I feel inferior. If I'm in the presence of someone of lesser net
worth or fame or status, I feel superior. My sense of self-worth constantly
fluctuates. I don't have any sense of constancy or anchorage or persistent
selfhood. I am constantly trying to protect and insure my assets, properties,
securities, position, or reputation. We have all heard stories of people
committing suicide after losing their fortunes in a significant stock decline or
their fame in a political reversal.
Pleasure Centeredness. Another common center, closely allied with
possessions, is that of fun and pleasure. We live in a world where instant
gratification is available and encouraged. Television and movies are major
influences in increasing people's expectations. They graphically portray what
other people have and can do in living the life of ease and “fun.”
But while the glitter of pleasure-centered lifestyles is graphically portrayed,
the natural result of such lifestyles -- the impact on the inner person, on
productivity, on relationships -- is seldom accurately seen.
Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and
mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers
no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered
person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of “fun,” constantly cries for
more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more
exciting, with a bigger “high.” A person in this state becomes almost entirely
narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self
here and now.
Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too
much video game playing -- too much undisciplined leisure time in which a
person continually takes the course of least resistance -- gradually wastes a life.
It ensures that a person's capacities stay dormant, that talents remain
undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart is
unfulfilled. Where is the security, the guidance, the wisdom, and the power? At
the low end of the continuum, in the pleasure of a fleeting moment.
Malcom Muggeridge writes “A Twentieth-Century Testimony”:
When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes
me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and
seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its
various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like
acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world
and up and down in it like Satan, explaining and experiencing whatever Vanity
Fair has to offer.