The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Wow! What a read. Despite this being a longer book with SO MUCH information, I honestly expect this to be a shorter review. And that might actually be because it’s such a dense read. Don’t let that intimidate you; it’s a very enjoyable read, but so much information.
If you’re hesitant about “self help” books, I totally get that. I actually haven’t read many self help books, but after looking at it on the shelf in my shared office for many months, I decided to finally cave and read it. I certainly don’t regret it, and most definitely recommend it. If I had to pick one important tidbit to speak to for the sake of my review, I think the first habit is really important to understand in order for the rest of the book to have any impact. The first habit is actually quite complex, and can take awhile to fully integrate into your life. From my understanding, the first habit is all about recognizing the personal responsibility you have to make your life what you want. We absolutely cannot control what happens to us, or what has already happened to us, but we can control how we react and respond to external stimuli. In fact, we have a responsibility to ourselves (and future kids if we have them!) to recognize where we’ve let ourselves remain a victim. The reality is, unfortunate things are going to continue to happen to us for the rest of our lives. But if we can develop a habit of looking for the opportunities we have to take back a little bit of control, we can handle our circumstances much more effectively. However, this is a big shift internally. Changing these thought patterns can be really difficult to do. Especially for those of us who have deeply embedded messages in our head that we don’t have control and never did have a control. But it’s a good thing that therapies like Cognitive Behavior Therapy exist! You can absolutely learn how to shift your mindset and daily living to a more proactive approach to life instead of reactive. If this is something you’re interested in exploring more in therapy, reach out to me today. We can learn to challenge old thought patterns keeping you stuck.
I also recommend going into this book knowing it’s going to be a bit interactive. I unfortunately borrowed this book, so that made it difficult to annotate it along the way. This will definitely be a book that I’ll have to go back and refresh my memory on, or reread it entirely when I can take notes in it. Each habit has its own chapter with recommended application practices at the end. In order to get the most out of this book, it’s important to engage with those practices as well as activities throughout the book. My personal favorite is the personal mission statement from Habit #2 “Begin With The End In Mind.” You can go to this website: https://msb.franklincovey.com to create your own personal mission statement. It took me about 25 minutes to do, and it was so fun! After completing it I genuinely felt a sense of clarity as well as motivation.
If you decide to read The 7 Habits, I truly hope you enjoy the activities and make the time for the application practices! Happy reading!