I know there’s mixed reviews about this book and it’s author, but regardless it’s a popular book and I wanted to give it a read to see for myself. To help retain and digest the information, the author recommends reading it as if you need to teach it to someone. So here’s my recap of the first habit (Be Proactive), and some of my thoughts. I’m curious what other people think as well because again, it has mixed reviews.
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* Humans are the only animal with the ability to be self aware. We can reflect on our own thoughts (think about how we think). This helps us grow as well as helps us understand how others may think about themselves.
* The three “excuses” of our own nature are often genetic (I’m this way because of my genes), upbringing (I’m this way because I was raised this way / around this behavior), environmental (I’m this way because of my environment).
* Being proactive is more than taking initiative – it means taking responsibility. Highly proactive people recognize their responsibility to control how they react to things, rather than blaming the above circumstances.
* The opposite of proactive is reactive. IE, reacting to external stimuli instead of from within.
* Being proactive is accepting the reality you’re in, but choosing to do something. Reactivity is absolving ourselves or our responsibility or our ability to do something.
* Your Circle of Concern is anything you care about or are concerned about. Within that circle, you have the Circle of Influence which contains the things you can influence or control.
* The problems we face in life fall under direct control (involving our own behavior), indirect control (other people’s behavior), or no control (problems we can do nothing about).
* We can choose our own actions, we cannot choose the consequences.
I’m torn with how I feel about the general sentiment of these ideas. One side, I understand that if I get mad about something, I can choose not to yell. If my spouse is complaining about something I am doing, I can choose to find a solution and work on myself rather than just reject or disagree with their complaining.
On the flip side – I can’t help but think this is rather dismissive of people’s emotions and/or circumstance. If someone says something hurtful, I can’t choose how that’s going to make me feel. It’s going to make me feel hurt or it’s not. That said, perhaps I can then control what I do with that emotion, and that’s what Covey means? Additionally, if I grow up poor or in an abusive household, I can completely understand how people would feel helpless in that situation. So saying, “you have the power to change it” feels a bit ignorant. Perhaps this reflates to the saying, just because something is not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.
Thoughts?
by toinah
3 Comments
[deleted]
Yeah, this boils down to really skeevy victim blaming the second you think about it for more than five seconds.
Not to be a left liberal on main or anything, but people’s lives are way, way, WAY more dependent on their material conditions than anyone wants to admit. If you’re too sick to work, too poor to get the medical care you need, and can’t get any help fixing either of those things, you’re gonna be trapped in a feedback loop that you *cannot* escape on your own. You will get sicker and poorer and sicker and poorer until someone gives you what you need to break the cycle.
That’s not an “excuse”. That is a way that society fails people. There are many, many others.
I, on principle, do not take life advice from wealthy mormons tbh. And this shows exactly why, its all ideas that sound ok for like a few moments and then when you actually think about it it becomes clear in my opinion that the author is a person who never had to struggle with the things a large portion of the population have had to. To a wealthy mormon who has always gotten exactly what he wants, it makes sense that all you have to do is *try* and your life will go well, so he doesn’t understand that other people cannot simply try and have everything fall into place for them. Mormon ideologies say that their god only ever gives them struggles that they can handle, from that perspective of course this is what he would believe to be realistic.