“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. How it has transformed my life, and why it can change yours.

More than 25 years ago, I was shopping with my sister and her man in a mall. While they were doing the buying, I told them, “I’ll wait for you in the bookstore section.”
I came upon the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
I felt it was only a few minutes, but I was with it for a while. I didn’t know yet that it would transform my life.

“We need to go.”

” What Already?”

I was hesitating. I was short of money. Should I invest in this book? I had no clue about who Mr. Covey was. Luckily, I made the right decision.

Since then, I have read it around ten times in different formats (book/audio) and several languages. As I feel confident with the content, I read and listened to it in new languages I want to learn: a great technique to improve your vocabulary.

I attribute most of my success in life to books. They are, without doubt, my best tool to learn and create new options. I read from one book a week to one book a month depending on the period.

The quantity opens me to more inputs, ideas, and options. It helps me to filter the books I want to study.
The quality, taking notes, writing, thinking, challenging the content, re-reading, brings me to profound changes.

And no doubt “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” have transformed my life dramatically.

What does The 7 Habits teach you?

It’s not a quick recipe for success. It’s a frame made of 7 universal habits that help one to grow in three main areas:

1. Your personal victory: Be proactive, Begin with the end in mind and Put first things first
2. Your Public victory: Think Win/win, Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood and Synergize.
3. The last part that encompasses all the others. Your ability to invest in your continuous development called “Sharpen the Saw” by the author.

What have I learned?

These principles that look simple on paper are a dynamic learning process that never ends. It might be the reason that they have had such an impact on me. I sometimes feel that I master them, and at other times that I restart from scratch.

Each reading brings me to a deeper level of understanding.

In the first ten years, I felt that I had focused a lot (maybe too much) on my personal victory. Focusing on these simple but powerful principles brought me to many achievements, particularly in my professional life.

In the last ten years, I’ve worked a lot on “The Public Victory”. It’s a much more complex level of leadership. These principles are helping me tremendously to navigate the challenges of building a family, progressing quickly in my professional career, and finding the proper harmony between them. I believe that is one of the most complex challenges of our working time era.

As with every learning, there is a big difference between understanding and applying a concept. I made significant progress when I actively studied The 7 habits by reading, journaling, and sharing it with my colleagues.

Discover my Resource guide: The 11 books that have influenced my career the most. (Including my favorite of all categories)

The 7 Habits: What am I applying ?

Be Proactive: Two main ideas have become quite automatic for me.

1. In between what happened to you and your response, there is a space. This space is your freedom to choose to be reactive (I’m a victim) or proactive (I’m 100% responsible).
   This concept has touched me a lot. I often reflect on it in my journal to help me see situations through a different angle. It’s so easy to drift and put the responsibility on others: my children, my wife, my colleagues, my business partner. Assuming 100% responsibility has helped me to solve hundreds of challenges and grow as a person.
2. Your circle of influence versus your circle of concern. This concept works for me as an excellent filter to remain focused and responsible. It drives my energy on problems I can influence. The more I apply it, the more my circle of influence extends.

Today, as part of an international company’s executive committee,
I influence decisions that were out of my reach two years ago. I arrived in this situation thanks to my disciplined approach to focusing and solving challenges in my circle of influence.

We each have much more influence than we can imagine, but most of the time, we waste our precious time on the wrong concerns. It consumes our emotional and physical bandwidth. It affects our ability to make an impact on the important things we can change.

Begin with the end in mind:

(see, Earn more, spend less, live more. Don’t live on a budget, live on your frame.)

As a leader, I’m used to building my forecast, budget, next three-year plan. Despite working on these processes professionally, it’s not an easy thing to transfer them into my private life. Mr. Covey helps me think about my roles on a much bigger and more detailed scope and from different dimensions.

Roles: As a husband, as a father, as a brother, as a son, as a friend, as a business leader…

Dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Spiritual, and Mental.

An excellent book that has helped me in this exercise is Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want. It’s a step-by-step book that focuses on the second habits.

I built my first detailed living plan four years ago. I read it often and update it every year. Keeping me connected to my big picture gives me the feeling to draw my life with intention. See here.

Put First things first:

The frame that I regularly use for me and my teams is “The Time Management Matrix”. The idea is to split your activities into four quadrants based on urgency and importance.
Like everyone, I can spend all my time on the urgent and important box. Often it’s comfortable; tasks are coming to me. There is a kind of adrenaline to be able to solve all these problems, but it rarely helps the long-term important goals.
I focus on ensuring that my team and I prioritize the second box, “non-urgent and important”. The significant results often come from there. See “The power of a few personal writing words”.

Win/Win and understand first:

Having started my career in sales, I understand the importance of the win/win deal and the ability to listen. Mr. Covey pushes me to another level of understanding. I try not to compete for the next great promotion. I work on building a pocket of excellence in everything I do. It helps me to shoot for excellence and enjoy the journey.
The concept of understanding first has accompanied me in many complex situations. I often still fail to apply it, but when I do, I often make significant progress in very complex environments.

Synergize:

I took over departments, divisions, and sometimes companies from scratch. You rarely find the perfect team where everyone sits on the ideal role. Moving from tension and misunderstanding to “Creative Cooperation” described by the author is a magical experience that drives impressive results.
It often happens when a leader helps the team refocus on a collective vision, reorganize the tasks based on the team’s strengths, and drives great execution.
You never master this process in every situation. Even when you reach the optimum recipe, the context remains dynamic, and you can quickly restart from zero. That’s what makes personal and business life so challenging and exciting.

Sharpen the saw:

Covey describes it as the ability to renew yourself on the four dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Spiritual, and Mental.
When I’ve started to implement this habit with discipline, my life changed profoundly.
Five years ago, under the impulsion of “The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life “, I’ve started to dedicate at least one hour a day covering the four dimensions.

Why have The 7 Habits transformed my life?

It has provided me with a frame that is structured enough to guide me but wide enough to open my curiosity towards continuous development. The framework helped me to organize the new knowledge I’m acquiring. Most of the +300 books that I’ve read fall into one of the 7 habits. I can dig into the principle and discover new options to grow.

I believe that knowledge can’t always be taught to us. We go to it when we are ready and select “how” we want to learn it. That was what The 7 habits offers to me.

It’s a system of invaluable principles, proven over time, that offers me many options to better manage challenges. This book has and continues to change my life. It helps me to intentionally draw my present and influence my future for the good. I will be eternally grateful to Mr. Stephen R Covey for this gift.

What book has transformed your life?

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PS: Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 other ways I can help accelerate your growth through coaching :

• You are an individual: You have a bias for action. You’ve achieved a lot. And yet you want more. Let’s connect for a free call and see if we can work together 
• You want to be coached in your work environment.  I help successful leaders become even better. And you pay me only if you succeed (yes, I’m serious). Curious to know more. Learn more here.