Habit 1 - Part 2

Snake Bite


Covey tells the story of a cousin that chases a rattle snake to kill it, and he is bitten by it. Rather than taking care of the wound, and quickly sucking out the poison, he chases the snake to finish it off. The automatic response of wanting to ‘get back’ actually ended up doing more harm than the original bite.

Not magnifying the original hurt is a higher value than getting even. If he had been more proactive, and chosen to act upon this higher value rather than the automatic reaction of striking out in revenge, he would have suffered less.

The behavior of a reactive person can be understood in the model of stimulus and response. A person has a program in them, an external stimulus happens to them, and they respond.

The habit of personal vision on the other hand – being proactive – separates the stimulus from the response. It gives us an awareness of ourselves, and a freedom to choose.

Our greatest power in life is our freedom to choose. All other powers are energized by this one. The power to rise above mediocrity, to break out of the scripting of tendencies we have gotten from our parents, and the culture we live in all stem from the power to choose.

The stimulus/response model is the dominant paradigm in the world today. There is not much support for the paradigm of proactivity. We typically see our ‘programming’ coming from 3 places:

1 – Genetic determinism
2 – Early childhood ‘psychic’ determinism
3 – Environment – the people and situations in our lives.

Covey does not dispute that these things are strong influences. But do they determine us? Indeed they do if we let them. And if we buy into these explanations for our behavior and reactions, they become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The exciting thing about proactivity is that it is like a muscle. It can be exercised to become very strong. The first step is just noticing that you have a choice. Do you really want to develop your potential? Start exercising your freedom. Act on the basis of your values, not on the basis of your conditions or feelings.

If you tell yourself you are not responsible, that you can’t help it, etc. You are psychologically safe. But if you tell yourself that you do have responsibility, you’ve got two choices: handle things irresponsibly, or handle them responsibly.

Listen to the language you and others use to. If someone says “He makes me mad”, this is reactive language. Responsability is transferred. And so is power over ones response.

I think this really goes to the question of free will. Do you believe you have it? Or another way to think about this is that if your behavior is ‘programmed’, do you have the ability to reprogram yourself? Is this the ability that Covey is talking about?