Habit 1 - discussion

I'd like to take a moment to reflect upon this first of the 7 habits.

The idea of being proactive, being aware of the difference between things we can influence and those we cannot, and acting on those things which we can is simple. It's almost obvious. But is also easily to forget and hard to live by.

One critical thing that Covey does not address specifically is fear. He says that the reactive mind is driven by emotion, and I believe that the primary emotion that drives it is fear. It is fear of loss: loss of face, status, image, position, security. He says that the areas where is most difficult to be proactive are the areas where we have the most emotions – ‘emotional attachment’ I would say. To me the primary mechanism of this is fear. It seems to me that largely what it means to be a proactive person in these difficult areas is to not let fear control you, but to recognize it and act in spite of it. Covey does not say as much, but I suspect he would agree.

Covey suggests that being a proactive person is being a 'value-driven' person. That is acting not in reaction to circumstance, but acting in alignment with ones values and ones vision. This brings up the obvious questions 'what are my values?', 'what is my vision?'. Without these how can one live by them? How does one discover or create one's values? I do hope, and suspect, that Covey will address these questions in later chapters.

This 'habit' is very much in line with work that my mother does around 'consciousness' in organizations. (www.interoctave.com) I remember reading in materials related to her field about the concepts of 'self-observing' and 'self-remembering'. If I think about these in the context of Covey's first habit of proactivity, I see self observation as the process of being aware of reactive selves – our automatic responses, and when we are focusing our energy on things over which we have no control. Self remembering is keeping in mind what we are about, what our values are, and what our vision is, and consciously aligning our thoughts and actions to these.

Another question that arises for me in listening to Covey's discussion of proactivity 'how do we even know what our possibility's for action are?' Covey has used the metaphor of a map to discuss the power of a paradigm. If we don't even have the right map, we can't effectively get to where we are going. And in every area, the power of proactivity is limited if we don't even know what action is possible. It would be like driving around with the parking brake on, not having ever heard of parking brakes.

It seems to me this is where self-education comes in, and a commitment to developing ones abilities through experimentation and adaptation.