I was tagged recently by Jenny and Erin who are on a quest for understanding. They are running a contest asking bloggers to post about habits (update: I won the contest!) Since this fits my blog perfectly, I accepted the challenge. The questions they ask are:

• How big of a role do habits play in your daily life?
  
• Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously?
  
• What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?

Well, I think we have a habitual life! I think most of what we do consists of habits, and that’s great, because we can choose what habits we want.

Habits rule our world
Let’s first take a look at what the dictionary says about habits:

hab·it
–noun

1. an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary;
2. customary practice or use;
3. a particular practice, custom, or usage;
4. a dominant or regular disposition or tendency; prevailing character or quality.

source: dictionary.com

Habits are an acquired behavior pattern that we follow involuntary. Scary right? In psychology this is also known as a conditioned behavior. It means we react to our circumstances in an acquired, conditioned standard way every time! Click to continue »

Today is the last day of July, the goal-free month. Tomorrow is August, and the start of one of the biggest habit changes I have ever undertaken. Tomorrow is the first day of adopting the habit of waking up early, I named it the Early Bird Challenge.

In a previous article I wrote about the reasons why I want to be an early bird. There are a lot of benefits to changing, however during the change these benefits are not there yet (certainly not in full effect). So during this month I need determination and support. And to support me during this month, I will join Leo’s August Challenge, over at Zen Habits. And my spouse of course supports me as well, and I empowered her to help me (by being grateful for the occasional poke in the ribs around 5am).

Preparation
Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Going cold-turkey is not an option, as my internal clock needs to adjust to the new time-settings. It’s kind of like jetlag, but then the other way around. Click to continue »

Sharpen the saw is the seventh and last habit that Covey defined in his original book. Habit 7 is a special habit, as this one is a perpetual habit, no matter how far you have advanced through the other 6 habits. Habits 1 to 3 form the Private Victory, and habits 4 to 6 form the Public Victory. Habit 7 tells us to “be fit for purpose”.The title of the habit is derived from wise craftsmen. You have to take care of your tools! If you’re cutting down trees and your saw is dull, it will take an agonizing long time. And since it took so long, you’re behind schedule, so you have to rush to the next tree.

But if you take the time to sharpen your saw, taking down the tree will be less strenuous and will deliver results faster. You will make up for “lost” time! Investing time to prepare your tools, pays itself back (and is in itself a quadrant II activity).

You are your tool in life!
Think about it! The single most important asset you possess…is YOU! Habit 7 demands that you take care of it. If you neglect this part, you can forget about the rest.

There are many ways to take care of yourself. Covey defines four areas:

• Physical
  Taking care of your body, staying healthy, focused on vitality
• Spiritual
  This is at the core, your life’s direction, your inner journey
• Mental
  Taking care of your brain and your acuity
• Social / emotional
  Investing in relationships and interdependence

I’m not going to tell you what Covey says about these dimensions in his book. The first part of what he describes is interesting, but then all of a sudden it shifts into another gear. The book is pretty timeless, but the chapter of habit 7 changes to a more time-constraint and personal interpretation in my opinion. I think people are wise enough to understand the message, and then venture into this world and give it a form and shape that suits their needs.

So take up the glove, and sharpen your saw! It’s an investment with double digit returns or even exponential returns if you combine it with the other 6 habits.

You can find the other six habits in previous posts:
Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win
Habit 5 Seek first to understand then to be understood
Habit 6 Synergize

You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

This habit is about creation and creativity. Synergy as defined by the dictionary is:

syn·er·gy

1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
2. Cooperative interaction among groups, especially among the acquired subsidiaries or merged parts of a corporation, that creates an enhanced combined effect.

Synergy is the ability to create more together with others than we can by ourselves. But if you paid attention, we already achieved that with Habit 4: Think Win-Win. True, but habit 6 takes it a little (or a league) further.

Synergize, a mindset of unlimited potential
In earlier habits we already talked about abundance and the power of visualizing. Synergize is the mindset to get there. We have to acknowledge the concept that the sum is more than its parts. And if applied correctly there’s a major multiplier. Synergy takes the win-win cliché of 1 + 1 = 3 a level further 1 + 1 = 20 or 100 or 1,000 or … And if 1 + 1 gets you that far, realize what synergy would do if you add more to that.

There are numerous examples of this phenomenon, Covey describes a couple of them. About two politicians being able to get a million voters each, but 2.5 million together. Or about two people both too short to pick apples from a tree, but as a team with one on the shoulders of the other can pick a lot of apples. The first example looks like a variant of the classic 1 + 1 = 2.5 equation. But the second one is an example between a couple of apples each or no apples at all, and that’s quite a synergetic effect.

Celebrate the differences
If there’s something you have to do to get the most out of this habit, it’s acknowledging that there are differences between people, and that these differences are there to celebrate! The paradigm shift in this habit focuses around differences, they’re not annoying, they’re very precious. The moment you realize this is wonderful, and you recognize the hidden value in it. It makes you wonder why you burnt all that energy on fighting differences, when there’s so much to gain from acknowledging them.

I learned this while we where renovating our current house. It happened when I had worked all day to paint most walls and the ceiling from our living room. I was nearly done, and satified with all the work I had done, and the improvement it turned out to be. My wife came in and started by pointing out all the spots I had missed!! Now I’m the type of person that likes to hear acknowledgment for a job well done, and I get this…it makes my blood boil. I took a deep breath…

But in that moment I suddenly recognized a NLP concept I had just read about. It’s about Matchers and Mismatchers. Matchers focus on what’s there, they seek parallels. Mismatchers on the other hand focus on what’s not there, they seek differences. Then and there it struck me that I was a Matcher, and that my wife was a Mismatcher. She just acted upon what she saw instantly, and the beauty of it, that was exactly the part I had trouble seeing. Synergy was about to happen, be it with a trivial thing as painting a wall.

Synergy was only there because of mindset, at that moment even a change in mindset for me. In retrospect it was habits working at high speed, creating a pause to choose a response, taking the end (a great looking living room) in mind, thinking win-win (both the great result and no fight ) and I wanted to understand why my wife was saying this. Having read about the concept just a couple of days ago helped too of course…

When to use this habit
Unlike the other habits I find it difficult to actively practice this habit. It’s more a mindset that proves its value in certain situations, it’s not that I walk around in a synergetic mood day in day out. That would be annoying right?

“Oh I spot a difference here, let’s investigate how we can multiply our individual value to create a joint value far greater than we can achieve!”.

This mindset is very useful when you feel you’re about to get into a conflict situation. I have some experience with it now, and it really works! But like I said, I’m not high vibing on synergy all day long, but that could also be an immaturity in implementing the habit

Next week the last habit: Sharpen the saw

Previous posts in this series:

Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win
Habit 5 Seek first to understand then to be understood

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it in del.icio.us or stumble it. Thanks!

People understand me so poorly that they even don’t understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

People want to be understood. You want to be understood, don’t you? You know how frustrating it can be when people don’t understand you, no matter how hard you try, over and over again.

Habit 5 is about this phenomenon: Seek first to understand and then to be understood. And as with all of the habits, this one not about learning a new trick or a set of techniques. The habits are about changing paradigms, about changing the beliefs you have about the topics of the habits. This habit is about communication, effective interaction between people.

What’s your intention?

Why do you listen to people? If you’re like most people in most conversations, you primarily listen to give a response! And while your listening, you’re preparing for a response already. Now how can you listen effectively, when you’re thinking how to formulate the sentence that’s about to leave you lips? Covey sums up four typical
listening responses:

• Ignoring
  not listening at all
• Pretending
  not listening at all, but with mindless responses (”Uh-hum”, “Yeah, that’s really interesting”)
• Selective listening
  not listening to everything, but hearing what you want to hear
• Attentive listening
  really listening to the words

Effective listening is about really wanting to listen, wanting to understand the other. To achieve this you have to go beyond the words.

Full scale listening

To really understand people you have to use empathic listening. It’s not just hearing what they’re saying. Empathic listening is a full body activity. In communication the words are only a small part of the total communication. It’s what we refer to as verbal communication. But there’s also a non-verbal part to communicating. It’s even an essential
part for effective communication.

In real life people do this by expressing emotion by gestures, frowns, smiles etc. On the internet this wasn’t possible, so emoticons were created to substitute for the lack of non-verbal language. In real life we also use the tone of our voice, the loudness of it, the pitch etc. This is already harder on the internet, but a lot of people seem to know HOW TO SCREAM, don’t they? Add some colors, and you get the picture of the mood they’re in.

Empathic listening is about all these aspects of communication at the same time. Does the body language show the same thing as the words that are being spoken, do they express the same feeling? If not, what does that mean, how can you respond?

Logic versus emotion

In conversation not all parts are filled with emotions. There are two parts of a conversation, the logical part and the emotional part. Some parts of a conversation are simply logical, and you can respond to that part by asking questions and giving advice and so on. However, when the responses become emotional, empathic listening is the better option.

The empathic listening responses are:

• mimic content
  just repeat what was just said
• rephrase content
  repeat, but in your own words
• reflect feeling
  express what you think the other feels
• rephrase content and reflect feeling
  combine the latter two

Empathic listening is effective when you have the best interest of the other in mind, if you genuinely seek the welfare of the other.

Now to be understood

That was a rather long part about how to understand the other. How about being understood? That’s important as well of course. However, it’s the understanding part where most people have to train their skills. That’s why that part of this chapter is so elaborate. In this article, I’m not going into being understood anymore, I’ll save that one for another post.

Previous posts in this series:
Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win

Next week habit 6: Synergize

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it in del.icio.us or stumble it. Thanks!