Page 34 - stephen covey The seven habits of highly effective people

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart

In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical
environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and their
performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines
makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality
work, it isn't a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.
Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the "social weather." When people
treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive or protective. Reactive
people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other
people to control them.
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive
people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people
are driven by values -- carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.
Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological.
But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.
As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of
Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing
permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the
first place.
I admit this is very hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of
explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else's behavior. But until a person can
say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person
cannot say, "I choose otherwise."
Once in Sacramento when I was speaking on the subject of Proactivity, a woman in the audience
stood up in the middle of my presentation and started talking excitedly. It was a large audience, and
as a number of people turned to look at her, she suddenly became aware of what she was doing, grew
embarrassed and sat back down. But she seemed to find it difficult to restrain herself and started
talking to the people around her. She seemed so happy.
I could hardly wait for a break to find out what had happened. When it finally came, I
immediately went to her and asked if she would be willing to share her experience.
"You just can't imagine what's happened to me!" she exclaimed. "I'm a full-time nurse to the most
miserable, ungrateful man you can possibly imagine. Nothing I do is good enough for him. He never
expresses appreciation; he hardly even acknowledges me. He constantly harps at me and finds fault
with everything I do. This man has made my life miserable and I often take my frustration out on my
family. The other nurses feel the same way. We almost pray for his demise.
"And for you to have the gall to stand up there and suggest that nothing can hurt me, that no one
can hurt me without my consent, and that I have chosen my own emotional life of being miserable --
well, there was just no way I could buy into that.
"But I kept thinking about it. I really went inside myself and began to ask, 'Do I have the power to
choose my response?"
"When I finally realized that I do have that power, when I swallowed that bitter pill and realized
that I had chosen to be miserable, I also realized that I could choose not to be miserable.
"At that moment I stood up. I felt as though I was being let out of San Quentin. I wanted to yell
to the whole world, 'I am free! I am let out of prison! No longer am I going to be controlled by the
treatment of some person.'"
It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things
can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity,
does not have to be hurt at all. In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge
our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the