Living Habits: #1 and #2

Recently, as I was wandering the many shelves of my small local branch library and imagining to embrace the vast amount of knowledge held within each book, I came across the psychology section where a catchy yellow wrapping caught my eye. A closer look revealed the title to be "Living the 7 Habits" which immediately made me recall the title "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". I have no memory where I had encountered that book before but it was one of those books which I had labeled as a book which I will read later when I have time. I picked up the book and found not to my surprise that it is by the same author. It is the habits from this book that I want to write about.

The book that I had picked up is a book of short stories containing the testimonials of people who had applied the principals of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" to their everyday challenges. The 7 Habits are also summarized in the book cover of the book and today I will like to share with all of you two of them. Although, these 7 habits are not "new discoveries" and most of us may have had similar ideas about developing these every habits too, but from my experience, we need to be shown how important these habits are before we realize how important they are. How these, seemingly unimportant habits can make us more effective or "become highly effective people".

The first habit for me to personally learn is

"Habit 3: Put First Things First".
Putting first things first is the second or physical creation. It is organizing and executing around the mental creation ( your purpose, vision, values, and most important priorities). Second things do not come first. First things do not come second. Individuals and organizations focus on what matters most, urgent or not. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.


and the second for me is

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is accepting responsibility for our own behavior (past, present, and future) and making choices based on principles and values rather than on moods or circumstances. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others. They do this by developing and using four unique human gifts - self-awareness, conscience, imagination, and independent will - and by taking an INside-Out Approach to creating change. They resolve to be the creative force in their own lives, which is the most fundamental decision anyone ever makes.

I hope these help you, my friends, in some way. I will put up other habits later on as I find time to go through them myself. :)
I hope this post is not too long.