Reflections from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
What most motivates me
As said by philosopher Amiel, “Moral truth can be conceived in thought. One can have feelings about it. One can will to live it. But moral truth may have been penetrated and possessed in all these ways, and escape us still. Deeper even than consciousness there is our being itself—our very substance, our nature. Only those truths which have entered into this last region, which have become ourselves, become spontaneous and involuntary as well as voluntary, unconscious as well as conscious, are really our life—that is to say, something more than property. So long as we are able to distinguish any space whatever between Truth and us we remain outside it. The thought, the feeling, the desire or the consciousness of life may not be quite life. To become divine is then the aim of life. Then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of loss. It is no longer outside us, nor in a sense even in us, but we are it, and it is we.” (Bold emphasis added).
As Stephen Covey interprets, “Achieving unity—oneness—with ourselves, with our loved ones, with our friends and working associates, is the highest and best and most delicious fruit of the 7 Habits.” Though “building a character of total integrity and living the life of love and service that creates such unity isn’t easy,” it is possible.
Similarly, as Harvard Professor Richard Weissbourd describes, “The much harder and more important challenge is to develop in children a deep, abiding commitment to these values. The issue isn’t cultivating moral literacy; it’s cultivating moral identity. It’s making these values integral to the self, so that doing what’s right becomes a reflex, and so children are strongly motivated to do what’s right even when it conflicts with other needs and wants.”
Live life in crescendo, and look ahead with optimism.
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!” Goeth
We are not human beings with spiritual experiences, but are spiritual beings with human bodies.
Attain the foundation, mindset, skills, habits, and heart for becoming your best self and achieving divineness.
“To pour forth benefits for the common good is divine.” Motto of library founded by Benjamin Franklin
(Photo by Peter Harholdt, 2004).