Habit 1 - Be Proactive: Principles of Personal Vision

Question 1

What is responsible for our ability to make and break habits

Answer 1

Our self-awareness or the ability to think about our very thought process.

Question 2

What does Viktor Frankl’s story teach about stimulus and response?

Answer 2

Between what happens to you and your response to it is your freedom to choose that response.

Question 3

What’s so special about our ability to choose our response to a stimulus?

Answer 3

In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.

Question 4

How is proactivity defined?

Answer 4

As human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. We have the responsibility and the initiative to make things happen. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

Question 5

How do highly effective people recognize their responsibility?

Answer 5

Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice based on values, rather than a product of their conditioning based on feelings.

Question 6

What is the essence of a proactive person?

Answer 6

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value.

Question 7

What does our basic nature to act, and not be acted upon say about taking initiative?

Answer 7

As well as enabling us to chose our response to particular circumstances, this nature empowers us to create circumstances.

Question 8

What does taking initiative mean?

Answer 8

Recognizing our responsibility to make good things happen.

Question 9

What kind of people get good jobs?

Answer 9

People who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done.

Question 10

What does RNI stand for?

Answer 10

Resourcefulness and Initiative.

Question 11

How is the difference between people who take initiative and people who don’t literally night and day?

Answer 11

It takes initiative to create the P/PC balance of effectiveness in your life. It takes initiative to develop the 7 habits.

Question 12

Describe the language of reactive people.

Answer 12

The language of reactive people absolves them of responsibility.

Question 13

What is an excellent way to become self-aware regarding our own degree of proactivity?

Answer 13

By observing and correcting our reactive language into proactive language.

Question 14

Apart from proactive language, what is another excellent way to become self-aware regarding our own degree of proactivity?

Answer 14

Our circle of influence is almost always smaller than our circle of concern. By determining which of these two circles is the focus of most of our time and energy we can discover much about the degree of our proactivity.

Question 15

Where do proactive people focus their time and energy?

Answer 15

They focus their energy in the smaller circle of influence. They work on the things they can do something about, causing their circle of influence to grow.

Question 16

Where do reactive people focus their time and energy?

Answer 16

They focus their efforts, worries, and thoughts in the larger circle of concern. They focus on the weaknesses of other people, problems in the environment and circumstances over which they have no control, causing their circle of influence to shrink.

Question 17

What’s the problem with focusing our attention on the circle of concern?

Answer 17

As long as we are working in our circle of concern, we empower the things within it to control us. We aren’t taking the proactive initiative necessary to effect positive change.

Question 18

What are the three areas in which the problems we face lie?

Answer 18

• Direct control: Problems involving our own behavior.
• Indirect control: Problems involving other people’s behavior.
• No control: Problems we can do nothing about.

Question 19

How does the proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our own present circle of influence?

Answer 19

• Direct control problems are solved by working on our habits. (private victories)
• Indirect control problems are solved by changing our methods of influence. (public victories)
• No control problems involve taking the responsibility to accept those problems and learn to live with them, so they can’t control us.

Question 20

What is one way to determine which circle our concern is in?

Answer 20

To distinguish between the “have’s” and the “be’s”. The circle of concern is filled with the haves. The circle of influence is filled with the bes.

Question 21

How can you distinguish between the haves and the bes?

Answer 21

Anytime we think the problem is “out there”, that very thought is the problem.

Question 22

Before we totally shift our life focus to our circle of influence, which two things in our circle of concern merit deeper thought?

Answer 22

• Consequences

- Mistakes

Question 23

Why do consequences in our circle of concern deserve deeper thought?

Answer 23

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions.

Question 24

Why are consequences in the circle of concern and not influence?

Answer 24

Because consequences are governed by natural laws or principles. We are free to choose our response in any situation but in doing so, we choose the attendant consequence. When we pick up one end of the stick, we pick up the other.

Question 25

Why are mistakes in the circle of concern and not influence?

Answer 25

Because we can’t recall them, we can’t undo them, we can’t control the consequences that come as a result.

Question 26

What is the proactive approach to a mistake?

Answer 26

Acknowledge it instantly, correct it, and learn from it. This turns a failure into a success.

Question 27

How is not acknowledging, correcting, and learning from a mistake a mistake of a larger order?

Answer 27

It usually puts a person on a self-deceiving, self-justifying path, often involving rationalization, which means rational lies, to self and to others. The second mistake empowers the first giving it disproportionate importance and causes far deeper injury to self.

Question 28

What is at the heart of our circle of influence?

Answer 28

Our ability to make and keep commitments and promises.

Question 29

What is the essence and clearest manifestations of our proactivity ?

Answer 29

The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments.

Question 30

Why are the commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, the essence of our growth?

Answer 30

Once we become conscious of areas for improvement in our lives, by making promises, setting goals, and being true to them, we build the strength of character.

Question 31

What are 2 ways to put ourselves in control of our lives immediately?

Answer 31

• Make a promise and keep it.

- Set a goal and work to achieve it.

Question 32

What happens to us as we make and keep even small commitments?

Answer 32

We begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives.