Tuesday, February 22
Test Results/ 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"No man can reveal to you aught but that
which already lies half asleep in the dawning
of your knowledge" Khaleel Gibran
Character Ethics & Personality Ethics
Primary Greatness & Secondary Greatness
By giving you a test in my last post and titling this post as (Test Results) I have tricked you to follow me on this post didn't I? :)
What I did was one form of what we call the modern school of management and the author termed as Personality Ethic management (personality growth, communication skill training, and the education in the field of influence thinking). They are good tools and sometimes essential for success. And surly effective for a while, but they remain to be band-aids, or quick-fixes. But they are nothing but TOOLS, and the author described them as Secondary Greatness.
But since you knew from experience that my intention is genuine and that we have built a bridge of trust between us that took some time to be built, you anticipated some results for the test and you are sure that I will do something worthwhile to keep the connection.
Trust is one element of what the author termed as Character Ethic Management that is fundamental in success, other elements like integrity, humanity, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity and modesty are the basic traits of human beings that can be accomplished in relationships only with time. This type of management is genuine, more effective and basic. And the author described them as Primary Greatness.
Now let's go back to test results;
Paradigm & Paradigm Shift
In the previous post I published a picture and asked my readers to tell me what did they see in a first glance and what would they see if they focused more on the picture. The results varied from one individual to another as follows:
1- Some readers only saw one picture no matter how much they focused.
2- Some readers had to focus hard to see two images.
3- The first image that each percieved varied from one individule to another.
3- Some readers gave descriptions that portrayed their specific image and sometimes it was associated with feelings.
3- Some readers gave descriptions that portrayed their specific image and sometimes it was associated with feelings.
The first image you saw is your Paradigm, and the second image after exerting some effort is your Paradigm shift.
The conclusion here is that every one of us has his own paradigm or paradigms of just about every thing in life. And there are feelings associated with these paradigms.
It was essential for us to clearly understand paradigm and paradigm shift before introducing habits. Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world. What we see is highly interrelated to what we are, we can't go very far to change our being, and vice versa.
Knowledge is "what to do and why", skill is the "how to do", desire is "want to do it"
Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions, which can break through to new levels of personal and interpersonal effectiveness as we break with old paradigms that may have been a source of pseudo-security for years. In other words if we want to better ourselves, our situations we have to acquire new habits and change our old perceptions. We have to go through paradigm shift because most of the time the way we look at the problem, is the problem.
But as we saw in the previous post that shifting paradigms is not always spontaneous, most deliberate ones need effort and hard work, it is not easy to change the way we are conditioned since the day we were born, yet we have to grow and we have to change to be able to perceive matters more clearly and therefore make better judgments.
Principles of growth and change
The very principle of growth and change is to accept the fact of the process, like the law of harvest; you have to sow, then wait for the harvest and then reap. Human behavior and human relationships should take their natural time to flourish; change has to take its considerable time to happen. We can't change people or circumstances, but we can change ourselves to be able to better deal with our environment.
Another principle of growth is to admit our mistakes and ignorance and in the process learn. If we analyze a situation that went terribly wrong, instead of crossing our hands and feeling sorry for ourselves, let's thing what did we do to unintentionally contribute to its failure. And in the process look at the problem from a different angle.
As for an example let's think of the way we deal with our children's schooling, we push them too hard to get excellent reports, we may use the modern schools of Personality Ethic; sometimes deceiving and conning to get what we want without any consideration to their natural abilities or the fact that these kids are learning more hazardous traits along the way, and when the end result is satisfactory, we get an extra mileage for being the perfect parent in the eyes of other adults concerned. But when they fail we consider it our failure.
But if we step aside and think of the matter as a natural process and give our children their right time to develop with our sincere guidance and nourishments without the stress of the outside influence, we begin to shift our paradigms and are able to deal with the situation more maturely.
If we want to change a situation we first have to change ourselves. And to change ourselves we have to first change our perceptions; we have to go through a paradigm shift.
The very principle of growth and change is to accept the fact of the process, like the law of harvest; you have to sow, then wait for the harvest and then reap. Human behavior and human relationships should take their natural time to flourish; change has to take its considerable time to happen. We can't change people or circumstances, but we can change ourselves to be able to better deal with our environment.
Another principle of growth is to admit our mistakes and ignorance and in the process learn. If we analyze a situation that went terribly wrong, instead of crossing our hands and feeling sorry for ourselves, let's thing what did we do to unintentionally contribute to its failure. And in the process look at the problem from a different angle.
As for an example let's think of the way we deal with our children's schooling, we push them too hard to get excellent reports, we may use the modern schools of Personality Ethic; sometimes deceiving and conning to get what we want without any consideration to their natural abilities or the fact that these kids are learning more hazardous traits along the way, and when the end result is satisfactory, we get an extra mileage for being the perfect parent in the eyes of other adults concerned. But when they fail we consider it our failure.
But if we step aside and think of the matter as a natural process and give our children their right time to develop with our sincere guidance and nourishments without the stress of the outside influence, we begin to shift our paradigms and are able to deal with the situation more maturely.
If we want to change a situation we first have to change ourselves. And to change ourselves we have to first change our perceptions; we have to go through a paradigm shift.
(To be continued)
(PS;This post is a continuation of the last two posts. Your questions, enquiries as well as participation are welcome :)
Name::AyyA
From::Kuwait
I AM WHO I AM AS I ARRIVE AT YOUR DOOR WHETHER I COME OR I GO IS NOT UP TO ME FOR I HAVE LOST SIGHT OF ALL DESIRE "Walled Garden of Truth",Hakim Sanai
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17 Comments:
Interesting, but then again, fits me :)
You never seize to amaze me Purg
I can’t believe that you read all that :)
GEO
I know, I just heard that, may be by the time we finish the 7th, it would be worthwhile to looking into the 8th.
a Paradigm is sort of like wearing prescription glasses. To get a Paradigm shift, you need to change your prescription. In other words your habit.
Certainly having the ability to "see" things from another perspective is very important & a prerequisite to further development. Recognition. But the second step which is acting or reacting to that shift in paradigm is equally if not more important.
Very useful Rabab :)
You know Ruby,
when I first saw how long this post was I thought, " I shoulda known there was a trick behind that little teeny weeny post" lol
Jewaita
You hit the jackpot dear; acting on the paradigm shift is the tools and the skills that the author presented in these 7 habits. Very good observation.
Peach
A very good comparison; when our prescription glasses fail to give us a clear vision we know that it is time to change them. But the problem is that most of the time we are not aware of that, we keep using the old glasses simply because we are used to them and we think that we are comfortable using them. In other words; old embedded habits are not easy to change we have to first realize their ineffectiveness, and then we need to have the right skills and tools to help us change them, and most of all we need to have the genuine desire for change, all these elements have to be present so that we can insure the newly acquired habit’s consistency.
Peach
You really cracked me up on your second comment LOL
Whoah Rabab! You must be psychic! I was talking about this with my dad just the other day. He was trying to explain to me what paradigm shift meant. He gave me so many explains but all I could answer was "huh?" with a dumb look on my face. You explained it perfectly and in a fun way (trixy little hobbitses) :P Thanks babe, laters!
DJ
Stay tuned girl, more to come ;)
DnG
So your dad is using the 7HHEP in home management?
I’m impressed :)
Here's a little something related to the post. hope you don't mind Ruby ;)
I am your constant companion.
I am Your greatest helper or heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down To failure.
I am completely at your command.
Half the things I do you might just as well Turn over to me & I will be able to do Them quickly & correctly.
I am easily managed – you must merely Be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you Want something done & after a few Lessons I will do it automatically.
I am the Servant of all great individuals and, alas, of
All failures, as well.
Those who are great, I Have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine, though I work
With all the precision of a machine plus The intelligence of a human.
You may run Me for a profit or run me for ruin – it Makes no difference with me.
Take me, train me, be firm with me, And I will place the world at your feet.
Be Easy with me & I will destroy you.
Who am I?
Peach
Of course I don’t mind, I wish all can participate in the same way.
Ok, let me make a wild guess; you are my paradigm, right?
peach notified me about this entry, wow rabab this was intense!
you see, my friend and i were trying to figure out the meaning of paradigm for her sociology class, to which dictionaries gave the weirdest definitions!
eventually she dropped the class saying she had better things to do; if only she read this before that..
so habits are built upon 3 dimensions; knowledge, skill, and desire.. that's new to me - certainly needs a focus session!
thanks for the great post rabab.
Hey there
Glad that Peach informed you about my posts, and I hope you keep on visiting, because I know you would benefit. I care mostly about you kids abroad. That’s why I’m trying to use as much a simple language, away from complicated terminologies so I can reach you, you can ask your friends to join in as well and there will be more posts about the subject, thanx sweetie and thank Peach for me :)
No need hon ;) I share your concern & that’s why I told him ;)
Glad you came Uz (^.^)
and btw ..
I AM HABIT ;)
This is a great discussion! I'm particularly interested in the poster who says "I AM HABIT." Of course, this could have been an ironic post, but it reminds me all the same of post-structural philosophy's position on the self, something else I am interested in. Check out my own Stephen Covey Seven habits Blog at Stephen Covey Seven Habits Blog
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