A New Beginning

We all make mistakes in our life. Some mistakes will come back to bite us. When you are tasting the bitter fruits of your past mistake, how can you say to yourself, “I will begin anew. I will no longer make that mistake again.” People from your past may give you the look that freezes your heart. But how can they know that you are a new person?

In Les Miserables, Hugo illustrates this same point through one man’s life story. Jean was put in prison when he was young. He then escaped from prison. In the police inspector Javert’s eye, Jean is and will always be a criminal. He is determined to track down Jean, and punish Jean.  Bishop Myriel hosted Jean after his escape, who instead stole silverware from Myriel’s house. But Myriel forgave Jean. In Myriel’s eye, Jean is redeemable. In the end, Jean became a mayor of a city, raised a beautiful daughter and contributed to French revolution.

Now, let’s ask ourselves again: Is it possible to break away from our past mistake, and become a new person? The answer is a firm Yes.

You can begin now to become a new person. No matter how many mistakes you made in the past, you can always begin anew and never make those mistakes again.

Do not let regret chain you to the past. Not a single ounce of regret can change the past. What is done is done. All you have is now.

Breathe in deeply, and say to yourself, “I am a perfect child of God. God accepts me for who I am.”  Embrace the wonderful things you have now, and start a new life.

Regular Exercise

The amount of exercise we need each day is the following:

1) 30-minute walk

2) 20-minute cardio exercise
3) 5-minute stretch    4) 5-minute muscle training

Normally we only talk about aerobic exercise, which is good for our heart. But weight lifting that builds our muscles is equally important. It is the quickest way to burn fat away. Stretching increases our flexibility and helps to avoid injury.

The power of commitment

As I sat at my desk starting on my hour of “total research”, I signed. I committed myself of devoting this hour completely to research problems. That means no email, no chatting, no personal matter, and no other worries such as applying for funding etc. This commitment forces me to devote all my attention to one problem, and give my all to it. In this total dedication, there is no self. In this total dedication, difficult tasks become easy because I put my mind to it. At the end of the hour, I felt proud. I have accomplished something and have made productive use of my time. Even though the progress is not as great as I wished, I was moving forward.

If commitment is so good, why don’t we make more such commitment? Why not commit 3 hours or 5 hours to “total research”, or to another task? I worry about interruption. Sometimes there are meetings, and that disrupted my promise of devoting my time to one task. One solution is planning around the meeting.

Another worry is flexibility. If we commit all the time to certain tasks, we have little time left for exploration or surprise. Maybe we can always leave 1-2 hours each day for pure exploration.

In general, the more we commit, the more productive we become. It enables full concentration and clear deadline. It is a magic way of getting things done.

The 8th Habit: Find your own voice and Let others express their voices

Our voice is our passion and dream, our desire to express our full potential.

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

This habit is about daily renewal in 4 areas: Physical, mental, spiritual, and social/emotional.

• Physical renewal means daily exercises.
• Mental renewal means planning, learning, reading, and writing.
• Social/Emotional renewal means practicing Habit 4, 5, and 6 every day. What is emotional renewal? What is social renewal? Does it mean talk to people who are close to us, and renew the tie?
• Spiritual renewal means daily reflection on our life purpose. It also means connecting to great people or literature that are inspiring.

Habit 6: Synergize

To synergize is to create a higher alternative among all parties. It’s the outcome of win-win solution. It enables everyone to express themselves, to be creative and bring passion to the whole team.

Covey talked about the tension between driving force and restraining force in an organization. If we want to change the organization, being a driving force ourselves is not enough. That’s because the restraining force will push back and the change is hard to achieve. Instead, Cover suggests we should ise Habit 4 (win-win), 5 (seek first to understand, then to be understood) and 6 (synergize) to unfreeze the restraining force, to loosen them up, and create new insights. Instead of pushing back, we transform those restraining force into driving force, and they become an important part of the solution. How power this is!

Synergy is team work, and the development of unity and creativity with other human beings. It’s a powerful force for change.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Before influencing others, we have to understand them. Understanding means looking at things from their paradigm, even if it is different from ours. It forces us to be open-minded.

To reach another person’s heart, we need to be an active listener. We need to be able to reflect the feeling and content back the speaker, so that the other person feels fully understood. This gives the other person the “psychological air”. By careful listening, we give respect and approval to others. Being able to reflect the person’s feeling and context is a powerful skill. It allows the person to open up and we can get to the deep root of a certain problem. It is the only way to persuasion.

Habit 4: Think win/win

In human relationship, the best outcome is win-win. It is different from win/lose where you take advantage of the other side, or from lose/win where you give up to the other side. The win-win solution requires us to treat human relationship as collaboration instead of competition.

It takes compassion to want others to win. It takes courage and assertiveness to want ourselves to win. If we can consistently practice these two sets of characters, we will create a richer life for us and others.

A win-win outcome depends on several factors: (1) Emotional bank account. You have built trust in another person by consistently give help, respect and appreciation. (2) Clear communication. All expectations are stated open, on the table, and be understood by all parties.

Covey talked about a remarkable story where a corporate training program shrank from 6 month to 5 weeks, and results were much better. This is all about setting clear expectations, clear reward, and enable the trainee to define their own ways to achieve their goal. It’s a 5-step process:

1. Desired results;
2. Guidelines (Qualify results with certain parameters);
3. Resources;
4. Accountability: performance standard and ways of evaluation;
5. Consequences: reward structure.

When all these steps are in place, we can motivate people to achieve remarkable things.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

This habit is about having goal or vision. If you want to achieve something, you must know clearly what you want. Note that it is about what *you* want, not what other people want or what you are *supposed to* want.

It takes courage and deep soul searching to know what we really want. When we are scared, it is very easy to settle for a goal that is a temporary fix. We thought we want this thing, but instead it is just an escape from something really good yet we believe hard to achieve.

Therefore the first step is getting rid of our self-limiting belief. Whatever we can think about, God will provide. For example, what kind of work really excites you? If you can make the wildest wish and it will be granted, what will it be? Sometimes it looks “silly” or impractical to ask for our deepest wish. The gap between our current situation and our wish may seem so large. The truth is, this gap will gradually close over time. But we have to hold our goal clearly in front of us in order to move close to it.

Habit 1: Be proactive

For the next 7 days, I will start to go over Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people. These habits are extremely important for achieving our goals. They are the foundation for success. First, let’s look at Habit 1 –be proactive.

Being proactive is taking initiative to influence your surrounding. It is the principle of saying “I am responsible” for whatever happens in my life. This belief is very powerful. It means I cannot blame others for my lack of money, lack of social life, lack of an idea job, or whatever that is not appearing in my life. I cannot even complain about my luck, my birth, or even God. It is I who will take the responsibility to make things happen. It also means I cannot passively wait for things to change. They will most likely not change unless I take actions. By saying “I’m responsible” I start to shape my own life, and not leaving it to chance.

This principle is also very scary. By taking responsibility, we can no longer blame others for our failure. We also do not have excuse for living a non-ideal life. If it is not ideal, it is up to us to take action. Such actions require courage, self-discipline and a lot of initiatives.

Being proactive is taking actions within our circle of influence. By focusing on things and people we can directly influence, we will be more effective. It is to resolve not to spend energy on things ourside our influence, such as gossips of celebrity, fires in a remote region, and things beyond our control.

As we take more responsibilities, our circle of influence will expand.

To create influence, we must be able to influence people around us. The way to achieve this is understanding and meeting others’ need. Only then we can gain trust and good will. Covey gave an example of how a person wins the support of a vice president by presenting information he looks for. What Covey didn’t mention here (but will mention in later chapters) is that you also need to get your need satisfied. It has to be win-win, not lose-win. Asserting our own need is the core to preserve our circle and expanding that circle. If we give up our own need, our circle of influence will shrink. Actively meeting other people’s circle, and asserting our need (circle), we allow both circle to expand. This is win-win.

The key is to have a strong understanding of our own need and a strong understanding of others’ need, and then take diligent work to ensure that both parties’ needs are satisfied. Failing to satisfy either one is the failure of this interaction. This requires strong courage and assertiveness to preserve our own need, and empathy and maturity to meet others’ need. This comes back to the core value– integrity that Cover mentioned in the earlier chapters. With strong integrity, we know that we will not hurt ours and we will hold our own promise. It is much easier to feel assertive in this way because we know we are not being selfish.