This is the first on my series of articles which draw upon the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”
The Success Problem
Imagine a successful person. Better still, imagine yourself as successful. Who do you imagine?
If you’d asked me to do this exercise, the first thing I’d imagine was someone with two qualities: fame and wealth.
Fame, or at least recognition, is a strong motivator for most humans. Money makes the world go round. Who would turn their back on more money? Money and fame. These seem to be what most people assess when they rate a successful life.
Unfortunately, not everyone can be famous, and not everyone can be rich. And for those who can, the fame and money sometimes come at a cost. Poor mental health, fractured relationships, stress and anxiety…
Stephen R Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, begins his book by highlighting this very problem. Covey starts by offering short stories of 10 conventionally successful people that he had met as his time as university lecturer and business coach. He introduces us to people who are estranged from their families, mistrust their staff, feel desperately stressed or envious, amongst other problems.
What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
For Covey, this problem of outward success with inward failure is a symptom of a deep personal and cultural problem. A problem with the perceptions and understandings related to what it means to be successful. For Covey, gaining holistic success involves making a paradigm shift. People must change themselves from the inside out.
Inside-Out: Personality vs Character
Self-help books have been with us forever. Meditations, by Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelias, is a nearly 2 millennia old example of stoic self-help. What do self-help books tell us about the society and individuals of their eras?
Covey studied American self-help literature over the first 200 years of American nationhood, and he came to an astonishing conclusion.
For the first 150 years of American life, self-help books focussed on building a strong and benevolent character. They identified the development of virtues such as integrity, humility, justice and patience, as representative of success.
On the other hand, over the preceding 50 years, about from World War I onward (7 Habits was written 35 years ago), self-help books changed. They became much more focused on having a positive mental attitude and teaching human public relations and manipulation skills.
Covey described this shift as being a change from a Character-Based Ethic, to a Personality-Based Ethic. He saw the shift in self-help literature as being emblematic of society’s shift from deep solutions to problems, toward shallow solutions.
Covey relates how he and his wife changed their approach with their socially, academically and physically immature son (poor kid gets described in a pretty embarrassing way by Covey). This child, once the parents had shifted their paradigm, becomes a scholar, an athlete and a gentleman. Impressive!
Building Character
So, how to we build our character? How do we change our source code so that we gain the attributes of a personally and professionally successful person?
In short, we need to change our dominant paradigm (the way we see ourselves and our world) to a principle-centred paradigm. What this means, in effect, is identifying who our old, bad masters are (usually our own ego, our job, our spouse, or some other person). And then becoming unbeholden to them. And in their place, becoming servants to our principles. Principles such as honesty, patience and generosity.
Once we’ve moved to become a principled person. Inward and outward success await. The only thing to do now, is to change our habits…