Before you get too excited after reading out the title, let me tell you that this is based on the review of the book called “7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen R. Covey.
The book is really enormous and quite insightful. For this reason, I decided to share important points that made me wow. At the beginning of the book, author talks about to what kind of results the 7 habits will lead you to achieve. In the overview section of the book, the maturity continuum is provided where it talks about the dependency-interdependency.
The first 3 habits are there for you to develop your independency skills as there are plenty of people who expect to be acted upon rather than to act. The first 3 habits will help you to transfer your dependency to independency.
Maturity Continuum
You can depend on anything. Be it a chocolate with pistachios in my case or be it a person, family, girl/boyfriend, alcohol, or your physical dependency or emotional or intellectual. In each of these cases, your value of self worth comes from outside, from other people’s appreciation. If you prioritize one person or a family or a job or anything else, then it becomes the center of your life. But the author is against this idea.
On the contrary, he offers to divide fair amounts of value to each importancy. If you put a lot of emphasis on one area of your life, then when this thing does not happen or goes wrong, you are totally devastated. It is not worth it. For those who would say it is too difficult to do let me share my favorite quote from the book: Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve!
Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own effort. Independent people combine their own efforts with their efforts of others to achieve their greatest success. If someone is emotionally dependent, then the sense of worth and security would come from others’ opinion of this person. If people didn’t like this person, it would be devastating for her/him. If someone is intellectually dependent, then this person would count on others to do thinking for her/him, to think through the issues and problems of her/his life.
If someone is independent, physically she or he could pretty make it on her/his own. Mentally, this kind of people would think their own thoughts, moving from one level of abstraction to another. These people could think creatively and analytically and organize and express their thoughts in understandable ways. Emotionally, they would be validated from within. They would be inner directed. Their sense of worth would not be a function of being liked or treated well.
It is easy to see that independence is much more mature than dependence. Independence is a major achievement in and of itself. But independence is not supreme. And most of the time, the emphasis on independence is a reaction to dependence – to having others control us, defines us, use us and manipulate us. True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon.
Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality. Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won’t be good eladers or team players.
Life is, by nature, highly interdependent. Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physcially interdependent, I am a self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I derive a great sense of worth within myself, but I also recognize the need for love, for giving, and for receiving love from others. If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own.
As an interdependent person, I have the opportunity to share myself deeply, meaningfully, with others, and I have access to the vast resources potential of other human beings. Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don’t have the character to do it; They don’t own enough of themselves.
Primary and Secondary Greatness
The author also talks about primary and secondary greatness: where the secondary greatness can serve you to survive in the short run but you need the primary greatness in order to be successful in the long run. As it is explained, people with secondary greatness try to get the social recognition but they lack primary greatness in their character. These people can easily be recognized in their long term relationship with their business associate, or a friend or a spouse or with any other person.
Most people use personality ethic in their short lived human interactions by making favorable impressions on others, or pretending to be interested in other people’s hobbies or demonstrating their skills or charm. These techniques can work out in the short run. But secondary traits should be there if the person wants to build long lasting relationship with others. So if there is not a deep integrity or fundamental character strength, the true human nature will come to surface and fail the relationship. That’s why what we communicate is far more important than anything we say or do. The character is so visible that it communicates itself automatically. As author uses the quote by Emerson where he stated: What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
A new level of thinking
As Albert Einstein observed, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. That’s why he offers inside-out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Inside-out means to start first with self: making and keeping promises to ourselves actually precedes making and keeping promises to others.
So the first 3 habits: 1) Be proactive 2) Begin with the end in Mind 3) Put first things first; will help to transform your dependency to independency. Habits 4,5 and 6 – 4) Think win/win 5) Seek first to understand, then to be understood 6) Synergize; will assist you to get to an interdependency state of mind. The last – 7th habit called ” Sharpen the saw” is the habit of renewal where it embodies all the other habits achieving continuous improvement.
As it is always easier to say rather than to do, the more you take into account all these advised habits and practice it in your daily life, the more you can get to the point you are planning to be. Salud!