The more people are into quick fix and focus on the acute problems and pain, the more that very approach contributes to the underlying chronic condition.

As well as empowering you to put first things first, weekly organizing gives you the freedom and the flexibility to handle unexpected events, to shift appointments if you need to, to savior relationships and interactions with others, to deeply enjoy spontaneous experiences, knowing that you have proactively organized your week to accomplish key goals in every area of your life.

Intrinsic security doesn't come from what other people think of us or how they treat us. It doesn't come from our circumstances or our position. It comes from within. It comes from accurate paradigms and correct principles deep in our mind and heart. It comes from inside-out congruence, from living a life of integrity in which our daily habits reflect our deepest values.

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word that you won't find in most dictionaries. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.

Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People embody many of the fundamental principles of human effectiveness. These habits are basic; they are primary. They represent the internalization of correct principles upon which enduring happiness and success are based.

Test the principle of proactivity for thirty days and see what happens. Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Our behavior is governed by principles. Living in harmony with them brings positive consequences; violating them brings negative consequences. 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 the stick, we pick up the other."

Renewal is the principle — and the process — that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement.

I've come to believe that the key to interpersonal synergy is intrapersonal synergy, that is synergy within ourselves. The heart of intrapersonal synergy gives the internal security sufficient to handle the risks of being open and vulnerable. By internalizing our principles, we develop authenticity and abundance mentality of Win-Win.

A character rich in integrity, maturity and Abundance Mentality has a genuineness that goes far beyond technique, or lack of it, in human interaction.

Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, "like straightening deck chairs on the RMS Titantic."

To begin with the end in mind means to begin each day with my deepest values firmly in mind. Then as the vicissitudes, as the challenges come, I can make my decisions based on those values. I can act with integrity. I don't have to react to the emotion, the circumstance. I can the truly proactive, value driven, because my values are clear.

It is so much easier to blame other people, conditioning, or conditions for our own stagnant situation. But we are responsible — "response-able" — to control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are.

As we continue to grow and mature, we become increasingly aware that all of nature is interdependent, that there is an ecological system that governs nature, including society. We further discover that the higher reaches of our nature have to do with our relationships with others — that human life also is interdependent.

Principles are not values. A gang of theives can share values, but they are in violation of the fundamental principles we're talking about. Principles are the territory. Values are maps. When we value correct principles, we have truth — a knowledge of things as they are.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination, and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment — independent will — that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.

The core of any family is what is changeless, what is always going to be there — shared vision and values. By writing a family mission statement, you give expression to its true foundation.

As a principle-centered person, you see things differently. And because you see things differently, you think differently, you act differently. Because you have a high degree of security, guidance, wisdom, and power that flows from a solid, unchanging core, you have the foundation of a highly proactive and highly effective life.

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Love — the feeling — is a fruit of love, the verb.

Reactive people make it [love] a feeling. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe the reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is becasue we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.

When you can see only two alternatives — yours and the "wrong" one — you can look for a synergistic third alternative. There's almost always a third alternative, and if you work with a Win-Win philosophy and really seek to understand, you usually can find a solution that will be better for everyone concerned.

Begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined. By keeping that end clearly in mind, your can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have of your life as a whole.

Lose-Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses often are the reincarnation of cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose-Win mentality. Disproportionate rage or anger, overreaction to minor provocation, and cynicism are other embodiments of suppressed emotion.

People who are constantly repressing, not transcending, feelings toward a higher meaning find that it affects the quality of their self-esteem and eventually the quality of their relationships with others.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values — carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values.

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.

Most of us think we don't have enough time to exercise. What a distorted paradigm! We don't have time not to. We're talking about three to six hours a week — or a minimum of thirty minutes a day, every other day. That hardly seems an inordinate amount of time considering the tremendous benefits in terms of the impact on the other 162-165 hours of the week.

Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth — in other words, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words — in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations. This requires an integrated character, a oneness, primarily with self but also with life.

Real self-respect comes from domination over self, from true independence.

Only when you have the self-awareness to examine your program — and the imagination and conscience to create a new, unique, principle-centered program to which you can say "yes" — only then will you have sufficient independent will power to say "no," with a genuine smile, to the unimportant.

My own maxim of personal effectiveness is this: Manage from the left (brain); lead from the right (brain).

Once you have a sense of mission, you have the essence of your own proactivity. You have the vision and the values that direct your life. You have the basic direction from which you set your long- and short-term goals. You have the power of a written constitution based on correct principles, against which every decision concerning the most effective use of your time, your talents and your energies can be effectively measured.

It is possible to be busy — very busy — without being very efficient.

Probably the most important deposit you can make into an Emotional Bank Account is just to listen, without judging or preaching or reading your own autobiography into what someone says. Just listen and seek to understand. Let him feel your concern for him, your acceptance of him as a person.

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.

As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others.

Ironically, you'll find that as you care less about what others think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves and their worlds, including their relationship with you. You'll no longer build your emotional life on other people's weaknesses. In addition, you'll find it easier and more desirable to change because there is something — some core deep within — that is essentially changeless.

I suggest that you shift the paradigm of your own involvement in this material from the role of learner to that of teacher. Take an inside-out approach, and read with the purpose in mind of sharing or discussing what you learn with someone else within forty-eight hours after you learn it. You will not only better remember what you read, but your perspective will be expanded, your understanding deepened, and your motivation to apply the material increased.

The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will infinitely impact our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are — or, as we are conditioned to see it.

When we take time to draw on the leadership center of our lives, what life is ultimately all about, it spreads like an umbrella over everything else. It renews us, it refreshes us, particularly if we recommit to it.

Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterik it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.

The more genuine the involvement, the more sincere and sustained the participation in analyzing and solving problems, the greater the release of everyone's creativity and of their commitment to what they create. This, I'm convinced, is the essence of power in the Japanese approach to business, which has changed the world marketplace.

How much negative energy is typically expended when people try to solve problems or make decisions in an interdependent reality? How much time is spent in confessing other people's sins, politicking, rivalry, interpersonal conflict, protecting one's backside, masterminding, and second guessing? It's like trying to drive down the road with one foot on the gas and the other foot on the brake!

Next time you catch yourself inappropriately using one of the autobiographical responses — probing, evaluating, advising, or interpreting — try to turn the situation into a [Emotional Bank Account] deposit by acknowledgment and apology. [For instance, "I'm sorry, I just realized that I'm not really trying to understand what you are telling me. Could we start again?" works wonders.]

When we really, deeply understand each other, we open the door to creative solutions and third alternatives. Our differences are no longer stumbling blocks to communication and progress; instead, they become the stepping stones to synergy.

If you want to interact effectively with me, to influence me — your spouse, your child, your neighbor, your boss, your coworker, your friend — you first need to understand me. And you can't do that with technique alone. If I sense you're using some technique, I sense duplicity, manipulation. I wonder why you're doing it, what your motives are. And I don't feel safe enough to open myself up to you.

Empathic listening gets inside another person's frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, your understand how they feel.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is a form of agreement, a form of judgment. And it is sometime the more appropriate emotion and response. But people often feed on sympathy. It makes them dependent. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it's that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.

Integrity means avoiding any communication that is deceptive, full of guile, or beneath the dignity of people. "A lie is any communication with intent to deceive." Whether we communicate with words or behavior, if we have integrity, our intent cannot be to deceive.

Our most constant relationships, like marriage, require our most constant deposits into the Emotional Bank Account. With continuing expectations, old deposits evaporate. If you suddenly run into an old high school friend you haven't seen for years, you can pick up right where you left off because the earlier deposits are still there. But your accounts with the people you interact with on a regular basis require more constant investment.

You cannot talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.