unique contribution capacity. 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. “Wrong” and “right” will have little to do with being found out.
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.
As you open yourself to the next three habits—the habits of Public Victory—you will discover and unleash both the desire and the resources to heal and rebuild important relationships that have deteriorated, or even broken. Good relationships will improve—become deeper, more solid, more creative, and more adventuresome.
The seventh habit, if deeply internalized, will renew the first six and will make you truly independent and capable of effective interdependence. Through it, you can charge your own batteries.
Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of effectiveness, happiness, and trust-based relationships.
With genuine caring, I encourage you to open the gate of change and growth as you study these habits. Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.
It’s obviously not a quick fix. But I assure you, you will feel benefits and see immediate payoffs that will be encouraging.
Be Proactive
PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL VISION
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
As you read this book, try to stand apart from yourself. Try to project your consciousness upward into a corner of the room and see yourself, in your mind’s eye, reading. Can you look at yourself almost as though you were someone else?
Now try something else. Think about the mood you are now in. Can you identify it? What are you feeling? How would you describe your present mental state?
Now think for a minute about how your mind is working. Is it quick and alert? Do you sense that you are torn between doing this mental exercise and evaluating the point to be made out of it?
Your ability to do what you just did is uniquely human. Animals do not possess this ability. We call it “self-awareness” or the ability to think about your very thought process. This is the reason why man has dominion over all things in the world and why he can make significant advances from generation to generation.
This is why we can evaluate and learn from others’ experiences as well as our own. This is also why we can make and break our habits.
We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world. Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we “see” ourselves—our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitudes and behaviors, but also how we see other people. It becomes our map of the basic nature of mankind.
In fact, until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective.
This significantly limits our personal potential and our ability to relate to others as well. But because of the unique human capacity of self-awareness, we can examine our paradigms to determine whether they are reality- or principle-based or if they are a function of conditioning and conditions.
THE SOCIAL MIRROR
If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror—from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us—our view of ourselves is like the reflection in the crazy mirror room at the carnival.
“You’re never on time.”
“Why can’t you ever keep things in order?”
“You must be an artist!”
“You eat like a horse!”
“I can’t believe you won!”
“This is so simple. Why can’t you understand?”
These visions are disjointed and out of proportion. They are often more projections than reflections, projecting the concerns and character weaknesses of people giving the input rather than accurately reflecting what we are.
The reflection of the current social paradigm tells us we are largely determined by conditioning and conditions. While we have acknowledged the tremendous power of conditioning in our lives, to say that we are determined by it, that we have no control over that influence, creates quite a different map.
There are actually three social maps—three theories of determinism widely accepted, independently or in combination, to explain the nature of man. Genetic determinism basically says your grandparents did it to you. That’s why you have such a temper. Your grandparents had short tempers and it’s in your DNA. It just goes through the generations and you inherited it. In addition, you’re Irish, and that’s the nature of Irish people.
Psychic determinism basically says your parents did it to you. Your upbringing, your childhood experience essentially laid out your personal tendencies and your character structure. That’s why you’re afraid to be in front of a group. It’s the way your parents brought you up. You feel terribly guilty if you make a mistake because you “remember” deep inside the emotional scripting when you were very vulnerable and tender and dependent. You “remember” the emotional punishment, the rejection, the comparison with somebody else when you didn’t perform as well as expected.
Environmental determinism basically says your boss is doing it to you—or your spouse, or that bratty teenager, or your economic situation, or national policies. Someone or something in your environment is responsible for your situation.
Each of these maps is based on the stimulus/response theory we most often think of in connection with Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. The basic idea is that we are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus.
How accurately and functionally do these deterministic maps describe the territory? How clearly do these mirrors reflect the true nature of man? Do they become self-fulfilling prophecies? Are they based on principles we can validate within ourselves?
BETWEEN STIMULUS AND RESPONSE
In answer to those questions, let me share with you the catalytic story of Victor Frankl.
Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and