Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life.
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives, and creativity.
Category Archives: Stephen Covey
Maturity.
Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration.
If I’m high on courage and low on consideration, how will I think? Win-lose. I’ll be strong and ego bound. I’ll have the courage of my convictions, but I won’t be very considerate of yours.
To compensate for my lack of internal maturity and emotional strength, I might borrow strength from my position and power, or from my credentials, my seniority, my affiliation.
If I’m high on consideration and low on courage, I’ll think lose-win. I’ll be so considerate of your convictions and desires that I won’t have the courage to express and actualize my own.
High courage and consideration are both essential to win-win. It is the balance that is the mark of real maturity. If I have it, I can listen, I can empathically understand, but I can also courageously confront.
If you are Principle Centered…
SECURITY
Your security is based on correct principles that do not change, regardless of external conditions or circumstances.
You know that true principles can repeatedly be validated in your own life, through your own experiences.
As a measurement of self-improvement, correct principles function with exactness, consistency, beauty and strength.
Correct principles help you understand your own development, endowing you with the confidence to learn more, thereby increasing your knowledge and understanding. Your source of security provides you with an immovable, unchanging, unfailing core enabling you to see change as an exciting adventure and opportunity to make significant contributions.
GUIDANCE
You are guided by a compass which enables you to see where you want to go and how you will get there.
You use accurate data which makes your decisions both implementable and meaningful.
You stand apart from life’s situations, and circumstances and look at the balanced whole. Your decisions and actions reflect both short and long-term considerations and implications.
In every situation, you consciously, proactively determine the best alternative, basing decisions on conscience educated by principles.
WISDOM
Your judgment encompasses a broad spectrum of long-term consequences and reflects a wise balance and quiet assurance.
You see things differently and thus you think and act differently from the largely reactive world.
You view the world through a fundamental paradigm for effective, provident living.
You see the world in terms of what you can do for the world and its people.
You adopt a proactive lifestyle, seeking to serve and build others.
You interpret all of life’s experiences in terms of opportunities for learning and contribution.
POWER
Your power is limited only by your understanding and observance of natural law and correct
principles and by the natural consequences of the principles themselves. You become a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, largely unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, or actions of others. Your ability to act reaches far beyond your own resources and encourages highly developed levels of interdependency. Your decisions and actions are not driven by your current financial or circumstantial limitations. You experience an interdependent freedom.
Principles !!
Principles don’t react to anything. They won’t divorce us or run away with our best friend. They aren’t out to get us. They can’t pave our way with shortcuts and quick fixes. They don’t depend on the behavior of others, the environment, or the current fad for their validity. Principles don’t die. They aren’t here one day and gone the next. They can’t be destroyed by fire, earthquake, or theft.
Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life.
What is at the center of your life?
- Spouse
- Family
- Money
- Work
- Possession
- Pleasure
- Friend
- Enemy
- Temple/Church/Mosque
- Self-Centered
The ideal, of course, is to create one clear center from which you consistently derive a high degree of security, guidance, wisdom, and power, empowering your proactivity and giving congruency and harmony to every part of your life.
Effectiveness
It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy — very busy — without being very effective.
jeet4uall 