Week 7: Moving Forward with a Driving Passion

Reflect upon the things that you are learning and experiencing so far in this course. What are you looking forward to learning and experiencing? What did you learn from the readings and videos this week? 

This week be sure to also share which of the 7 habits has the most meaning for you and why the 7 habits will help you fill your life with passion and purpose as you seek to achieve both a private and public victory.

When considering the seven habits of highly effective people that Bro. Covey identified, number six, or Create Synergy, means the most to me. To create synergy is the creation of some entity that is bigger than the sum total of the parts. At first blush, it doesn't make sense, but in purpose and practice, it is very real. This habit resonated with me because I know the feeling. I know the feeling of the energy that flows when synergy is created. I've been part of this before. I've helped create it within a group working with a single purpose inside each of us, but I wasn't necessarily the one driving it. Habit number six is intriguing, exciting, and big. Habit number six reminds me that I am (we are) heir to the Creator.

I know the Church creates synergy with the welfare program. It's one reason to feel so good and confident in being obedient in paying a fast offering or contributing to the humanitarian fund. I put X amount of dollars into the pot each month. If I were to take that same amount of money and go out and try to do some good with it, the results would be meager at best. However, when the Church pools all the fast offerings & donations together, it can feed, clothe, educate, rescue, immunize, and provide clean drinking water to the poorest and neediest communities or people on earth. The Church can mobilize beautifully, and it is because each contribution is made larger by being part of the whole. I can only hope and pray that my endeavors can be magnified and made part of something bigger and lovelier than I could ever produce on my own. 

Covey's Seven Habits will help fill my life with passion and purpose as I seek to achieve both a private and public victory because I am naturally a scatter brain these days. By identifying what it takes to be highly effective, I can "fall in line." Once I really nail, or make a true habit of being proactive and beginning all my endeavors with the end in mind, and putting things in proper priority, I can consider that a lovely private victory. If I choose to view life and each opportunity in a way that all parties can benefit (win/win), then I put myself in a humble position. In a place of humility and empathetic listening, I am ready and able to understand. When I understand, I am able to teach and be understood. These two habits, "win/win" and "first seek to understand, then seek to be understood" are all about other people. When I can view others as the Lord would have me do, then I am capable of habit number six, "create synergy." I am highly effective with others when working with respect, empathy, and purpose. The seventh habit "sharpen the saw" reminds me that as life rolls on, so do my needs and the needs of others. It's important to regroup, re-energize, and do whatever is necessary to take care of myself so that I can have the power to be effective always.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was quoted this week...

That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

Habits are funny like that. At first they're hard, but after a while, they become second nature.

In the Passion vs. Money short, Guy Kawasaki advised learners to broaden their horizons, to seek learning beyond their borders, and to spend as much time learning in life as possible. I agree! However, that doesn't necessarily mean spend an excessive amount of time enrolled in college. Learning happens outside the classroom too, dare I say even more for some. It's also important that my goals should make the world better in some way, and that whatever I do, may it be about my passion and not all about the money.