Brown Belt Project - 7 Habits Journal #2

[Marcus Cortez]

This is the second installment of my Brown Belt Project, where I will be discussing the second habit in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” namely, to “begin with the end in mind.” It focuses primarily on developing a principle based center, rather than leaning towards some of the problematic centers discussed in exercise four below. It then discusses developing my own guiding principles and integrating them into a personal mission statement, an ever-evolving code of personal ethics. The following exercises are given at the end of the chapter and incorporate the bulk of the content of the chapter.  

1. At the beginning of the chapter, I had an assignment to do a visualization exercise where I imagine watching my own funeral and there are four speakers: one from my family, a friend, a colleague, and someone from a community organization in which I participate. I was able to draw some clear ideas of what they might say.

People have described me as hard working and, at times, a good inspiration. They would likely talk about my humor and how I can bring a smile to their day or take some steam off of a stressful situation. They might also talk about how I can be aloof and a little self-absorbed, or joke about having to twist my arm to make some time for them. They might talk about my struggles with stuttering or breaking out of my shell. They may also talk about immense potential not yet actualized. But most of all, I hope they would talk about my return punch.

2. Take a few moments to write down my roles as I now see them. Roles can be critical to developing a personal mission statement, and seeing where I need to distribute my attention. Am I satisfied with that mirror image of my life?

I identified roles as a professional, student, musician, boyfriend, future father, son to Mom/Dad, friend, and colleague. In each of these areas I see room for growth, which I discuss in terms of detailed personal goals in the next exercise.

 

3. Set up time to completely separate myself from daily activities and to begin work on my personal mission statement. Below are a number of mission statements that came most immediately to mind. It is my mission to:

Explore and strive to understand the complex nature of physical universe and the natural processes that sustain it.

Align my desires with the betterment of humankind and the earth on which we live, and manifest these desires in action, pursuing them with eagerness, diligence and confidence. Dissolve my ego and egocentric behaviors.

Continue to develop skills to manage time and resources to strive towards my determined goals, face each new challenge proactively and with a conscious plan.

Proactively face my fears and fearful situations, focusing on my abilities rather than doubts and obstacles, pursue a strong and patient character in the face of intimidation and oppositions, to further ground myself in my core beliefs.

Understand my biases and pursue a mindset open to new insights, information, and perspectives, as well as to aid others in this pursuit.

Promote tolerance through outreach and education.  Promote honesty with myself and others in all matters.

Pursue peace and calm in my mind, heart, and body, as well as to help others to the same end. Set a strong example and provide encouragement towards my fundamental principles.

Develop understanding of my spiritual beliefs such that I can support with confidence and clarity.

5. Go through the different problematic centers discussed in the chapter - spouse centered, family centered, money centered, work centered, possession centered, pleasure centered, friend centered,  enemy centered, church centered, self-centered - and determine those I can identify with. Do they form a pattern for the behavior in my life? Am I comfortable with the implications of my analysis?

Work Centered:  not concerning my day-to-day “job” work, but concerning life-long pursuits like music and exploration.  When I do not manage this area properly, I am prone to put off friends and loved ones to focus tasks in this area. While focus can be beneficial, I am learning that it is best to also keep perspective of the needs of others, as well as my needs in other areas.  For me, work-centeredness manifests itself in an anxiety to accomplish as much as possible as soon as possible, and when I apply this kind of approach to long-term goals, the workload becomes indefinite and compounds itself into an overwhelming and infinitely expanding set of tasks. My goal in this area is to develop a clear set of goals and the means to accomplish them, from start to finish. This will allow me break the large tasks into smaller components that I work into a schedule and balance against other priorities, so that I can dictate when and where my time and energy are spent in this area, rather than hurling myself fervently into an undetermined and endless series of tasks.

Possession Centered: not concerning material possessions, but concerning fame, glory, social prominence etc.  This has been my primary motivation in life until recently. My desires to be recognized as a musician were focused on proving my superiority in musical creativity and performance. It has been a deep rooted desire to prove I am better than others, more socially valuable and more deserving of social privileges. I have recently realized two significant problems with this thinking: 1) everyone must fulfill my ego by fitting into this model and acknowledging my superiority, and 2) all of my actions must meet this standard and be deserving of everyone’s praise.  This has contributed to a perfectionist mindset that has made small errors into large monsters, because any errors would disprove my abilities and assumptions. This has caused great barriers to my creativity because I have been afraid to take risks and experiment with new ideas, since mistakes may serve as an attack to my ego and damage my sense of self worth. Moreover, I had been more concerned with proving my superiority than with contributing the betterment of humankind.

Pleasure Centered and Self Centered:  Many times I have been pleasure centered, making the majority of my decisions based on what will bring me the most pleasure. Any sense of security comes from the short term pleasure “high” and is, therefore, always fleeting. It cannot foster any long term sense of purpose or focus towards a higher goal and can easily lead to the opposite: stagnancy, boredom, and sadness. This center is related to my tendencies towards self-centeredness, as both have caused me to see the world in terms of what’s in it for me and how decisions, events, and circumstances affect me.  Not only has this perspective kept me from focusing on goals that are higher than my immediate wants, it has also caused me to emotionally isolate from people close to me and to the larger global community – If not managed properly, my self-centeredness can dissolve my concern for other people, the natural world, and other things I find most important in life today.

Enemy Centered: all of my concentration can be overtaken by my appetite to rectify the insults and antagonistic actions of people I consider my enemies. While I do not see this manifesting through actions against such people, my mind is easily consumed with verbal tirades and plots of revenge that would really “put them in their place.” Not only is this a significant waste of my brain power, I also find that in any situation where I would actually have the opportunity to unleash such verbal or physical revenge, the action never feels natural, and I end up feeling a bit ridiculous for wasting so much time on dreams of vengeance.

6. Start a collection of notes, quotes, and ideas I may want to use as resource material in writing my personal mission statement.

This response could go on forever, but here’s a recent one that I found  Rusty Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut, discussing a perspective of Earth from space, and I found it terrifically inspiring:

“You begin to recognize that your identity is with the whole thing…You look down and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross…hundreds of people are killing each other over some imaginary line that you are not even aware of, you can’t even see it. From where you are, the planet is a whole and it’s so beautiful and you wish you could take each individual by the hand and say, ‘Look at it from this perspective. Look at what is important.’”

7. Share the principles of Habit 2 with my family or work group and suggest that together we begin the process of developing a family or group mission statement.

As my own mission statement is quickly coming to completion, I will next be initiating this exercise soon.

This is the second installment of my Brown Belt Project, where I will be discussing the second habit in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” namely, to “begin with the end in mind.” It focuses primarily on developing a principle based center, rather than leaning towards some of the problematic centers discussed in exercise four below. It then discusses developing my own guiding principles and integrating them into a personal mission statement, an ever-evolving code of personal ethics. The following exercises are given at the end of the chapter and incorporate the bulk of the content of the chapter.  

1.       At the beginning of the chapter, I had an assignment to do a visualization exercise where I imagine watching my own funeral and there are four speakers: one from my family, a friend, a colleague, and someone from a community organization in which I participate. I was able to draw some clear ideas of what they might say.

 

People have described me as hard working and, at times, a good inspiration. They would likely talk about my humor and how I can bring a smile to their day or take some steam off of a stressful situation. They might also talk about how I can be aloof and a little self-absorbed, or joke about having to twist my arm to make some time for them. They might talk about my struggles with stuttering or breaking out of my shell. They may also talk about immense potential not yet actualized. But most of all, I hope they would talk about my return punch.

 

2.       Take a few moments to write down my roles as I now see them. Roles can be critical to developing a personal mission statement, and seeing where I need to distribute my attention. Am I satisfied with that mirror image of my life?

I identified roles as a professional, student, musician, boyfriend, future father, son to Mom/Dad, friend, and colleague. In each of these areas I see room for growth, which I discuss in terms of detailed personal goals in the next exercise.

 

3.       Set up time to completely separate myself from daily activities and to begin work on my personal mission statement. Below are a number of mission statements that came most immediately to mind. It is my mission to:

Explore and strive to understand the complex nature of physical universe and the natural processes that sustain it.

Align my desires with the betterment of humankind and the earth on which we live, and manifest these desires in action, pursuing them with eagerness, diligence and confidence. Dissolve my ego and egocentric behaviors.

Continue to develop skills to manage time and resources to strive towards my determined goals, face each new challenge proactively and with a conscious plan.

Proactively face my fears and fearful situations, focusing on my abilities rather than doubts and obstacles, pursue a strong and patient character in the face of intimidation and oppositions, to further ground myself in my core beliefs.

Understand my biases and pursue a mindset open to new insights, information, and perspectives, as well as to aid others in this pursuit.

Promote tolerance through outreach and education.  Promote honesty with myself and others in all matters.

Pursue peace and calm in my mind, heart, and body, as well as to help others to the same end. Set a strong example and provide encouragement towards my fundamental principles.

Develop understanding of my spiritual beliefs such that I can support with confidence and clarity.

4.       Go through the different problematic centers discussed in the chapter - spouse centered, family centered, money centered, work centered, possession centered, pleasure centered, friend centered,  enemy centered, church centered, self-centered - and determine those I can identify with. Do they form a pattern for the behavior in my life? Am I comfortable with the implications of my analysis?

 Work Centered:  not concerning my day-to-day “job” work, but concerning life-long pursuits like music and exploration.  When I do not manage this area properly, I am prone to put off friends and loved ones to focus tasks in this area. While focus can be beneficial, I am learning that it is best to also keep perspective of the needs of others, as well as my needs in other areas.  For me, work-centeredness manifests itself in an anxiety to accomplish as much as possible as soon as possible, and when I apply this kind of approach to long-term goals, the workload becomes indefinite and compounds itself into an overwhelming and infinitely expanding set of tasks. My goal in this area is to develop a clear set of goals and the means to accomplish them, from start to finish. This will allow me break the large tasks into smaller components that I work into a schedule and balance against other priorities, so that I can dictate when and where my time and energy are spent in this area, rather than hurling myself fervently into an undetermined and endless series of tasks.

Possession Centered: not concerning material possessions, but concerning fame, glory, social prominence etc.  This has been my primary motivation in life until recently. My desires to be recognized as a musician were focused on proving my superiority in musical creativity and performance. It has been a deep rooted desire to prove I am better than others, more socially valuable and more deserving of social privileges. I have recently realized two significant problems with this thinking: 1) everyone must fulfill my ego by fitting into this model and acknowledging my superiority, and 2) all of my actions must meet this standard and be deserving of everyone’s praise.  This has contributed to a perfectionist mindset that has made small errors into large monsters, because any errors would disprove my abilities and assumptions. This has caused great barriers to my creativity because I have been afraid to take risks and experiment with new ideas, since mistakes may serve as an attack to my ego and damage my sense of self worth. Moreover, I had been more concerned with proving my superiority than with contributing the betterment of humankind.

Pleasure Centered and Self Centered:  Many times I have been pleasure centered, making the majority of my decisions based on what will bring me the most pleasure. Any sense of security comes from the short term pleasure “high” and is, therefore, always fleeting. It cannot foster any long term sense of purpose or focus towards a higher goal and can easily lead to the opposite: stagnancy, boredom, and sadness. This center is related to my tendencies towards self-centeredness, as both have caused me to see the world in terms of what’s in it for me and how decisions, events, and circumstances affect me.  Not only has this perspective kept me from focusing on goals that are higher than my immediate wants, it has also caused me to emotionally isolate from people close to me and to the larger global community – If not managed properly, my self-centeredness can dissolve my concern for other people, the natural world, and other things I find most important in life today.

Enemy Centered: all of my concentration can be overtaken by my appetite to rectify the insults and antagonistic actions of people I consider my enemies. While I do not see this manifesting through actions against such people, my mind is easily consumed with verbal tirades and plots of revenge that would really “put them in their place.” Not only is this a significant waste of my brain power, I also find that in any situation where I would actually have the opportunity to unleash such verbal or physical revenge, the action never feels natural, and I end up feeling a bit ridiculous for wasting so much time on dreams of vengeance.

5.       Start a collection of notes, quotes, and ideas I may want to use as resource material in writing my personal mission statement.

This response could go on forever, but here’s a recent one that I found  Rusty Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut, discussing a perspective of Earth from space, and I found it terrifically inspiring:

You begin to recognize that your identity is with the whole thing…You look down and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross…hundreds of people are killing each other over some imaginary line that you are not even aware of, you can’t even see it. From where you are, the planet is a whole and it’s so beautiful and you wish you could take each individual by the hand and say, “Look at it from this perspective. Look at what is important.”

6.       Identify a project I will be facing in the near future and apply the principle of mental creation. Write down the results I desire and what steps will lead to those results.

Goal:  Initiate career in field science research of life in extreme environments.

Goals Completed: Identify research centers, programs, and scientist currently working in this field. Identify the educational background of scientist in this field: which concentrations for their Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees and where they have studied. Identify local community college and online study opportunities to determine the most economic  and streamlined means to obtain associates degree; Refresh on Algebra, Geometry, and Pre-Calculus; Enroll in community college.

Immediate goals: Test for math competency, enroll in Pre-Calculus or Calculus for the Summer 2013 semester; Enroll as full time student for the Fall 2013 semester; Determine half-time work opportunities and timeline to initiate.

 

Upcoming Goals: Find Information about effectively managing education, work, and family, develop and implement plan accordingly; Declare major: Geology vs. Microbiology; Determine transfer university for upper-division courses; Determine research, internship, and networking opportunities, especially in connection with desired research centers/programs and identified scientists.

 

Long term goals: Determine master’s degree program and university. Find information and/or contact working scientist to understand how scientist conducting field research balance travel, research, and family life. Initiate career in field exploration

 

7.       Share the principles of Habit 2 with my family or work group and suggest that together we begin the process of developing a family or group mission statement.

As my own mission statement is quickly coming to completion, I will next be initiating this exercise soon.