Covey's Right after all

by phil on Tuesday Aug 12, 2003 12:03 PM
endorsement, principles

Bah, it seems like Stephen Covey's right after all. His first chapter in 7 Habits of Highly Effective people is about making your expectations a little ahead of your capacity. This is similar to my earlier posts regarding how wise-men keep the recurring concept that wisdom is knowing how and when to control your desires. His second chapter, I think, is having a "principle-centered" life... I was always against this, primarily because his method for discovering your principles involved imagining what you wanted your close-ones to think of you when you died. Now, this may relate to Buber's concept that man is only a man inasmuch as he serves his community, so he could still be right on that one... but I still hold down the individualists' attitude. Either way though, Covey has a point about having a principle-centered life, which can be translated into an endorsement-centered life, or an authentic life. Everything you do should revolve around the things that you truly believe in. This is not so obvious because we could do things out of desparation even though we don't endores the acts of desparation. Finding out your principles is not easy, and I won't suggest Covey's method, but you can find them eventually.