Navigating College With the 7 Habits. Sean Covey

      Where do your habits come from? From your paradigms. Too often people try to change their habits without changing their paradigms. What are the most popular New Year’s resolutions? They are, first, lose weight; second, pay off debts; and third, quit smoking. They are also the resolutions that get broken the most. Why? Because people try to change their habits rather than the paradigms that drive their habits. They try dieting and they fail because the paradigm is “starve yourself.” Maybe they need to adopt a new paradigm, like “I feel better when I exercise.”

      In any case, if you want to make big, quantum improvements in your effectiveness, you need to work on changing your paradigms. Just as how you See things impacts what you Do, what you Do ultimately impacts what you Get.

      Let me illustrate using a well-known fable, Aesop’s tale of The Goose and the Golden Egg. A poor farmer wakes up one day to find that his goose has miraculously laid an egg of pure gold. Delighted, he takes great care of the prized bird, ensuring its safety and good health. In turn, day after day the goose delivers a single golden egg, which makes the farmer rich. One day, however, in a moment of greed, the farmer kills the goose in an effort to get all of the golden eggs at once. To his dismay, he finds no gold inside and the bird is now dead. The farmer did not live happily ever after.

      So, what happened here? The farmer’s flawed paradigm (WHAT HE SAW) was that all the gold was inside the bird. So, he killed (WHAT HE DID) the goose to obtain the riches faster. In the end, however, the results (WHAT HE GOT) proved disastrous.

      Now, suppose the farmer had a better paradigm and believed that this bird of his should not be forced to produce more than one golden egg per day. With that in mind, the farmer would have cared for and protected the goose at all costs and been very happy cashing in one golden egg per day. And he and his wife would have lived happily ever after.

      Sometimes, we’re like the farmer and we kill the goose, so to speak. For instance, we may work too hard in school—taking no time for rest, fun, or relationships—and end up burning out. Or, we play so hard that we have no time for schoolwork and end up flunking out. Effectiveness, by contrast, means getting what you want in such a way that you keep getting what you want over time. That’s what it means to be an effective college student.

      Let’s take a few minutes to examine some of your paradigms about college and life:

      Suppose your paradigm is that you hate math. What will you do? You’ll skip math class and avoid math homework. What results will you get? A failing grade, and you’ll waste a lot of money and time. And you might not graduate.

      Here’s another example. Suppose you see yourself as not smart enough to succeed in college or too old or too young, too poor, or too shy. What will you do? You’ll likely quit at the first big challenge, and the results you get are obvious—no college education, no diploma, and a very limited future.

      So, here’s how to overcome those limiting paradigms: Put principles at the center of your life. What do I mean by principles? Principles are natural laws that always work. Let me illustrate what I mean:

      Years ago, there was a children’s book called The Chance World. Everything in the story occurs by chance. Sometimes the sun rises in the morning, sometimes it doesn’t. Water running over the edge of a cliff might fall down or rise up. An apple seed might produce an apple or maybe a rose. Who knows? Such is life in a “chance world.” Fortunately, even though life isn’t predictable, we do not live in a “chance world.” There are some things we can depend on—they’re called principles, or natural laws. Here is one example: Hard work gets you closer to finishing a job than no work at all. Here’s another one: Staying up late every night makes you tired. Another: A dollar saved will be there if you need it; a dollar spent will not be there. One more for good measure: If you plant seeds in the spring and take care of the plants, you’ll likely have some nice vegetables in the fall. If you don’t do those things, you won’t have the veggies.

      Here’s an excellent principle: If you don’t keep trying—even though you struggle—you will fail. It’s that simple.

      Principles are timeless: they were true yesterday, they’re true today, and they’ll be true tomorrow. Principles are true everywhere: they apply whether you are in Minnesota, Madagascar, or Mongolia. Principles are also self-evident: they’re true whether we like it or not.

      The nice thing about principles is that you can trust them. They will NEVER let you down. And you can let them work for you or against you. There are principles at work in your personal life at all times, principles such as working, saving, and getting enough rest. If you put principles at the center of your life, you will be far more likely to get the life you want.

      Not all of us put principles at the center of our lives. If you center your life on a friend, that friend could take over your life or let you down. If you center your life on money, you could lose it. If you center your life on grades, your self-confidence might be shot when you don’t get the grades you want. So, what if you center your life on partying, alcohol, gaming, sports, or social media? What’s the likely outcome? You get the idea.

      So, what’s your center? When you center your life on principles, you become a highly effective college student. Principle-centered people make decisions based on principles. They don’t make decisions based on what their boyfriend likes or what will make them the most money. It’s called principle-centered leadership.

      Take the principle of honesty. If you’re principle-centered, you tell the truth. You don’t cheat on a test even if it means a better grade. You don’t make up a phony excuse if you have a late paper. You don’t steal stuff from your roommate. As a result, you never get in trouble for being dishonest and you feel good about yourself.

      So, what are the timeless, universal principles that make people most effective? My father, Dr. Stephen Covey, wanted to know. He researched 150 years of success literature. It took him many years, but he finally boiled down certain key principles into The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

      In the next few chapters, I’ll introduce each of the 7 Habits. I’ll show you how each habit is centered on principles that will really work for you and your college life. If you adopt these 7 Habits you won’t necessarily always succeed at everything you do, but you’ll be a lot more likely to succeed. If you don’t adopt these habits, it’s a pretty sure thing that you’ll fall short of your goals and never arrive where you could have.

      So, right now, think of the paradigms you have that are keeping you from succeeding. Maybe you see yourself as unfriendly, or maybe you see yourself as “not a morning person” and so you simply can’t get up on time. Just try the opposite paradigm. Look in the mirror and try seeing yourself as friendly or as a morning person. Then do something in line with that paradigm. Say hi to a lot of people. Get up early for a week. See for yourself the amazing results you can get just from changing your paradigms.