The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 书评

一、内容简介

本书是作者Stephen R.Covey 写的一本关于让个人、家庭、团体等等生活更美好的一本书。他将本书分为三大部分，第一部分为我们介绍了一些有关Private Victory的3个原则，Principle of Personal Vision, Principle of Personal Leadership, and Principle of Personal Management. 第二部分介绍了基于Public Victory的3个原则，Principle of Interpersonal Leadership, Principles of Empathetic Communication, and Principles of Creative Cooperation.第三部分为我们介绍了Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal包含的4个方面Renewal——Physical, Spiritual, Mental, Social/Emotional——来总领，平衡和促进前面说的6个习惯。

在第一部分的Private Victory部分，作者先给我们抛出我们人类的独有self-awareness，It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. 正是由于有了这个天赋，我们人类has dominion over all things in the world and can make significant advances from generation to generation. 当我们成为一个proactive人的时候，我们应该关注Circle of Influence，而不是关注Circle of Concern中的那些我们不能改变也无能为力的事情。

但是如果没有第一个习惯的基础，就像作者说的那样：In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances outside our Circle of Influence to shape much of our lives by default. We reactively live the scripts handed to us by family, associates, other people's agendas, the pressures of circumstance——scripts from our earlier years, from our training, our conditioning.

所以说：The unique human capacities of self-awareness, imagination, and conscience enable us to examine first creations and make it possible for us to take charge of our own first creation, to write our own scripts.

有了第一个习惯的支持，我们就开始了第二个习惯——create our own scripts.需要我们创造两个东西：leadership and management. leadership是方向层面，management是方法层面。就像作者说的那样：Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? Management is a bottom-line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things?

leadership如此的重要，但是作者最后说：And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.所以，我们可以写一个personal mission statement 或者叫personal constitution. 写出这个是基于our Circle of Influence的，而我们的影响圈核心的核心各不相同，但它们都是我们的security, guidance, wisdom, and power的源泉。作者也举了几个典型的centers例子：Spose Centeredness, Family Centeredness, Money Centeredness, Work Centeredness, Possession Centeredness, Pleasure Centeredness, Friend/Enemy Centeredness, Church Centeredness, Self-Centeredness.这么多类型，作者分析它们都是易变的，也不足为我们提供生活上的四个方面， 作者得出只有A Principle Center，我们才能更好，更健康的生活。

第三个习惯也是基于第二个习惯自然而然展开的，当我们有了自己要关注的center内核，自然且容易地会将时间和精力集中到重要的事情上面。就像作者说的那样：As a longtime student of this fascinating field, I am personally persuaded that the essence of the best thinking in the area of time management can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities. 而且作者给我们提供了一个非常强大的时间管理工具——The Time Management Matrix，它包括Urgent和Important两个维度，我们尽量将所有事情都化解到第二个象限里，即Not urgent but Important。

在第二部分的Public Victory部分中，作者首先给我们介绍了一个Emotional Account，然后详细举例给我们指出可以从6处来deposit，bulid the Emotional Bank，分别是：

① Understanding the Individual
② Attending to the Little Things
③ Keeping Commitments
④ Clarifying Expectations
⑤ Showing Personal Integrity
⑥ Apologizing Sincerely When You Make a Withdrawal

当我们思考双赢的时候，我们其实就是在找到利益最大化。

第5个原则（Principles of Empathic Communication）中作者提出Empathic Listening，要做到这些，用一句话概况就是：Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

二、我的感触

1.做一个Proactive Person.

Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon. As well as enabling us to choose our response to particular circumstances, this empowers us to create circumstances.
我们人类之所以区别于动物，就是因为我们有拥有强大的天赋，self-awareness, imagination, conscience, independent will.

我们有这么多的天赋，可是，我们大多数人都没有利用这些天赋，所以我们都和动物生活的没什么两样。大多数人都生活在被有意识设计的规则下无意识的生活 。我一用脑，就发现我的生活有多么的糟糕。

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

我们要用我们的这些天赋，然后提升我们的生活。承担起自己的责任，活给自己看看。当我们没有了我们的责任，我们就把自己的权利交给了别人，然后变成了一个没有主见的人。如果没有主见，我们在生活中，在工作中永远处于一个可有可无的地位，甚至当别人生气的时候，很有可能自己就被他们潜意识地当成了出气筒。

怎样才能承担起自己的责任呢？

首先，改变我们的态度。是我们选择这样了，而不是环境让我们成为这样。很多人对决定论深信不疑，例如Genetic Determinism, Psychic Determinism, Environmental Determinism.但是，这些决定论是我们无法改变的，这些是所有动物都被决定的，我们人类可以用我们的天赋去改变那些我们能决定的东西。thinking the initiative, act or be acted upon, listening to our language.

然后，给自己画圈。我们现在的时间和精力都关注在哪些事情上？通过给自己画圈——关注圈（circle of concern)，然后着重关注圈里的我们能改变的事情——影响圈（circle of influence)。如果我们把精力用在影响圈的外部，那么除了耗费精力，我们什么都做不了，例如经常关注战争局势，核战争，国家统一，国家有几艘航空母舰等等这些我们改变不了的事情，除了消耗我们的精力，而且还缩减了我们的影响圈。

最后，把我们影响圈里的问题划分为三类，Direct control problem, No direct control problem and No control problem。

接着依次采取解决的办法。下面是各自解决的办法。

Direct control problems are solved by working on our habits. They are obviously within our Circle of Influence. These are the "Private Victories" of Habits 1, 2, and 3.

Indirect control problems are solved by changing our methods of influence. These are the "Public Victories" of Habits 4, 5, and 6. I have personally identified over 30 separate methods of human influence -- as separate as empathy is from confrontation, as separate as example is from persuasion.

No control problems involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom on our face to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don't like them. In this way, we do not empower these problems to control us.

2.先立志，后有朋友，次序不能颠倒。

我们应该先想想自己未来想要成为什么样的人，从事什么样的职业，然后在路上就能遇到志同道合的人。为什么有些人走着走着就散了，那是因为道不同了，这里的“道”，一语相关，既包括具体的道路，也引申为抽象的志同道合的道。

曾今一直不能释怀，自己把别人当成了好朋友，可是自己在他人心中并不是像自己想的那么重要。是的呀，我才发现，自己一直没有方向，当然别人是有方向的，人家走远了我还在原地踏步，这也导致了我们渐行渐远了。

3. Empathic Listening

确实，我们为什么不能和别人走心地交流，然后成为好朋友，问题就出现在这里了，作者是这么说的：

“Seek first to understand” involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.
“Oh, I know exactly how you feel!”
“I went through the very same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.”
They’re constantly projecting their own home movies onto other people’s behavior. They prescribe their own glasses for everyone with whom they interact.
If they have a problem with someone—a son, a daughter, a spouse, an employee—their attitude is, “That person just doesn’t understand.”

三、本书特色

1. 逻辑相当连贯，读起来一气呵成，酣畅淋漓。

2. 书中举了大量的例子，所以很容易理解。

3. 如果用“道”和“术”来划分书籍，本书可以上升为“道”。

四、我的看法

书名完全糟蹋了书的内容，应该把Habits换成Principles更好。

这本书几乎适合所有人看，不管年龄多大都适合，上到公司CEO，下到高中大学生，内容涵盖了个人，朋友，家人，公司等等亲情友情爱情。

如果你正在迷茫，前3个原则绝对会给你启发，如果你人际关系一直处理不好，第二部分的3个原则也绝对是一个不错的实践方向。

第7个原则，个人感觉一般般，但是也给了我启发，作者列出了4个：Physical，Spiritual，Mental，Emotional，我发现，可以进行划分，前两个为一组，后两个为一组，这样感觉更好，一个身体和精神，智商和情商，但是Mental也有精神上的意思，我们一般说身心健康，英语就是Physical and Mental health. 毕竟英语和汉语不能一一对应，不过我们知道其中的精髓就行了。