Wednesday, October 1, 2008

7 Habits: Question #4

Can we pretend we’re in a group therapy circle for a second? What does it take to get us to retain and implement good advice? Who wants to share their success story from doing anything that they learned in this book? Does anybody have any other thoughts/comments on the book?

3 comments:

cassidy said...

I would love to hear other people's answers on this, because I am already forgetting all of the good ideas I read about and wanted to implement in my life.

I do have one success story though:
Now that we have moved and don't know a lot of people I have felt somewhat lonely and even more shy than I usually am. I have been feeling really sorry for myself, but while reading the "be proactive" chapter I decided I would be proactive and call a girl I met at church to see if she and her husband wanted to get together. Since then we have met some other couples and have done fun things together and feel like we have friends here.

Now, making a simple phone call might not sound all that proactive to anyone else, but for someone with a mild social phobia, that was a big accomplishment for me. It helped me realize that when I'm feeling sorry for myself there is usually something I can personally do to change the situation if I just think about my options and act. Was that cheesy?

Sam said...

Bravo Cassidy. You just made me feel a lot better about choosing this book. Yes, it was a little cheesy, but so was the book, so you're ok.

Glad you guys are making friends in Hawaii, but don't make too many so you're still excited for us to come crash your apartment.

I don't have any specific success stories yet. In fact, I'll be honest, I still have a some more reading to do...the habits are developing slowly.

Marci said...

For me to implement any sort of change I have to write it down. (Although, dusting off my goals from January 2008 shows that doesn't even ensure success.)

Through my work, I'm constantly helping people try to make positive changes in their life through diet and exercise. And my experience both personally and professionally is start small and really really specific. I often find that in life, I get overwhelmed with all of these things I need to do better and find that I don't really make much progress. But if I can just choose one or two really specific things, I can make a little headway.

So when I finish the book, I'll try to pick one thing that really stuck out and try to work on that. I haven't decided what that will be yet....