Today I was giving my daughter a bath, while my littler one napped, and I was looking for a child-rearing book in my bathroom library, when I came across Steven Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I put this down when I was still pregnant with my 15 month old. I didn’t buy it TOO long before that, maybe a year, but it’s not an easy book to read casually – as most of my reading is part hardcore/mostly casual with 2 kids under 4. As I flipped through it, I realized I was not far into the 2nd habit, so I thought I’d review exactly what on earth the FIRST habit was:
BE PROACTIVE.
I was coming down with a serious case of pink eye, the phone was ringing and Amelia was acting up in the tub, so I was still a little bubble-headed about the habit. Amelia settled down and I scanned parts I had previously read and I came to this conclusion:
I GOT the first habit!
I do recall NOT having that habit when I first read the book, and folding down the applied part of the book for “later”, then moving on to habit two. I can even REMEMBER feeling uncomfortable about doing that, because who the heck was I cheating while reading a SELF HELP BOOK???
Now I’m NOT going to go out and say I mastered this skill, but so much of what it said to do I realized I already DID. None of this happened casually or without hard work on my part, but NONE of this occured because of what I read in the book.
This is the amazing thing: In simply trying to be Christ-like, trying to be Godly, I accomplished Habit 1 (more or less). I need some work, say in the area of child-rearing and marketing my business, but I am far more proactive in my life than reactive and ALL of it is thanks to applying God’s will in my life. Wow.
So for 2007 – Habit 2??