Almost everyone wants to get ahead in life, and I say almost everyone because I take it for granted that a certain percentage of the population have chosen, through their actions, not to make progress and to keep on complaining, with everything that entails. But for everyone else, how do you get ahead in life?
Many of the people who want to make progress envy or admire others who are pursuing success or who have already reached a certain stable level of it. So we look at them and ask what we could do to achieve what they have achieved.
What we basically want from this is a quick piece of advice we can apply to our own lives to turn them completely around. That is not usually how it works, because there is no magic formula for success. For that, we need to develop certain habits and routines.
And it is these habits that Stephen Covey captured perfectly in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a book I strongly recommend, because it will help you (if you do your part) to get ahead in life.
The 7 habits for getting ahead in life
Your life doesn’t just happen
According to Stephen Covey, every moment and every situation in your life gives you an opportunity to make progress. Every choice you make gives you the chance to do things differently if those choices don’t bring you the result you wanted. And by doing things differently, we can produce a more positive result. Every day we must make the decisions that best fit the results we want to achieve. This is what Stephen Covey called…
1. Be proactive
Being proactive means that you take responsibility for your life and don’t blame others for the things that don’t happen in it. In other words, as we have said countless times, you lead the life you have chosen to lead.
Proactive people are responsible for their behaviour and their choices, so they tend to be much less affected by the environment around them. Put another way, they are aware that the environment around them is their own choice.
See also: The surprising truth about happiness
To be truly proactive in life, we can start by using proactive language with ourselves.
Reactive people say, “I have to do this…”, while a proactive person tells themselves, “I choose to do this…”
Proactive people focus their energy on the things they can control, and they make a point of doing something with those “things” to improve their lives and make progress. Everyone else (reactive people) tends to put more energy into things they cannot control, and that is where the negative results in their lives come from. Being aware of where you spend your energy is essential to being proactive and effective.
2. Begin with the end in mind
To get ahead in life, we first need a goal to reach, a place we want to get to. We need to imagine how we want to see ourselves some time from now; then, with every step we climb and every choice we make, we at least know we are getting ever faster towards what we want to achieve.
All your efforts should be directed towards that vision of the future. For Covey, everything begins with two steps:
- First there is a mental creation (what we want to achieve)
- and then there is physical action (the work to achieve it)
If we know where we are going, we are more likely to get there than if we don’t know where we want to go.
See also: Your future is today: 8 ideas and reflections from the book
3. Put first things first
You have to learn to say NO, and you have to learn to say YES.
YES to focusing on the highest priorities, on the hardest things. Because success, for the most part, comes from doing the things that many people are not willing to do.
Today it is easier to go out partying, and it is more entertaining to spend hours on end watching television, but success does not lie in those easy things. So say NO to instant gratification, and choose to say YES to the difficult things that will bring us closer to achieving something important a few years from now.
“Do what nobody wants to do today so you can live the life everyone dreams of tomorrow.”
Identify your purpose, values, roles and priorities. Now focus on first things, the priorities: manage your time effectively and be more productive.
4. Think win-win
Covey says that life is an arena for cooperation, not a zero-sum game; in other words, for you to win, you don’t have to make someone else lose (although in business that is sometimes the case). Focus your mind on win-win, looking for ways to create mutual benefit with other people.
People with a win-win mindset tend to be people of integrity and maturity, with a proactive abundance mentality. If you look for ways to make your success also the success of others, you will avoid making many enemies, and other people will be considerate towards you.
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
First you must learn to listen, to pay more attention, to be more empathetic and to understand others better. That way you build trust with others, and the result is usually that they find it easier to understand you.
Remember that knowing how to listen is, in itself, a way of influencing others.
6. Synergize
With synergy we can make 1 + 1 add up to 3. Creating synergies, whether in our personal lives or in business, helps us discover more, cover more ground, gain new knowledge, get better results and so on… all with the same effort.
Creating good synergies is one of the best ways to achieve great things in life and in business.
7. Sharpen the saw
To be effective, we must continually renew these areas of our lives: physical, social, emotional, mental and spiritual.
See also: The 6 areas you must master to control your destiny
Covey says that without renewal and constant learning, we grow weak. So one of the healthiest habits is to take the time we need to renew ourselves.
It is called sharpening the saw because, as anyone who owns a saw knows, it is not all about using it to get the job done. After a certain amount of use, if we want to keep getting the result we are after, we have to spend some time sharpening it; otherwise we might put in all the effort, but the saw would not cut well enough. The same happens to people: however good you were five years ago, or however much you learned at university, if you have not renewed yourself, today you would hardly cut. In other words, you are unlikely to be as effective without that renewal.
See also: 16 simple habits that make you look more professional
Every day gives you an excellent opportunity for renewal, but you won’t see that daily opportunity if you lack the desire, the knowledge and the skill.
So if you are not satisfied with your life or you lack enthusiasm, start by applying these habits and you will see your life improve.
This article is only a brief extract from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which contains a great deal more of value.
Recommended: 8 ways to influence people, drawn from the book Influence
Featured image: Neshan H. Naltchayan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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