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particularly if we recommit to it.
This is why I believe a personal mission statement is so important. If we have a deep
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understanding of our center and our purpose, we can review and recommit to it frequently. In our
daily spiritual renewal, we can visualize and "live out" the events of the day in harmony with those
values.
Religious leader David O. McKay taught, "The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the
silent chambers of the soul." If you win the battles there, if you settle the issues that inwardly conflict,
you feel a sense of peace, a sense of knowing what you're about. And you'll find that the Public
Victories -- where you tend to think cooperatively, to promote the welfare and good of other people,
and to be genuinely happy for other people's successes -- will follow naturally.
The Mental Dimension
Most of our mental development and study discipline comes through formal education. But as
soon as we leave the external discipline of school, many of us let our minds atrophy. We don't do any
more serious reading, we don't explore new subjects in any real depth outside our action fields, we
don't think analytically, we don't write -- at least not critically or in a way that tests our ability to
express ourselves in distilled, clear, and concise language. Instead, we spend our time watching TV.
Continuing surveys indicate that television is on in most homes some 35 to 45 hours a week. That's
as much time as many people put into their jobs, more than most put into school. It's the most
powerful socializing influence there is. And when we watch, we're subject to all the values that are
being taught through it. That can powerfully influence us in very subtle and imperceptible ways.
Wisdom in watching television requires the effective self-management of Habit 3, which enables you
to discriminate and to select the informing, inspiring, and entertaining programs which best serve and
express your purpose and values.
In our family, we limit television watching to around seven hours a week, an average of about an
hour a day. We had a family council at which we talked about it and looked at some of the data
regarding what's happening in homes because of television. We found that by discussing it as a family
when no one was defensive or argumentative, people started to realize the dependent sickness of
becoming addicted to soap operas or to a steady diet of a particular program.
I'm grateful for television and for the many high-quality educational and entertainment programs.
They can enrich our lives and contribute meaningfully to our purposes and goals. But there are many
programs that simply waste our time and minds and many that influence us in negative ways if we let
them. Like the body, television is a good servant but a poor master. We need to practice Habit 3 and
manage ourselves effectively to maximize the use of any resource in accomplishing our missions.
Education -- continuing education, continually honing and expanding the mind -- is vital mental
renewal. Sometimes that involves the external discipline of the classroom or systematized study
programs; more often it does not. Proactive people can figure out many, many ways to educate
themselves.
It is extremely valuable to train the mind to stand apart and examine its own program. That, to me,
is the definition of a liberal education -- the ability to examine the programs of life against larger
questions and purposes and other paradigms. Training, without such education, narrows and closes
the mind so that the assumptions underlying the training are never examined. That's why it is so
valuable to read broadly and to expose yourself to great minds.
There's no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit
of reading good literature. That's another high-leverage Quadrant II activity. You can get into the
best minds that are now or that have ever been in the world. I highly recommend starting with a goal
of a book a month then a book every two weeks, then a book a week. "The person who doesn't read is
no better off than the person who can't read."
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Quality literature, such as the Great Books, the Harvard Classics, autobiographies, National
Geographic and other publications that expand our cultural awareness, and current literature in various
fields can expand our paradigms and sharpen our mental saw, particularly if we practice Habit 5 as we
read and seek first to understand. If we use our own autobiography to make early judgments before
we really understand what an author has to say, we limit the benefits of the reading experience.
Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts,
experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context. Writing good
letters -- communicating on the deeper level of thoughts, feelings, and ideas rather than on the shallow,
superficial level of events -- also affects our ability to think clearly, to reason accurately, and to be
understood effectively.
Organizing and planning represent other forms of mental renewal associated with Habits 2 and 3.
It's beginning with the end in mind and being able mentally to organize to accomplish that end. It's
exercising the visualizing, imagining power of your mind to see the end from the beginning and to see
the entire journey, at least in principles, if not in steps.
It is said that wars are won in the general's tent. Sharpening the saw in the first three dimensions --
the physical, the spiritual, and the mental -- is a practice I call the "Daily Private Victory." And I
commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it -- one hour a day
for the rest of your life.
There's no other way you could spend an hour that would begin to compare with the Daily Private
Victory in terms of value and results. It will affect every decision, every relationship. It will greatly
improve the quality, the effectiveness, of every other hour of the day, including the depth and
restfulness of your sleep. It will build the long-term physical, spiritual, and mental strength to enable
you to handle difficult challenges in life.
In the words of Phillips Brooks:
Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under
the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now. Now it is being decided whether, in
the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer.
Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.
The Social/Emotional Dimension
While the physical, spiritual, and mental dimensions are closely related to Habits 1, 2, and 3 --
centered on the principles of personal vision, leadership, and management -- the social/emotional
dimension focuses on Habits 4, 5, and 6 -- centered on the principles of interpersonal leadership,
empathic communication, and creative cooperation.
The social and the emotional dimensions of our lives are tied together because our emotional life is
primarily, but not exclusively, developed out of and manifested in our relationships with others.
Renewing our social/emotional dimension does not take time in the same sense that renewing the
other dimensions does. We can do it in our normal everyday interactions with other people. But it
definitely requires exercise. We may have to push ourselves because many of us have not achieved the
level of Private Victory and the skills of Public Victory necessary for Habits 4, 5, and 6 to come naturally
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