Is your life falling apart?

Does it lack structure and stability?

Than I have the just the book for you!

its called the “7 habits for highly effective people” and it’ll change your life*

Hellooo readers of The life of Colton, my name is Colton and this is my blog.

The 7 habits are a set of habits that we had indulged in for the past month and a bit. So what does that mean? Im glad you asked.

The 7 habits are self development habits that the great Stephen Covey Developed after reading years and years of literature from the past 200 years. He noticed a common theme among all of them. They all focused on the outside you, and how you portray yourself to the world. Using his wisdom he created a book that focuses on three aspects of yourself.

 

The Private Victory which focuses on self improvement, and how you can control your own destiny and improve on things that help with will help with the rest of your life, or little tasks.

The Public Victory focuses on how you appear to the public. Not just yourself, but working together with others. The series of habits in the Public Victory has to do with interactions and working with other people to achieve something greater to yourself.

Renewal is the 3rd and final aspect of the book. Only one habit belongs in this category. The habit is about renewing and caring for your cognitive, social and phisical health.

Each of the habits fit into each category. The first 3 habits: Be Proactive, Begin With Then End in Mind, and Put First Things first.  All belong to the Private Victory. Think Win Win and Seek first to Understand and then to Be Understood. Belong to the Public Victory and Sharpen the Saw belong to renewal.

So how did you learn about these things you may ask. Well when I first learned about how this would work, I was so confused. Well, like I always do, I over thought about it way to much. It was actually pretty simple.

We would read the book, but we would have some “fun” options to choose from. We could read the adult book (7 habits for highly effective people). The teen book. (7 habits for highly effective teens) and the more visual book that includes infographics and charts. After reading the books, we would then fill out workbooks for that related to the chapter or part that we read. The big assignment was called the Assessment Choice Board. A big name and actually a lot of fun. I personally liked it because of all the creative freedom it gave us. We were given the task of creating something that signifies or represents the topics and content in the part of the book we were assigned. We had an abondance of options to choose from to make out Choice Board:

We had to make 4 choice boards in total (Set Up, Private Victory, Public Victory, Renewal). We were heavily encouraged to choose new things each time, but I didn’t really get that part. I really liked what I made so I stuck with it (for the most part). Here are my choice board for each part.

 

 

Here are the 2 other Choice Boards that are videos

Public Victory Assessment Choice Board

Renewal Assessment Choice Board

I actually really enjoyed using the choice boards. The vague guidelines and instructions at first made me wonder if I was doing everything correctly, and what’s allowed and not allowed but that was the best part of it. The creative freedom helped me think about the book even more, being the entire point of the project.

But PLP isnt PLP without there being a final product. And it also isn’t without the core competencies being involved somehow.

For our final product we had to connect each habit to a core competency and create a Visual, audio, and kinaesthetic representation of these habits

So this is a chart that I filled out to help organize my thoughts;

So if you couldn’t tell by the chart, for Communication I was going to focus on habits 6 and 5 and create a puzzle For Thinking I decided to focus on habit 2 Habit 4 and Habit 3 an make a playlist of some of the songs that I think connects with the competency. And for Personal and Social I would focus on habits 7 and habits 1 And for these habits I would make a 3D collage.

 

Communication 

habits 6 and 5 are two of the Public Victory habits. Synergize and seek first to understand, then to be understood. These two habits are about teamwork and understanding each other. What better way t represent this by using a puzzle.

The puzzle pieces are like people. Each with their own unique worldview. The lines and shape represent this. To fit together, they need to understand each others differences and work off them accordingly. The puzzle pieces look good on they’re own, but they don’t understand how much better they would look, if they all came together. This analogy, while simple, represents a lot of todays problems with politics like racism and cultural restrains. If we understood these habits, we would be so much better off and even though this is just a puzzle, just like the habits it represents, it means something much bigger than itself

Thinking

Habits 2, 3 and 4 all have do with thinking. They think about the future, others, and the present. They have a larger meaning than just yourself. They think about focusing on the present while still having a clear idea of the future which is hard to manage and control. Thinking of both is like a win win. You need a perfect mix of both in your life. Its important to set goals and aim for things, but at the same time, stay grounded and focus on important things in the present. This playlist aims to cover those meanings artistically, using rhyme and rythm

Personal and Social

habit 1 and 7 should be on the opposite end of the spectrum from each other, but actually its interesting how similar they are. The two both connect through self development and control. I created a 3D model to show what I enjoy in life.What brings me joy, What makes me me. On the bottom are things that deplete me. Short term pleasure. These things give little amounts of joy for short term, but are addicting and controlling. The goal of a depiction like this is to help me critique myself on what I need to focus on and what will help me. Not something that consumes me and makes me the worst version or less effective version of myself.

Tap me to see the model!

 

So how can we be the most effective version of ourself? Its a big question that I know lots of people would want to know the answer too. Its not as hard as you think. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a great example. The 7 habits, if you put effort into fulfilling each one of them, are the perfect keystones to living a happy and successful life. Reading the book wont allow the habits to just come to you and make you a new person.

“Words may inspire but action creates change”.