"Skill of 7. Sharpen the saw. The principles of balanced self-renewal.
Man, bitterly, the last effort cutting down a tree with a blunt saw. He said:
- Why don't you pause for a few minutes and sharpen the saw?
- I have no time to sharpen the saw! I need to saw!
Skill 7 is your PERSONAL resources(your PC, your saw). It maintains and develops your most valuable resource - you. It updates the four dimensions of your nature:
physical, spiritual, intellectual and socio-emotional.
The principle of "sharpen the saw" requires consideration of all four dimensions. It means that we should regularly and consistently to develop them in the most reasonable and balanced manner
Our PC is located in the centre of our Circle of Influence, and no one but us will be able to ensure their development. We must try for ourselves.
This is the best, the biggest investment we ever make in life. It's an investment in ourselves.
We have to put pressure on myself as long as the activity in Квадрате2 (non-urgent, but important) not to turn us into useful habit - skill.
Physical dimension provides effective care of your physical condition, eating the right food, adequate rest, regular exercise.
You can perform a full exercise program at home. This programme is designed to develop your body endurance, flexibility and strength.
1. Endurance is achieved through effective training of the cardiovascular system, the ability of your heart to pump blood throughout the body. Ideally, you should try to raise the heart rate, at least up to 60% of your maximum rate. The maximum rate is usually derived by subtracting your age from 220. Thus, if you are 40, you should aim to stress that increases the heart rate to 108 beats per minute (220 - 40 = 180; 180 x 0.6 = 108). "Training effect" usually occurs with increasing heart rate in a 72 - 87 % of your maximum heart rate.
2. Flexibility is achieved through stretching. Before training the muscles relax and warm up in preparation for intense exercise. After class stretching helps to dissipate lactic acid so that muscle was not felt pain and tension.
3. Strength comes through exercise on muscle resistance, a simple gymnastic exercises, push-UPS, pull-UPS, squats and exercises with loads.
If I want to pump strength, and it only happens when muscle tissue "breaks" and the nerves register pain. Then nature starts the process over compensation, and in 48 hours the muscles become stronger.
The same principle applies to emotional muscles, for example, for patience. If you have patience beyond measure, the emotional fiber "breaks", then the nature over compensates for this violation, and the next time a patience threshold is higher.
In developing its programme of exercise we need to exercise common sense. People not previously engaged in exercise, there is a tendency to give a too big load. This leads to unnecessary pain, injury and even chronic ailments. It is best to start slowly.
First, you your load may not like. You might even hate these classes. But be proactive. Continue to comply with them. Gradually your heart rate at rest will decrease as your heart and respiratory system will work more efficiently.
Perhaps the greatest benefit that you will gain from their exercises, will be the development of your muscles of being proactive from a Skill 1. This has a serious impact on your paradigm of yourself, your self esteem, your sense of self-confidence and integrity to your personality.
the Spiritual dimension is your core, your center, your commitment to your value system, It is a very personal and at the same time very important sphere of life. It is fed by springs, inspiring and uplifting you, connecting you with the eternal truths of mankind. And every person is updating its spiritual dimension in their own way.
Some people are like spiritual renewal can experience under the influence of the great literary or musical works. Someone finds this update in communion with nature. Nature shares his grace with those who are able to merge with it.
The idea is that if we dedicate time thinking about the meaning of life, the ultimate goal of our existence, all that we derive from these reflections, like an umbrella over all others reveals our works. It renews and refreshes us, particularly if we return again and again to this process.
That is why I believe the provisions of the personal mission (Skill 2) are so important. When we deeply understand the essence of its centre and its purpose, we can often turn to them to maintain their commitment to implementation of the inherent principles. In your daily spiritual renewal, we can visualize themselves and "live" the events of the day in harmony with the values which have set for ourselves.
And you will find that the public victories - where you aim to cooperate, care about the welfare of others and genuinely rejoice in their successes - just come by themselves.
Intelligent measurement - achieved mainly at the expense of traditional formal education. However, after graduating from school or College, most of us stop caring about the development of his intellect and allows him to gradually atrophy. We don't read serious books, we are not discovering anything new that would be beyond our professional interests, we cease to think analytically, we cease to write, anyway, so that you can test your ability to Express thoughts clearly and concisely. Instead, we spend all of our time watching TV.
Like our body, television is a good servant but a bad master. We need to practice habit 3 and to govern themselves effectively, to maximize use of all resources in order to implement its mission.
The ability to evaluate the program of his life in comparison with higher values, and goals, as well as with other paradigms, is the essence of liberal education. That is why it is so important to read the literature on a wide range of issues and maintain correspondence contact with great thinkers.
You can chat with the best minds of the past and present. I highly recommend to start with setting a goal to read one book a month, then two weeks, then a week. "He who does not read, no better than someone who can't read".
Quality literature can expand our paradigms and sharpen our intellectual saw, especially if we use Skill 5 and reading, first seek to understand. If we instead truly understand the meaning of the author, based on his own autobiography and make hasty judgments, thus we limit the benefits that could obtain from reading.
Another powerful way to sharpen the Intellectual saw this letter. Keeping a journal where you record your thoughts, ideas and discoveries, promotes clarity, accuracy and completeness of your thinking.
"Sharpening the saw" for the first three dimensions - physical, spiritual and intellectual, is an activity which I call the "Daily private Victory". And I recommend you a simple practice: every day allocate one hour for this activity. Just an hour a day - but throughout the remainder of life. It will significantly improve the quality and efficiency of all the other hours of your life, including night sleep will become deeper and more restorative. It will give you the physical, spiritual and intellectual resistance, thanks to which you will be able to overcome life's difficulties.
Character cannot be created otherwise than through hard, long effort."
the Socio-emotional dimension does not require special time-consuming, as required by other dimensions. We can implement it in ordinary, everyday interaction with other people. But this will require effort. We may have to push myself to this, as many of us have not yet reached a level of Personal and Public Victory to Skills 4, 5 and 6 naturally would be in all of our interactions with other people.
Success Skills 4, 5 and 6 is mainly determined, not by the intellect and emotion. It is highly linked with our sense of personal security, with a sense of confidence.
If our sense of personal security depends on our internal sources, we have the power to apply the skills of Personal Victory. If we are not emotionally protected, even the possession of high intelligence does not exempt us from feeling a serious threat when you use Skills 4, 5 and 6 in dealing with people whose view on life is different from ours.
The feeling of personal safety can occur as a result of effective interdependent living. This feeling comes from the knowledge that the decisions in the spirit of "win-Win" is real, that life is not always "either-or" that there is almost always mutually beneficial Third Alternative. This feeling comes from the realization that you can deeply, truly understand the other person, you can move away from their point of view, not abandoning it. This feeling arises when you are genuinely creative and willing to interact with other people and in fact embody all the skills of interdependence.
Sense of personal security may occur through the Ministry and helping other people.
Another source of feelings of personal safety - this is an anonymous service, when nobody knows about it now and may not know in the future. For you it is not important. The main thing for you is to make lives of other people happier. You use the influence you have, but not a thank you or recognition of your merits.
The basic idea of Hans Selye, in his monumental study of stress is that a long, healthy and happy life is the result of constantly making contributions and the implementation of important projects that bring satisfaction to the person and make the lives of others happier. The essence of ethics Selye expressed in the words: "Earn the love of neighbor."
How did George Bernard Shaw; "to Be a part of great nature, and not a little trembling, selfish creature, the focus of diseases and plagues, hurt the whole world, which for some reason does not climb out of the skin, to make you happy."
Although it is important to upgrade each of these measurements optimally effective, this process becomes only when it is reasonably balanced across all four dimensions. Neglecting one of them will have a negative impact on everyone else.
Balanced update creates optimal conditions for achieving synergy. Whatever you undertake for the sake of "sharpening the saw" in any dimension, has a positive effect on the other measurements, since they are all highly interrelated. Your physical health affects your intellectual health; your spiritual strength affects the strength of emotional-social. Improving in one dimension, you are simultaneously increasing their opportunities in other.
The update is a principle and a process that encourages us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, in a spiral of continuous improvement.
The upward spiral requires us to learn new, take responsibilities and act, rising each time to a new level. We only deceive ourselves into believing that we can do any one of these elements. To constantly move forward, we need to learn to commit and to act, and again to learn, to commit and to act.
To climbing this spiral was coherent and meaningful, we must consider another aspect of renewal which relates to the unique properties of a person and directs this upward movement -- our conscience. In the words of Madame de Stael: "the Voice of conscience is so weak that it is easy to drown out, but it is so clear that it is confused".
The conscience is a gift that allows us to feel our compliance or noncompliance with correct principles and who, if it is sufficiently developed - raises us to the heights of these principles.
Constantly develop and sensitise the conscience will lead us on the way of increase of personal freedom, security, wisdom and energy."
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