(no subject)

[kuangning]

I didn't need to see the footage again. Really, I didn't. Except it hurt like it was tearing me open, so maybe I did.

Anyway.

Babies. Living, squirming, fragile, oh-so-strong babies. Thank you, ABC, for the reminder. For an image to hold on to that hurts in a better way, and to put at the center of this jumble of half-thoughts and feelings I call my mind right now.

I'm reading, for the record, Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I don't know what I expected from the book, but it's surprising me and that's a good thing. So when I mention "homework," for the next few weeks, I probably mean an exercise from the book. Today's came at a very right time for me. I thought, six months ago, "thousands of people did not wake up this morning and decide it was a good day to die." That's true every day, today included, anniversary or no anniversary... and life is too short to spend simply drifting. It's also too short to spend crying, resenting, mired in busy-ness that doesn't satisfy, defending against blows that haven't fallen, anticipating the worst, or fearing what we know or what we don't know or what we can't know or expect. It's too short to spend in any way that doesn't take me closer to being what I want to be or bring me more in line with what matters to me.

Homework? Identify what matters to me, and develop a series of resolutions based on that: a personal Constitution.


I have only ONE day to live: today.

Today, I am a restful, gentle person. Today, I create beauty wherever and whenever I can. Today, I learn, laugh, and love. Today, I am honest with myself and straightforward with others. Today, I build something that will endure, even if that something is as small as someone else's memory of a kind word from me. Today, I know that humanity is precious, and I treat each person I come into contact with as the wondrous and fragile phenomenon that he or she truly is. Today, I will seek first to truly understand someone else, to see through their eyes, before trying to superimpose my paradigms and my autobiography upon the situations we face. Today, I recognise and acknowledge my goals and my requirements for living a fulfilling and effective life, and I act responsibly to achieve them.

*Today, I live my life in a way that is in harmony with my most valued principles - love, honesty, inner peace, and being an agent of change for the better within my own life, with the recognition that inner change becomes a catalyst for outside change.*

Comments

[theomachio.livejournal.com]

ACK! The best book in the world!

I've advised a lot of my friends using the Seven Habits. If you need coaching, I'm here. ;)

[kuangning]

That totally fails to surprise me, you know. When I think of the most centered, gentle people I know, the people whose outlook I envy and want to emulate, you're high up on the list. I may take you up on that offer of coaching, but I'm on the first read-through, and I want to see how much I can internalise on my own right now.

However... although you admittedly don't see much more of me than is here, would you point it out to me if you see that I'm doing something that's not in line with my Constitution? That's an open invitation to everyone... I don't promise to follow every bit of advice given, nor to let you or make you assume the position of being a supervisor of my character, but it takes opposition and differing viewpoints, after all, to test my understanding and practise many of these principles. I've lifted the bans I had in place in here; any registered user can add a comment.

Re:

[theomachio.livejournal.com]

Ok, I will. And by the way, thank you for your kind words. That means a lot to me.

[scrypto.livejournal.com]

I used to think that Steven Covey was a lunatic until I actually sat down and read Habits. Few books have had such a significant impact on the way I lead my life. In fact, I sometimes worry now that people might dismiss the things I say as being too Covey :)

I like the bit in your constitution about building "something that will endure." I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to that.

Re:

[kuangning]

I sometimes worry now that people might dismiss the things I say as being too Covey :)


You're worried that they might think you're being insincere?

[scrypto.livejournal.com]

You're worried that they might think you're being insincere?

I'm worried they'll think that I'm just blindly repeating what he's said without actually adding to it any thoughts of my own.

*nod*

[kuangning]

I can understand that. I think I'd have a difficult time with that myself... I would hope that people who know me would know better, but outside that audience, I wouldn't know how to begin to explain it. One of the most impactful things about the book, for me, is the way he points out that in order for there to be actual change, you have to change your feelings and it has to come from inside-out. Someone who is quoting blindly without internalising it has missed the whole point, really. I guess, though, that the change speaks for itself eventually.

[netbard.livejournal.com]

7 Habits is a wonderful book that has the all-to-regretable misfortune to be thrown in with the hundreds of other business/self-help titles that are crap. I started it back in September after buying it at a Kinkos while waiting for the evil that is Geico to process my insurance. I regret putting it down so that I could study things that were actively related to my job, actually. This reminds me to pick it back up.

[kuangning]

That was exactly what I expected, actually... another self-help book that'd bore me to tears and make me wonder what the writer was on when he wrote it, because he wasn't looking at any reality I knew. I didn't even have to buy it, actually... I was gifted with the well-worn copy I'm reading. ;)