Self-Improvement

Reading about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People this week, I found myself thinking about which habits I feel the deepest connection to.  I found that there are some I am fairly practiced at, and some that stood out to me that I need to work on.  The one I feel I need to focus on improving in the most is Habit 7, “sharpen the saw.”  I am a very busy person, with very little time to take care of the things I have to do, let alone the things I don’t have to do. After reading this section, I realize that I am approaching it all wrong.  If I neglect myself, and don’t do some of the things I want to do for myself, I will be less effective at everything else.  I plan to set goals for myself of realistic things I can do to make sure I am sharpening the saw everyday. 

The other habits that I connected with are habit 3: “put first things first,”  habit 4: “think win/win,” and habit 5: “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  I feel that these habits work together, and can help me achieve my goals.  Think win/win was especially interesting to me as it is something I had never thought of before.  I was very intrigued by the idea that if we engage in a transaction where one person make all the compromises, both people lose.  I really put that idea in my heart and it is the other habit that I want to improve in my life.  I want to make sure that any solutions I may find to a problem are mutually beneficial, and that everyone is able to walk away happy.  I know that as I work to improve in this area, I will improve my relationships with those around me.

Family, Faith, and Career

My studies this week got me thinking a lot about how my family, my job, and the need to find balance. I just started working for the fist time in 9 years back in April of 2018.  I started back to work as a part time employee but am now working full time in a job that has started me on a path to my career of choice.  With all this sin mind, I have had to ponder a lot how I plan to balance family and work.  My husband is able to stay home with our children, so I know that they are getting love and parenting from their parents, but as their mother, I still have a responsibility for their emotional well-being.  With all this weighing frequently on my mind, I was truly appreciative of our studies this week.

In the video, The Entrepreneur and the Family, Steve Blank talks about ways we can balance our entrepreneurial pursuits with our families.  I don’t plan to start my own business, but I do hope to be a leader in a company one day.  As such, I was interested in what blank had to say about family and work.  He made rules for himself with his family that he cannot break, such as family dinners.  He had several ideas that I felt I could apply in my life to help me stay close to my children.  The part of the story that struck me is that he came home for evenings with his children but would go back to work when they got to bed.  I too can be creative in the ways I balance my family with my work.  If I make my family the most important thing, I will be able to plan my work accordingly. 

I also enjoyed listening to Jan Newsman talk about the importance of God and Family.  He teaches us that we should “never be to busy to take a calling in the church.”  I need to make sure that I put my Heavenly Father first as I continue down my career path.  I also need to make sure that I take care of my family.  As I do so, I will be able to find true success in my life.

Character and Courage

This week I enjoyed learning about the character and skills required to be a successful entrepreneur.  The video that stood out to me the most is the video A Hero’s Journey.  From the video, we learn that when a person gets to the end of their life, they will ask themselves who did I love, who loved me, did I contribute something meaningful, and was I a good person.  This brought me back to when I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  One of Covey’s habits is “begin with the end in mind” (Covey, 2004).  If I am to begin with the end in mind, I need to decide now what I want people to be saying about me when I get to that point in my life.  In thinking about this, I realized that the most important thing I want people to say about me is that I love my family.  With this in mind, I need to make sure that I keep them at the canter of my life.  I also want people to say that I was a good person.  If I keep close to the gospel of Jesus Christ, I will be able to accomplish both of these things.

I also enjoyed reading the story about Erica Mills starting her own card company.  In general, I am a very cautious person. I do not have the desire to start my own company, however, I do have the desire to advance in my career.  Erica Mills story about how she was able to have the courage to take risks and make the mistakes necessary to grow a business was encouraging to me.  I hope to be able to have that kind of strength as I pursue my own dreams of becoming the CFO or controller of a small, local company.

Works Cited

Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Being More Effective

This week I learned about making effective decisions and making decisions that will help you be happy and successful versus making choices that will make you a lot of money.  Being a successful entrepreneur does not mean that we have to be at work all the time as we learn from Jeff Hawkins in “Effective Choices, Not Longer Days.”  We can choose to spend our time in whatever way we feel is the most effective.  We should also work “smarter not harder.”  I have found this to be true in my own work environment.  I recently moved into a position at work.  When I first learned how to do my daily tasks, they took me an hour of more each.  As I got to know each task better, I was able to find ways to simplify to task and drastically reduce the amount of time I spend on each one.  The same things that took me all day to complete I now get done in a few hours.  This has given me the opportunity to take on more roles and learn new skills at the company.  I learned how to do my job smarter, not harder.

This idea can be applied to my job when I become entrepreneur.  I should learn the intricacies of each job that needs to get done.  The more I learn about each task the better I will be able to streamline the task into its most effective execution.  I should not become complacent when I have increased the efficiency of a task but should always seek ways to improve.  This brings me back to one of my core values: education.

I also learned about my fears and acting to prevent them.  I have many fears as I am starting into a new career field.  My goal is to become a leader in the financial industry. I want to become a CFO or treasurer of a company and I find that I have many fears as I start down this path.  I completed an activity where we evaluate our fears and create action plans to avoid them, I realized many of my fears have to do with the perceptions other people have of me.  The best actions I can take to avoid these fears is to be proactive, and not become frozen by my fears.  If I am actively avoiding my fears, there is a high chance they will never manifest.  I also learned that I need to be doing more tow build my confidence in myself and my abilities, and to learn to worry less about the opinions of others.