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Three Resolutions
Well-intentioned resolutions will fall flat in the face of stiff restraining forces without character and
social reinforcements.
Every organization and individual struggles to gain and maintain alignment with core values, ethics
and principles. Whatever our professed personal and organizational beliefs, we all face restraining
forces, opposition and challenges, and these sometimes cause us to do things that are contrary to
our stated missions, intentions and resolutions. We may think that we can change deeply
imbedded habits and patterns simply by making new resolutions or goals only to find that old
habits die hard and that in spite of good intentions and social promises, familiar patterns carry
over from year to year.
We often make two mistakes with regard to New Year's resolutions:
First, we don't have a clear knowledge of who we are. Hence, our habits become our identity,
and to resolve to change a habit is to threaten our security. We fail to see that we are not our
habits. We can make and break our habits. We need not be a victim of conditions or
conditioning. We can write your own script, choose our course, and control our own destiny.
Second, we don't have a clear picture of where we want to go; therefore, our resolves are easily
uprooted, and we then get discouraged and give up. Replacing a deeply imbedded bad habit with
a good one involves much more than being temporarily "psyched up" over some simplistic success
formula, such as "think positively" or "try harder." It takes deep understanding of self and of the
principles and processes of growth and change. These include assessment, commitment,
feedback, follow-through.
We will soon break our resolutions if we don't regularly report our progress to somebody and get
objective feedback on our performance. Accountability breeds response-ability. Commitment
and involvement produce change. In training executives, we use a step-by-step, natural,
progressive, sequential approach to change; in fact, we require executives to set goals and make
commitments up front; teach and apply the material each month; and return and report their
progress to each other.
If you want to overcome the pull of the past those powerful restraining forces of habit, custom
and culture to bring about desired change, count the costs and rally the necessary resources. In
the space program, we see that tremendous thrust is needed to clear the powerful pull of the
earth's gravity. So it is with breaking old habits.
Breaking deeply imbedded habits such as procrastinating, criticizing, overeating or oversleeping
involves more than a little wishing and will power. Often our own resolve is not enough. We need
reinforcing relationships people and programs that hold us accountable and responsible.
Remember: response-ability is the ability to choose our response to any circumstanc or condition.
When we are response-able, our commitment becomes more powerful than our moods or
circumstances, and we keep the promises and resolutions we make. For example, if we put mind
over mattress and arise early in the morning, we will earn our first victory of the day the daily
private victory and gain a certain sense of self-mastery. We can then move on to more public
victories. And as we deal well with each new challenge, we unleash within ourselves a fresh
capacity to soar to new heights.
Universal Resolutions
In each of our lives, there are powerful restraining forces at work to pull down any new resolution
or initiative. Among those forces are 1) appetites and passions, 2) pride and pretension, and 3)
aspiration and ambition.
We can overcome these restraining forces by making and keeping the following three resolutions.
First, to overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to exercise
self-discipline and self-denial. Whenever we over-indulge physical appetites and passions, we
impair our mental processes and judgments as well as our social relationships. Our bodies are
ecosystems, and if our economic or physical side is off-balance, all other systems are affected.
That's why the habit of sharpening the saw regularly is so basic. The principles of temperance,
consistency and self-discipline become foundational to a person's whole life. Trust comes from
trustworthiness and that comes from competence and character. Intemperance adversely affects
our judgment and wisdom.
I realize that some people are intemperate and still show greatness, even genius. But over time, it
catches up with them. Many among the "rich and famous" have lost fortunes and faith, success
and effectiveness, because of intemperance. Either we control our appetites and passions, or they
control us.
Many corporations and cities have aging inventories and infrastructures; likewise, many executives
have aging bodies, making it harder to get away with intemperance. With age, the metabolism
changes. Maintaining health requires more wisdom. The older we become, the more we are in the
crosscurrents between the need for more self-discipline and temperance, and the desire to let
down and relax and indulge. We feel we've paid our dues and are therefore entitled to it. But if
we get permissive and indulgent with ourselves overeating, staying up late or not exercising the
quality of our personal lives and our professional work will be adversely affected.
If we become slaves to our stomachs, our stomachs soon control our mind and will. Gluttony is a
perversion of appetite, and to knowingly take things into the body that are harmful or addicting is
foolishness. More people in America die of over-eating than of hunger. "I saw few die of hunger
of eating, a hundred thousand," observed Ben Franklin. When I overeat or overindulge, I lose
sensitivity to the needs of others. I become angry with myself, and I tend to take that anger out on
others at the earliest provocation.
Many of us succumb to the longing for extra sleep, rest and leisure. How many times do you set
the alarm or your mind to get up early, knowing all of the things you have to do in the morning,
anxious to get the day organized right, to have a calm and orderly breakfast, to have an unhurried
and peaceful preparation before leaving for work? But when the alarm goes off, your good
resolves dissolve. It's a battle of mind versus mattress! Often the mattress wins. You find yourself
getting up late, then beginning a frantic rush to get dressed, organized, fed and be off. In the rush,
you grow impatient and insensitive to others. Nerves get frayed, tempers short. And all because
of sleeping in.
A chain of unhappy events and sorry consequences follows not keeping the first resolution of the
day to get up at a certain time. That day may begin and end in defeat. The extra sleep is hardly
ever worth it. In fact, considering the above, such sleep is terribly tiring and exhausting.
What a difference if you organize an arrange your affairs the night before to get to bed at a
reasonable time. I find that the last hour before retiring is the best time to plan and prepare for the
next day. Then when the alarm goes off, you get up and prepare properly for the day. Such an
early-morning private victory gives you a sense of conquering, overcoming mastering and this
sense propels you to conquer more public challenges during the day. Success begets success.
Starting a day with an early victory over self leads to more victories. Second, to overcome the
restraining forces of pride and pretension, I resolve to work on character and competence.
Socrates said: The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
To be, in reality, what we want other to think we are. Much of the world is image-conscious, and
the social mirror is powerful in creating our sense of who we are. The pressure to appear
powerful, successful and fashionable causes some people to become manipulative. When you are
living in harmony with your core values and principles, you can be straight-forward, honest and
up-front. And nothing is more disturbing to a person who is full of trickery and duplicity than
straight-forward honesty that's the one thing they can't deal with.
I've been on an extended media tour with my book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and
I've become aware of how everyone is very anxious about the entertainment value of the
program. Recently, I was in San Francisco, and I thought I would make my interview more
controversial by getting into the political arena. But my comments threw the whole conversation
off on a tangent. All the call-ins commented on political points. I lost the power to present my
own theme and represent my own material.
Whenever we indulge appetites and passions, we are rather easily seduced by pride and
pretension. We then start making appearances, playing roles and mastering manipulative
techniques. If our definition or concept of ourselves comes from what others think of us from the
social mirror we will gear our lives to their wants and their expectations; and the more we live to
meet the expectations of others, the more weak, shallow and insecure we become. A junior
executive, for example, may desire to please his superiors, colleagues and subordinates, but he
discovers that these groups demand different things of him. He feels that if he is true to one, he
may offend the other. So he begins to play games and put on appearances to get along or to get
by, to please or appease. In the long run, he discovers that by trying to become "all things to all
people," he eventually becomes nothing to everyone. He is found out for who and what he is. He
then loses self-respect and the respect of others.
Effective people lead their lives and manage their relationships around principles; ineffective
people attempt to manage their time around priorities and their tasks around goals. Think
effectiveness with people; efficiency with things.
When we examine anger, hatred, envy, jealousy, pride and prejudice or any other negative
emotion or passion we often discover that at their root lies the desire to be accepted, approved
and esteemed of others. We then seek a shortcut to the top. But the bottom line is that there is no
shortcut to lasting success. The law of the harvest still applies, in spite of all the talk of "how to
beat the system."
Several years ago, a student visited me in my office when I was a faculty member at the Marriott
School of Management, Brigham Young University. He asked me how he was doing in my class.
After developing some rapport, I confronted him directly: "You didn't really come in to find out
how you are doing in the class. You came in to find out how I think you are doing. You know
how you are doing in the class far better than I do, don't you?"
He said that he did, and so I asked him, "How are you doing?" He admitted that he was just
trying to get by. He had a host of reasons and excuses for not studying as he ought, for cramming
and for taking shortcuts. He came in to see if it was working.
If people play roles and pretend long enough, giving in to their vanity and pride, they will gradually
deceive themselves. They will be buffeted by conditions, threatened by circumstances and other
people. They will then fight to maintain their false front. But if they come to accept the truth about
themselves, following the laws and principles of the harvest, they will gradually develop a more
accurate concept of themselves.
The effort to be fashionable puts one on a treadmill that seems to go faster and faster, almost like
chasing a shadow. Appearances alone will never satisfy; therefore, to build our security on
fashions, possessions or status symbols may prove to be our undoing. Edwin Hubbell Chapin
said: "Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather
than to be."
Certainly, we should be interested in the opinions and perceptions of others so that we might be
more effective with them, but we should refuse to accept their opinion as a fact and then act or
react accordingly. Third, to overcome the restraining forces of unbridled aspiration and ambition,
I resolve to dedicate my talents and resources to noble purposes and to provide service to others.
If people are "looking out for number one" and "what's in it for me," they will have no sense of
stewardship no sense of being an agent for worthy principles, purposes and causes. They become
a law unto themselves, a principal.
They may talk the language of stewardship, but they will always figure out a way to promote their
own agenda. They're may be dedicated and hard working, but they are not focused on
stewardship the idea that you don't own anything, that you give your life to higher principles,
causes, purposes. Rather, they are focused on power, wealth, fame, position, dominion and
possessions.
The ethical person looks at every economic transaction as a test of his or her moral stewardship.
That's why humility is the mother of all other virtues because it promotes stewardship. Then
everything else that is good will work through you. But if you get into pride into "my will, my
agenda, my wants" then you must rely totally upon your own strengths. You're not in touch with
what Jung calls "the collective unconscious" the power of the larger ethos which unleashes energy
through your work.
Aspiring people seek their own glory and are deeply concerned with their own agenda. They may
even regard their own spouse or children as possessions and try to wrest from them the kind of
behavior that will win them more popularity and esteem in the eyes of others. Such possessive
love is destructive. Instead of being an agent or steward, they interpret everything in life in terms
of "what it will do for me." Everybody then becomes either a competitor or conspirator. Their
relationships, even intimate ones, tend to be competitive rather than cooperative. They use various
methods of manipulation such as threat, fear, bribery, pressure, deceit, and charm to achieve their
ends.
Until people have the spirit of service, they might say they loves a companion, company or cause,
but they often despise the demands these make on their lives. Double-mindedness, having two
conflicting motives or interests, inevitably sets a man at war within himself and an internal civil war
often breaks out into war with others. The opposite of double-mindedness is self-unity or
integrity. We achieve integrity through the dedication of ourselves to selfless service of others.
Implications for Personal Growth
Unless we control of our appetites, we will not be in control of our passions and emotions. We
will, instead, becomes victims of our passions, seeking or aspiring our own wealth, dominion,
prestige and power.
I once tried to counsel a junior executive to be more committed to higher principles. It appeared
futile. Then I began to realize that I was asking him to conquer the third temptation before he had
conquered the first. It was like expecting a child to walk before crawl. So I changed the approach
and encouraged him to first discipline his body. We then got great results.
If we conquer some basic appetites first, we will have the power to make good on higher level
resolutions later. For example, many people would experience a major transformation if they
would maintain normal weight through a healthy diet and exercise program. They would not only
look better, but they would also feel better, treat others better, and increase their capacity to do
the important but not necessarily urgent things they long to do.
Until you can say "I am my master," you cannot say "I am your servant." In other words, we might
profess a service ethic, but under pressure or stress we might be controlled by a particular
passion or appetite. We lose our temper. We become jealous, envious, lustful or slothful. Then
we feel guilty. We make promises and break them; make resolutions and break them. We
gradually lose faith in our own capacity to keep any promises. Despite our ethic to be the "servant
of the people," we become the servant or slave of whatever masters us.
This reminds me of the plea of Richard Rich to Thomas More in the movie, A Man For All
Seasons. Richard Rich admired More's honesty and integrity and wanted to be employed by him.
He pleaded, "Employ me." More answered, "No." Again Rich pleaded, "Employ me," and again
the answer was no. Then Rich made this pitiful yet endearing promise: "Sir Thomas, employ me. I
would be faithful to you."
Sir Thomas, knowing what mastered Richard Rich, answered, "Richard, you can't even so much
as answer for yourself tonight," meaning "You might profess to be faithful now, but all it will take
is a different circumstance, the right bribe or pressure, and you will be so controlled by your
ambition and pride that you could not be faithful to me." Sir Thomas More's prognosis came to
pass that very night, for Richard Rich betrayed him!
The key to growth is to learn to make promises and to keep them. Self-denial is an essential
element in overcoming all three temptations. "One secret act of self-denial, one sacrifice of
inclination to duty is worth all the mere good thoughts, warm feelings, passionate prayers, in which
idle men indulge themselves," said John Henry Newman. "The worst education which teaches
self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that," said Sterling.
Making and keeping these three universal resolutions will accelerate our self-development and,
potentially, increase our influence with others.
Copyright © 1996, 1998 Covey Leadership Center and Franklin Covey. All rights reserved.  Click here for their planner pages!
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