Habits, brains and their financial application

-Watch your thoughts because they will become words.
-Watch your words, for they will become deeds.
-Watch your actions because they will become habits.
-Watch your habits because they will forge your character.
-Take care of your character because it will shape your destiny.
-And your destiny will be your life"

 Gandhi

Our character is made up of our habits. Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent patterns that we repeat constantly and daily, they end up expressing our character and generate our effectiveness or ineffectiveness. The good news is that they can be learned and forgotten, although doing so is neither easy nor quick: it involves a tremendous process and commitment.

The first 3 habits he describes Stephen Covey at The 7 habits of highly effective people have to do with self-mastery and discipline: they lead you from dependence to independence. They are the "private victories", the essence of character development, which precede the "public victories". You can no more reverse that process than you can reap a harvest before it is sown: it is from the inside out.

We all begin life as beings totally dependent on others. Gradually, we become more and more independent and we become aware that life is also interdependent, that part of our success depends on our relationships with others.

Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people get what they want through their own efforts. Interdependent people combine their efforts with the efforts of others to achieve greater success.

It is after working out the first three habits that one becomes truly independent, for one possesses a basis for effective interdependence. It possesses a base character from which one can work more effectively on the more personality-oriented "public victories", teamwork, cooperation and communication.

For Covey, therefore, the last four habits are:

• Win-Win Thinking: developing a mindset of material and spiritual abundance, where life does not imply that for me to win someone else has to lose.
• Seek first to understand and then to be understood: respect for others is the key to effective human relations and makes it possible to reach such agreements.
• Generate Synergies: cultivate the ability and attitude to value diversity through teamwork and innovation.
• Sharpening the saw: renewing ourselves physically, mentally, socially and spiritually in order to balance all dimensions of our being and to be effective in the different roles we play in our lives.

The last habit is that of renewal: a regular and balanced renewal of the four basic dimensions of life. It encompasses and embodies all the other habits. It is the one that creates the upward spiral of development that leads to new levels of understanding and to living each of the habits on an ever higher plane. This is the habit that leads the human being to step out of his comfort zone, not to stagnate and to innovate.

Each of the seven habits is related to one of the four brains and we can analyse its application financially. The first two (being proactive and having an end in mind) have to do with the neocortex, with the why. Remember that before we can do anything successfully, we have to find the motivation. The next two (first things first and win-win) are related to the reptilian brain: survival, basic spending and needs analysis. The fifth and sixth habits (understanding the other and synergies) depend on the limbic brain: relationships, processes and respect. And finally, the seventh habitus is that of purpose, the prefrontal brain: we always seek to improve, evolve, transcend and find purpose.

Routine somehow prevents us from being aware in the present., This is reflected in our body on a daily basis because we do all our functions systematically like a machine. When we have to modify one of our functions, we consciously do it in our mind and then we put it into practice. Who has not made a plan to start doing sport, get up earlier, modify their diet or change the way they study or work? Before doing something different from what we are used to, we first think about how we are going to do it.

Success is not only in knowing ourselves and having good habits. Success lies in excellence, in doing well whatever we set out to do, as long as we are constant and conscious. All great deeds have started with a courageous decision, and certainly a great commitment: acquiring new skills and constant efforts over time. But the starting point is always the same: to decide to try and give the best of oneself in every moment.

The references in these articles to brain structures are made in a simplified, not exhaustively scientific method, in order to facilitate their understanding and application to everyday life.

 
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