The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Sharpen the Saw
This last habit encourages us to focus on ourselves and take time to "sharpen the saw" this is, renewing in four dimensions, in a balanced way:
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Physical: The physical renewal is basically to care effectively for our physical body and all that it involves (eating, exercising, resting, etc.), it is highly related to habit 1.
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Spiritual: The spiritual renewal provides leadership to our life, It’s highly related to habit 2, and our commitment to our value system.
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Mental: The mental renewal is to keep "training" the mind. In order to do this, Stephen advices us to study, read, explore new subjects (outside our action fields), write (thoughts, experiences, insights or learnings). He also advises us against watching television (and I would add using Internet) in a non-discriminative way (without discriminating the information we receive). This renewal is highly related to habit 2 and habit 3.
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Social/Emotional: The social (or emotional) renewal it’s basically achieving interpersonal leadership, empathic communication and creative cooperation. Being careful of what we reflect to others about themselves, for it may influence them in a negative way, is a way of renewing in this dimension. It’s highly related to the Public Victory.
Renewal, as Stephen describes, is the process of renewing all the six other habits. Seeking Private Victory in a daily basis, is the foundation for the Public Victory, and renewing the habits (working on them) at least an hour a day, leads to Private Victory.
Final Conclusion
The book gives an interesting and (in my opinion) very accurate description of how a highly effective people should be, for it not only focuses on independent achievements, but also on interdependent ones.
In my previous posts I stated my opinion and a brief summary of what the writer describes in each habit, so I won’t go over that again. The one thing I would add is a final concept about the book.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a very interesting and recommended reading, for it makes you retrospect to what you have done in life, analyze yourself, and learn to see every situation from a different point of view.
Another interesting point of the book, even though it gives you "application suggestions", is that it can be read not only as a recipe you could follow, but also in the way that it would help you most (general guidance, other point of view about life, recipe, etc.).