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So here we are. We’ve explored six of the seven habits and why they’re important to us and our learners at iLEAD Antelope Valley, and hopefully by this point you feel more equipped and empowered to approach your own life and work with clearer focus and vision. 

But how do we maintain that energy? 

That’s where Habit 7 comes in — Sharpen the Saw. Incorporating the 7 Habits into your life is all about achieving balance. But living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. It’s all up to you. You can renew yourself through relaxation, or you can totally burn yourself out by overdoing everything.

“Sharpen the Saw” means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have — you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual. Here are some examples: 

• Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting.
• Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others.
• Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching.
• Spiritual: Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service, etc.

The point is, if we don’t take the time to recharge and renew ourselves regularly, we will burn out and find our efforts stale.

As Dr. Stephen Covey said, “Renewal is the principle — and the process — that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement.”

What that sharpening looks like will vary from person to person. For you, sharpening the saw might mean taking a 10-15-minute walk every day where you can decompress and not focus on day-to-day responsibilities. Or maybe it means better structuring your workweek so on weekends you can focus primarily on family time. Whatever your saw-sharpening looks like, find something that works for you. 

As the saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To make the most of the 7 Habits in improving yourself, your life, and your work, it cannot be a piecemeal effort. Each enhances and strengthens the others. Step by step, find the balance of incorporating each habit — and don’t neglect yourself. Sharpen that saw so that you can truly be your best. 

For more information on the 7 Habits and other leadership resources, click here to visit the FranklinCovey website.

So here we are. We’ve explored six of the seven habits and why they’re important to us and our learners at iLEAD Antelope Valley, and hopefully by this point you feel more equipped and empowered to approach your own life and work with clearer focus and vision. 

But how do we maintain that energy? 

That’s where Habit 7 comes in — Sharpen the Saw. Incorporating the 7 Habits into your life is all about achieving balance. But living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. It’s all up to you. You can renew yourself through relaxation, or you can totally burn yourself out by overdoing everything.

“Sharpen the Saw” means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have — you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual. Here are some examples: 

• Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting.
• Social/Emotional: Making social and meaningful connections with others.
• Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching.
• Spiritual: Spending time in nature, expanding spiritual self through meditation, music, art, prayer, or service, etc.

The point is, if we don’t take the time to recharge and renew ourselves regularly, we will burn out and find our efforts stale.

As Dr. Stephen Covey said, “Renewal is the principle — and the process — that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement.”

What that sharpening looks like will vary from person to person. For you, sharpening the saw might mean taking a 10-15-minute walk every day where you can decompress and not focus on day-to-day responsibilities. Or maybe it means better structuring your workweek so on weekends you can focus primarily on family time. Whatever your saw-sharpening looks like, find something that works for you. 

As the saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To make the most of the 7 Habits in improving yourself, your life, and your work, it cannot be a piecemeal effort. Each enhances and strengthens the others. Step by step, find the balance of incorporating each habit — and don’t neglect yourself. Sharpen that saw so that you can truly be your best. 

For more information on the 7 Habits and other leadership resources, click here to visit the FranklinCovey website.

Whether in the classroom, the workplace, relationships, or life in general, learning to compromise can be an important and helpful tool. However, what if there were a way to even further enrich and strengthen our communication and interactions?

That’s what’s behind Habit #6: Synergize.

Synergy brings into focus the old adage that “two heads are better than one.” Instead of merely striking a compromise, synergy allows us to creatively collaborate with others and find new solutions to problems. The essence of synergy is to value and respect our differences, build on strengths, and compensate for weaknesses.

In iLEAD Antelope Valley culture, when learners are incorporating this habit into their lives, they’re learning to work in groups and building and reinforcing a mind-set that says, “I get along well with others — even people who are different from me.” That lays the foundation to a long-lasting collaborative approach to life in a multicultural and interdependent world. 

There are a couple of helpful steps to know if you’re in synergy:

• You have a change of heart.
• You feel new energy and excitement.
• You see things in a new way.
• You feel that the relationship has transformed.
• You end up with an idea or a result that’s better than what either of you started with.

One of the most important keys to synergizing is learning to trust, and that trust is built through communication. 

Take, for example, these three levels of communication and the associated levels of trust: 

• Defensive communication comes out of low-trust situations. It’s characterized by defensiveness, protectiveness, and legalistic language that prepares for the eventuality that things may go wrong, and that people may become resentful. Such communication isn’t effective and produces only win/lose or lose/lose outcomes.
• Respectful communication is characterized by honesty, authenticity, and respect that produces a low form of win/win, a compromise where one plus one equals one-and-a-half.
• Synergistic communication means that one plus one may equal 8, 16, or even 1,600. The situation produced is better than any originally proposed.

When we learn to see our individual differences as strengths instead of weaknesses, we are well on our way to learning to synergize. 

Join us next week as we explore the seventh and final habit: Sharpen the Saw.

For more information on the 7 Habits and other leadership resources, click here to visit the FranklinCovey website.