Tag: Mental Health

What does a principle-centered person look like? What principles do you live by? This post continues “Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind,” by Stephen Covey. In the post ACHIEVE HEALTHY GOALS IN 12 WAYS,I explained how to achieve your goals by cultivating thoughts to achieve a desired outcome. I also shared my mission statement for my life and the goals to achieve my mission. In the post Three Ways to Unlock Your Potential: Achieving Goals Continued, I explained how to rewrite defeating scripts written by unhealthy beliefs. Unhealthy beliefs develop from painful experiences. You can write a new script by exchanging unhealthy beliefs with true or positive beliefs.

Of the 12 ways to achieve healthy goals, this post will explain the following two ways:

8. I will be principle-centered, not spouse-centered, family-centered, money-centered, work-centered, possession-centered, pleasure-centered, friend-centered, enemy-centered, church-centered, or self-centered. I will be Christ-centered, showing love to everyone.
9. As a principle-centered person, I will try to separate myself from the emotion of the situation and from other factors that might affect me and evaluate the options.

In his book, Stephan Covey explains each of the other ways to be centered in number 8 above. The decisions you make depend on what your life is centered around. In this post, I will only share what he says about being principle-centered. Though Stephan’s book is not a Christian book, the principles are applicable. So when you read about being principle-centered, think about the truths of God’s word.

Excerpts from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Principles are deep, fundamental truths and classic truths. (e.g., truths found in the Bible.)

Security

1.   Your security is based on correct principles that do not change, regardless of external conditions or circumstances.

2.   You know that true principles can repeatedly be validated in your own life, through your own experiences.

3.   Correct principles help you understand your development, giving you the confidence to learn more, thereby increasing your knowledge and understanding.

4.   Your source of security provides you with an immovable, unchanging, unfailing core, enabling you to see change as an exciting adventure and opportunity to make significant contributions.

Guidance

1.   You are guided by a compass, which enables you to see where you want to go and how you will get there.

2.   You use accurate data, which makes your decisions both implementable and meaningful.

3.   You stand apart from life’s situations, emotions, and circumstances, and look at the balanced whole. Your decisions and actions reflect both short- and long-term considerations and implications.

4.   In every situation, you consciously, proactively determine the best alternative, basing decisions on conscience educated by principles.

Wisdom

1.   Your judgment encompasses a broad spectrum of long-term consequences and reflects a wise balance and quiet assurance.

2.   You see things differently and thus you think and act differently from the largely reactive world.

3.   You see the world in terms of what you can do for the world and its people.

4.   You adopt a proactive lifestyle, seeking to serve and build others.

5.   You interpret life’s experiences in terms of opportunities for learning and contribution.

Power

1.   Your power is limited only by your understanding and observance of natural law and correct principles and by the natural consequences of the principles themselves.

2.   You become a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, largely unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, or actions of others.

3.   Your ability to act reaches far beyond your own resources and encourages highly developed levels of interdependency.

4.   Your decisions and actions are not driven by your current financial or circumstantial limitations.  You experience an interdependent freedom.

Remember that your paradigm (biblical concepts) is the source from which your attitudes and behaviors flow.  A paradigm is like a pair of glasses; it affects the way you see everything in your life.  …As a principle-centered person, you try to stand apart from the emotion of the situation and from other factors that would act on you, and evaluate the options. Looking at the balanced whole–the work needs, the family needs, other needs that may be involved and the possible implications of the various alternative decisions–you’ll try to come up with the best solution, considering all factors.

Writing and Using a Personal Mission Statement

Personal responsibility, or proactivity, is fundamental to the first creation. Returning to the computer metaphor, Habit 1 says, “You are the programmer.” Habit 2, then says, “Write the program.” Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, that you are the programmer, you won’t really invest in writing the program. …As proactive people, we can begin to give expression to what we want to be and to do in our lives.  We can write a personal mission statement, a personal constitution.

Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs.

Using Your Whole Brain

Our self-awareness empowers us to examine our own thoughts.  This is particularly helpful in creating a personal mission statement because the two unique human endowments that enable us to practice Habit 2–imagination and conscience–are primarily functions of the right side of the brain.  Two Ways To Tap The Right Brain:  Through the powers of your imagination, you can visualize your own funeral, as we did at the beginning of this chapter.  Write your own eulogy.  Actually write it out.  Be specific.  What would you like your family to say about you.  What would you like your friends to say about you.  What would you like your co-workers to say about you.

Suppose I am a parent who really deeply loves my children.  Suppose I identify that as one of my fundamental values in my personal mission statement.  But suppose, on a daily basis, I have trouble overreacting.  I can use my right brain power of visualization to write an “affirmation” that will help me become more congruent with my deeper values in my daily life.  A good affirmation has five basic ingredients:  it’s personal, it’s positive, it’s present tense, it’s visual, and it’s emotional.  So I might write something like this:  “It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that I (personal) respond (present tense) with wisdom, love, firmness, and self-control (positive) when my children misbehave.”

      Then I can visualize it.  I can spend a few minutes each day and totally relax my mind and body.  I can think about situations in which my children might misbehave. The more clearly and vividly I can imagine the detail, the more deeply I will experience it, the less I will see it as a spectator.  Then I can see her do something very specific which normally makes my heart pound and my temper start to flare.  But instead of seeing my normal response, I can see myself handle the situation with all the love, the power, the self-control I have captured in my affirmation.  I can write the program, write the script, in harmony with my values, with my personal mission statement.  And if I do this, day after day my behavior will change.  Instead of living out of the scripts given to me by my own parents or by society or by genetics or my environment, I will be living out of the script I have written from my own self-selected value system.  …all the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers.  They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it.  They begin with the end in mind.

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I pray you are inspired to read your Bible to learn more about developing Christ-centered principles. For the sake of time, I will write about Christ-centered principles in the next post.

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All verses are from the English Standard Version. If you find my posts and website helpful, please share this link with your friends and family: hopeforcompletehealing.com. The information is copyright protected. Please do not reproduce any part of the posts or my book without proper citation to Joyce Hanscom and this website. 

My latest book, Unlocking God’s Promises, explains 18 categories of relevant promises to each of our lives. It also includes the promises in Psalm 91.  

If you find this website helpful, you would like to read Breaking Mental Strongholds, which expands on my website book and includes many of my posts. 

Additionally, consider my book Fighting Unseen Battles, which describes the many unhealthy beliefs that control our lives and what the truths are. To learn more about this book, read the post How to Fight Unseen Battles.  

Contact me at hopeforcompletehealing@gmail.com, and ask for a PDF of Eight Life-changing Prayers from the Bible. The prayers are for the Spirit of wisdom, renewal, spiritual strength, knowledge of His will, virtues of God, non-believers, 23rd Psalm, and victory. I will also send you the Lord’s Prayer Model to pray effectively. Please leave your name, so I know you are a real person making the request.