Week 7--Moving Forward With a Driving Passion

I found this week's learning very interesting.  Guy Kawasaki's gave some great advise about money and passion in his video, Passion vs. Money. He said that the goals we set should be about making the world a better place.  If your goals are set in this manner and you change the world, you will make money.  He said, "Money isn't all that it's cracked up to be."  With money comes more responsibilities. And just because we have money, doesn't mean we will be happy.  Finding our passion is what drives us.  It is what makes us get up in the morning to face the challenges of the day.  I liked being reminded that passion, doing what I enjoy, is more important than making more money doing something I dread.

I also learned about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.  His goals are:

• Be Proactive
• Begin with the end in mind
• Put first things first
• Think win/win
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Synergize
• Sharpen the saw

When we work on Covey's seven habits, we achieve private and public victories as we strive to better ourselves and improve our communication and relationships with others.  I feel that as I work on the habit of beginning with the end in mind, my life will have meaning.  I will have a direction to head and goals to achieve. I like how Covey says to visualize what people will say at your funeral, at your 50th wedding anniversary, ant at your retirement. What do you want them to be saying about you?  Using these visualizations, we should write a mission statement that focuses on "what you want to be (character), do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based." (Stephen R. Covey, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", http://www.summaries.com)  I am excited to take the time to visualize just exactly what I want my end to be and how I am going to get there.