How to Coach Yourself and Others From Dependency to Inter Dependency | Page 5

To love is a verb. It’s what you do: empathize,
appreciate, affirm, stimulate, sacrifice, listen, and
giving of self. “Love”, the feeling, is a fruit of
“love”, the verb.
Happiness, like unhappiness, is a choice: we can be
happy if we accept those things, which at present
we cannot control, while we focus our efforts on
the things we can.
Proactive people concentrate on their circle of
influence, which is: the things they can do
something about. They thus cause their circle of
influence to increase.
Reactive people focus a lot of time and energy to
their much wider circle of concerns: the things they
have little or no impact on, such as the weakness of
other people or the problems in the environment.
This leads to feelings of victimization and causes
their circle of influence to shrink.
The commitments we make to ourselves and to
others, and our integrity to those commitments, is
the essence and the clearest manifestation of our
proactivity and of our personal growth.

2. Begin with the end in mind
If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place
faster.
All things are created twice: there’s a first or mental creation, and a second or physical creation.
But not all first creations are by our own conscious design: if we do not become responsible for first
creation, we empower people and circumstances outside our circle of influence to shape much of our
lives by default. We then reactively live the scripts handed to us by family, associates, … other
people’s agendas.
Leadership, the 1st creation, is determining what is right for us and which things we want to
accomplish. It is based on imagination (vision) and conscience (principles and values).
Management, the 2nd creation, is determining how to do things right. It is based on technical skills.