Ahhhh, right, it's the thermostat!!!!!!!! For years and years I've been wondering what it is!! And how very true it is that 'the thermostat setting usually gets programmed in early childhood before we can think for ourselves.'
I cannot tell you how this resonated with me.
That's why the ability to 'unlearn' is so very very important....if I'm going to go all the way re. not making excuses, not blaming circumstance etc etc, I've got to sort this thermostat out. Well, after 40-odd years I've just discovered this thermostat, I didn't even know it existed until today. And I have to tell you it's looking pretty ropey. It's probably beyond repair, looks like it was stuck on the lowest setting for years and years and someone put a lot of effort into unsticking it... so I've decided to replace it with a BRAND NEW thermostat! A top of the range job.
Superb stuff, thank you so, so much.

Cheers! I was just talking to my daughter about an hour ago - she is 21 now and has just become a mum. It was nice for her to reflect on how the book influenced her and really laid the foundations for her future. She bought it for all her friends as birthday presents! There's also a workbook, I think. All excellent stuff!

Wow! This is really interesting - wherabouts are you? I work in education here in the UK and can only begin to imagine the impact of schools using the 7 habits for kids as their core foundation! Here in the UK personal development in schools has taken on much more importance over the last 5 years or so, but I have never been convinced that we are going about this in the right way, sometimes dealing with the symptom (eg, having classes for anger management for kids) rather than looking at the cause and instilling all the good stuff from the word go. At the moment my aim is to work with teachers and support staff on all this - I think that's a good place to start!

I'm in the UK, so I the timing is working out well for me!
The 7 Habits was the first 'personal development' book I read - about 9 years ago- and I have to admit that at the time, although I could see its brilliance, I didn't find it an 'easy read'. Seven habits seemed like quite a lot for the beginner to take in all at once! But it changed things for ever in more ways than one. Covey's 'principle centred' approach is pretty much timeless. The story about 'sharpening the saw' is one that never loses its power with me, and whenever I find myself too tired to invest time in really important stuff I remind myself of this.
There's one quote in the book that, above all others, has stuck with me through some 'bad times'. It's something like 'Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.' This always makes me think about how important it is for me to have total control of that space between stimulus and response - because when I've lost that control, that's when less-than-good things have happened.
The other way in which this changed my life was that when my (then) teenage daughter saw the 7 Habits book, she found another book, written by Covey's son, called 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens'. She lived by this book, and her optimism and positivity as a teenager was an absolute joy.

Great start to the challenge, no doubt. It seems that 'don't take anything personally' has struck a chord with so many people, myself included. It's interesting that when we talk about 'taking things personally' it's almost always associated with negative stuff....sometimes people will say 'don't take this personally, but...' and then go on to say something really negative that most will indeed take personally, get upset and let it affect them. So what I'm trying to do is to filter stuff, pay attention to what energises me (and at times that might include constructive - as opposed to destructive - criticism) and reject a whole load of other rubbish. I read once that in order for anyone to make us feel worthless, upset, stressed, worried etc, we have to give them our permission. So I don't.
But I do give people permission to use words that energise me and ultimately make me grow! And I choose to take that sort of stuff personally!