A book about change.

There's a book called the 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', its a very good book about self change. I never got to finish it, I couldn't get past habit 3 and every now and again I'd come back to that book, be invigorated to change myself and it works for a week then I caught up in whatever and forget about it for a good long time. Frankly, this book has been an immense help to my personal development. I think I discovered this book during the year of 2008 or 2007, it made me realize that the problems I face was not due to outside stimuli: God, genetics, politics, the world was not at fault. Things happen and as conscious beings we have the power of choice.

The book talked about choice, the concept of perception, and living by principle I'm sure there was much more if I had read it all. One thing I learned from this book was perception. This is my favourite excerpt from the book:

I remember a mini-Paradigm Shift I experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York.

People were sitting quietly -- some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.

Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and

rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.

The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The

children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people's papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive to let his

children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, "Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more?"

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, "Oh, you're right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I guess they don't know how to handle it either."

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things

differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man's pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. "Your wife just died? Oh, I'm so sorry. Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?" Everything changed in an instant.

The idea of paradigms and changes in perception liberated my mind from preconceptions and baseless assumptions. I do still assume things passively and subconsciously but I have yet to act upon it. That's only one of the things I've actually managed to integrate into my life from that book. I'm still undisciplined and my emotions sometimes get the better of me. Right now, I wish I had that book with me.

I still have so much to change in such a short time.