Navigating College With the 7 Habits. Sean Covey

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Foundations

      More than a half century ago, a music executive in London was invited to listen to a new group of four guys who sang and played the guitar. He listened for a while and then shrugged them off. He decided not to offer them a recording contract. “Groups of guitars are on their way out,” he said, and turned down what would become the most popular band in history, a band that would go on to sell more than a billion recordings—the Beatles.

      Today, it seems incredible that anyone in their right mind would turn down the Beatles. So why did this executive do it? The results you get in life flow from the things you do, which in turn flow from the way you see things. We call this the See-Do-Get Cycle. The music executive saw a world in which groups of guitars were losing popularity, so what did he do? Naturally, he turned down the Beatles. And what did he get as a result? Well, he didn’t get to sell a billion recordings.

      Again, the results you get in life flow from the things you do, which in turn flow from the way you see things. For example, if you see hard work as the key to success in life, what will you do? You’ll probably work harder than most people. And what will be your reward? Most likely you’ll achieve what you’re working toward—a degree, a good job, a great family, whatever means success for you. And even if you don’t get all the rewards you want out of your work, you’ll be a lot further down the road toward achieving your goals than those other people who don’t work as hard as you did.

      The See-Do-Get Cycle is at work in your life all the time. For example, if you see your professor as a jerk, you’ll probably ignore his lectures and glare at him during class. What result will you get? Not much learning.

      Clearly, what you See is what you Get in life. If you See yourself as a loser, you’ll probably lose. If you See yourself as a confident person who can succeed with the right kind of help, you probably will succeed. The way you see things is called your paradigm. Other words for paradigm are mindset, perception, belief system, frame of reference, or point of view. Your brain is packed with paradigms. You have political, religious, moral, racial, and social paradigms. You have paradigms about sports, music, art, movies, parents, drugs, sex, dating, studying, drinking, careers, and college. Lots of paradigms are in our heads about ourselves, other people, and the world in general.

      Here are a few everyday paradigms people often have that work against them:

      “I’m not cut out for college.”

      “I’m not a morning person, so I can’t get to class on time.”

      “I’m no good at sports.”

      “I can’t dance.”

      “Study groups are a pain.”

      Of course, none of these paradigms are really true—they’re just beliefs.

      Your paradigms are like lenses through which you view the world. If you see college through positive lenses, you will see it as a great opportunity to build lifelong friendships, tap into brilliant minds, and prepare yourself for a meaningful career. But if you look at college through negative lenses, you’ll see it as an annoying barrier to getting a good job. You will see exams as meaningless games and schoolwork as a waste of time. So, your paradigms of college matter a lot.

      A paradigm is a mental map. Suppose a friend texts you a map on the first day of school and tells you it’s a map of the campus. Running late, you whip out your phone and start making your way to class. Fifteen minutes later, frustration hits. Nothing makes sense. Only then do you realize that your very funny friend has given you the wrong map. Hilarious. So, even if you try really hard and think positive, that map won’t help you find your class.

      If you have the wrong mental maps, you’re not going to make it to your destination. You’ve got to have accurate paradigms of what college requires of you—how to write a paper or take a test, how to get along with others, how to work in study groups, and so forth. If you start now in getting the right mental map of your college experience—of what it takes to succeed—you can avoid all kinds of costly delays and emotional breakdowns.

      The same is true of your life. What are your paradigms of success, of how to use your time, of what life is all about? You can save yourself a lot of grief in the coming years if you examine your paradigms and work to make the off-target ones as accurate as possible.

      So, what is your paradigm of school? Of your future? Of yourself?

      Your most important paradigm is your paradigm of yourself. For Brianna, a student at New York University, the first year of college was a major shock. She was stunned by the huge workload. It seemed like everyone was smarter than she was. “I just knew that I wouldn’t ever be able to keep up,” she said. Despite that crippling mindset, she kept trying. Fortunately, Brianna’s midterm tests brought a pleasant wake-up call: She discovered that she had managed to keep up with her class after all. “At that point, it began to dawn on me,” she said, “that I could compete, and that I could do even better if I stepped up my effort.” And she did. She worked harder, and, at semester’s end, she had scored better than average in each of her classes. But the biggest payoff for Brianna was her new self-paradigm. She no longer saw herself as a loser.

      So, if you say, “I’m not the college type; it’s just not me,” is that really true? Or have you just talked yourself into believing it? I’ll bet it’s a paradigm, and a paradigm is not reality. You can change a paradigm, the way Brianna did. Sometimes it just means that you keep trying. When a person’s paradigm changes, it’s called a Paradigm Shift. If you’ve come straight out of high school, college can be a massive Paradigm Shift, especially if you’ve moved away from home. People talk differently and behave differently—and nobody tells you what to do. Or maybe you’ve been working at a job for years and you’re going back to school to get a degree. Another big Paradigm Shift! School might not be what you remember. You might be stunned that you have to work harder and longer than you would on the job. You might find you’re older than some of your teachers.

      “Going to college was the scariest thing I’ve done,” said Marisol, who had never finished school. “We had three kids and I had a job. But when I looked at who got laid off at work and who didn’t, I saw school was the important differentiator. I needed that degree.” So, she went back. She said, “The first thing I noticed was that college isn’t high school. It was a big adjustment to be in class with people younger than me. I felt so old! But then I got into it and nobody seemed to care how old I was. Plus, I was paying for it, so I cared a lot more!”

      So, you act according to your paradigms—the way you see things—in everything you do. Your paradigm of other people impacts how you make friends. Your paradigm of alcohol impacts how much—or if—you drink. Your paradigm of grades impacts how much you study. Your paradigms drive what you DO every day.

      Now, what you repeatedly do is called a habit, like brushing your teeth, texting in class, or waking up late.

      Do you have a string of ineffective habits, like gaming for ten hours a day or habitually putting other people down?