The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens
The International Bestseller Updated for the Digital Age
By Sean Covey
Category: Parenting | Reading Duration: 18 min | Rating: 4.5/5 (79 ratings)
About the Book
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (2011) invites teenagers to begin taking charge of their lives by teaching them seven habits that help them thrive and will set them up for a successful future.
Who Should Read This?
- Parents and guardians of teens
- Teachers and other role models
- Leadership coaches
What’s in it for me? Get the roadmap to success for you and your favorite teen.
Anyone who’s benefited from the classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People might be wondering how to instill those tried and true habits for success into a teenager – a person at the brink of adulthood. Teenagers are, of course, people too – so everything we know about highly effective people can also be applied to teens. The habits are the same, but the contexts are different. So in this Blink, we’ll break down the classic 7 habits and show how they can best be understood by a teen and applied to challenges that are common to their age group. You can get value out of each habit individually and out of order – but if you take them in sequentially, you’ll start to see how they all build on each other to form a strong, resilient, healthy human being.
Chapter 1: Habit One: Be Proactive, and take responsibility for your responses to the world around you.
Responsibility means being the boss of your life. For kids and teenagers, responsibility can get a bad reputation. They often don’t understand that it’s about more than just doing chores and homework. Responsibility is about owning the way you react and relate to your circumstances. Life throws curveballs, from smaller things like everyday rudeness– to larger things like experiencing discrimination or losing a loved one. In every situation, people generally fall into two categories: reactive and proactive. A reactive person sees the circumstances as things that are happening to them. They see the world as a place they don’t control, and they often feel like a victim. Proactive people, on the other hand, recognize that even though they can’t control everything that happens, they can control how they respond to it. Take, for instance, the example of dealing with a rude customer. One young woman found herself scanning groceries for her customer when he interrupted her to tell her that she’d started scanning the next customer’s groceries. The young woman started getting angry. Why wouldn’t the guy stop her before she started scanning? To make matters worse, the man informed her that she’d charged the wrong price for his broccoli, and he was right. At this point, the young woman was feeling frazzled. But she remembered something she’d learned. She paused to take a breath. Then she took responsibility for her mistake by correcting the price on the broccoli. Finally, she informed the man that if he could remember to place the bar behind his groceries next time, this sort of thing could be avoided. While there are certainly worse situations that can happen, the habit required is the same. As you can see in the young woman’s story, there are a few steps to follow.When things get heated, press pause. Take a breath, calm down, and then do the right thing. Take responsibility for anything that you’ve done or need to repair. And remember that taking responsibility doesn’t mean letting people walk all over you. It’s important to make sure people understand and respect your personal boundaries. This first habit, being proactive and taking responsibility, is the foundation for every other habit. It is critical for a successful life.
Chapter 2: Habit Two: Begin with the end in mind, and create a vision for your life as a whole.
Having an eye on the future helps you make better decisions today. That’s why the second habit is to know what you want or need out of any situation before taking action. You can start to see why these habits are sequential. You can’t begin making decisions based on a projected future until you first know how to be proactive and take responsibility for how you react to your circumstances. It takes that level of self-control to be able to apply enough discipline to make a future-based decision. That’s because making a decision based on how you want the future to be often means going against something you want to do right now. Examples of this occur most obviously for teenagers in the areas of friendship, sex, and school. Pausing to think of future things like goals or resolutions before making a decision affects which friends you choose to surround yourself with. Are you spending time with people who are hurting your chances of graduating in the top ten percent of your class? Or are you hanging out with people who share the same values as you and are helping you to grow? Making decisions based on your goals and values is a big step toward achieving success in life. But what if you don’t have any goals? What if you don’t know what you want? You can’t keep your eye on the prize if you don’t know what the prize is. So in that case, it’s particularly helpful to make your decisions based on your values. That’s where a personal mission statement comes in handy. Writing out who you are, what’s important to you, what you’re good at, and any principles or behaviors you hold valuable can help you make better decisions. Your mission statement acts as your guide when you find yourself struggling to make the best choice. Once you have a mission statement, you’ll want to start making goals. When you decide on something you want to work toward, take some time to think about what’s going to be required to achieve this goal. Then write it down. Studies show a goal written down has a higher chance of being accomplished. Next, take action towards accomplishing your goal. Take advantage of the energy around moments like New Year’s or anniversaries to get the momentum going. Finally, surround yourself with the support you need to succeed. Now that you understand the first two habits, let’s move on to number three.
Chapter 3: Habit Three: Put first things first, and manage your time effectively.
At this point we’ve already talked about taking responsibility for your choices, and making choices based on your future. Now it’s time to talk about the action you have to take to advance towards your goals. To get there, habit three tells us to put first things first. This habit has two parts: managing time, and managing fear. Managing time means exactly what it sounds like: planning. To get the most out of your time and continue progressing towards your goals, it’s best to establish regular planning habits. Both daily and weekly planning are essential. The weekly plan helps you know what’s coming, and the daily planning helps you make adjustments as you go. You have to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, and that means making adjustments to any future plans that get altered. Planning also takes the burden off of you to remember everything. By writing it down and scheduling it out, you’re freeing up brain space to focus on other things or even to rest a little bit. The second part of habit three is stepping out of your comfort zone. Realize, first, that comfort zones aren’t inherently bad. You need a way to self-soothe and seek rest and comfort. Sometimes it’s okay to block off a Saturday, stay in your pajamas, and just take it easy. But when it comes to reaching your goals, you can’t avoid things that make you uncomfortable. Whether it’s public speaking, networking, applying for a new job, or learning a new skill, stepping out of your comfort zone allows you to grow and develop as a person.
Chapter 4: Habit Four: Think Win-Win.
Claire was a good basketball player. She’d developed a particular shot that she could get pretty consistently and was getting the team lots of points. She was becoming something of a star – until her teammate, Diana, started to get jealous. Diana started keeping the ball, not passing it to Claire when she had a chance. Claire’s will to fight back was strong and she began working to keep the ball from Diana. Overall, this had a negative effect on the team. But then Claire got some advice from her father. He suggested she pass the ball to Diana every time she got it. This didn’t make any sense to Claire, but she tried it. What ended up happening was that through that small action, Claire managed to open the door to rebuild their working relationship. Diana was able to score, and feeling good about herself, she did what was best for the team and passed to Claire whenever necessary. From working together, they helped their team win more games, and both of them shot their record number of points. In life, as in sports, we win best when we win together. The fourth habit is called win-win, and it means making choices that serve the bigger goal rather than your immediate desires. Again, these habits are sequential and this one won’t work if you’re a reactionary person without a vision for the bigger future and goals. Reactionary people may find themselves winning at the expense of other people, as Diana was doing at the beginning of the story. Or they may find themselves accepting a permanent place in life as a “loser” to avoid conflict. There is power in realizing that other people don’t have to lose in order for you to win. That, in fact, you win even bigger when other people are winning with you. This may require challenging your sense of competitiveness or rethinking how you compare yourself to others, but once you do, you’ll experience greater success in life.
Chapter 5: Habit Five: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
As a teenager, Julie was afflicted with anorexia. Anorexia is, of course, a dangerous disease, and that’s why everyone in Julie’s life was trying to push her to get help. But Julie didn’t want help – she was miserable being surrounded by people trying to fix her. When Julie went to college and met her three roommates, they immediately noticed how emaciated she was and how disordered her eating habits were. These roommates could have tried to help her, but instead, they spent their time trying to understand her. They got to know her, accepted her, and continued to live their lives in front of her with an open invitation for her to join them. In the end, these relationships helped Julie accept herself enough to start eating again. Our desire to help can often end up backfiring. We’ve learned a lot about what causes people to fall into addiction or self-harm, and about what is and isn’t working in terms of helping. It turns out that the deepest human desire is to be understood. So when you offer that to someone, you’re giving them the most important thing one human can give to another. It starts with listening. Most people listen the wrong way – they’re really just waiting for their turn to talk. Or they listen while formulating their argument, solution, or answer to what’s being said. While there are many tips on how to be a good listener, the first thing you must do is actually, sincerely care about understanding what the other person is saying. If you are sincere in your motivation to listen and understand, then you can use the following tips. First, listen with your eyes, your ears, and your body. You want to turn towards the person, make eye contact, and actively engage with what they’re saying. Second, you need to empathize. That means thinking about what you would do or feel if you were in their situation. It means trying to understand them even if it’s a situation you’ve never experienced before. Finally, practice being a mirror. This doesn’t mean repeating back to them everything they say or mimicking them. Instead, it means digesting what you heard, and then saying it back in your own words. For example: Roommate: “I can’t believe you ate some of my granola bars. I had those portioned out to last me all week.” You: “You don’t like that I took them without asking.” Roommate: “I don’t like that you took them at all. They weren’t communal snacks.” You: “I see. You meant them to be just for you, and I made the assumption that they were for everybody.” Roommate: “Yes. The wrong assumption.” You: “I’m sorry about that. I’ll replace the ones I ate, and maybe we can keep a marker in the kitchen and put our names on the things that we don’t want to share.” In this example, you mirrored back what you heard and found out that you were off base. When you mirrored it back the second time, your roommate then felt heard and understood. Only then could you approach a solution to the problem. Always try to understand before jumping to conclusions.
Chapter 6: Habit Six: Synergize
Synergy occurs when you work with others to achieve a higher goal. The habit of creating synergy is where you really start to see the compounding effects of all the previous habits. Let’s say you’ve had a vacation planned for ages, and all of a sudden, the night before leaving, your teenager says they don’t want to go. They want to stay home and spend time with their friends. This is a high tension moment that can bring up a lot of feelings. You may feel annoyed because there isn’t room in your schedule for teenage meltdowns. You might feel hurt that your child is rejecting you like this. Regardless, it’s important to remember habit one, to press pause, and remember that you are in control of how you respond to this situation. Fortunately, there’s a good framework for working through our differences. Step one is defining the problem. In the case of this vacation, the problem is that you want everything to go smoothly and your child wants to stay home. Your two desires are at odds with each other. Before you go offering solutions, take some time to understand where your child is coming from. Practice listening and mirroring from habit five. You: “I’m surprised because we’ve had this planned and now you’re saying you don’t want to go.” Teen: “I’d just rather spend time with my friends.” You: “You’ve got plans for spending time with them.” Teen: “No, I just know they’re going to be hanging out, and if I go on this vacation, they’ll have all these stories that I won’t be part of.” You: “You’re afraid of being left out.” Teen: “Well, when you put it like that…” You: “It’s not bad that you feel that way. No one likes to feel excluded or left out.” At this point, you can begin to have a productive conversation. If your child feels understood, they should be able to listen as you make yourself understood. You can explain why you planned the vacation and what you think is good about it.After that, you can work with your child to come up with a solution that is best for everyone. Parenting and synergy with your kids can be a bit more challenging than work situations, mostly because there are some moments when the best solution does involve your child feeling as though they lost. Your ultimate goal is to help teach your child how to make the best decisions for themselves beyond their immediate desires and with a focus on the big picture.
Chapter 7: Habit Seven: Sharpen the saw, and make time to take care of yourself.
Every body, mind, heart, and soul require maintenance. The seventh and final habit is about maintaining balance and good health in four dimensions of life. The first is your body. The link between physical health and mental and emotional health has been scientifically proven. There is a biological component to how we feel and what we achieve. With that said, it’s important to keep a healthy diet and exercise regimen, which most people know. But it’s also important to get the right amount of sleep, take time to groom yourself, and put effort into how you present yourself. If you ever find yourself starting to feel bad about yourself, the first thing to check is whether you’ve let your physical health slip. Your brain is the second dimension of your life. Reading, having conversations, and trying new things are all ways to help keep your brain in good health. School is an important component in success but it shouldn’t be relied upon to keep the brain growing. Instead, you need to develop good learning habits that can continue beyond school. Your heart is the third dimension of life. This one is all about your relationships. You want to strike that fine balance between taking care of yourself and giving within your relationships. Generosity and love towards others, maintaining closeness with your trusted loved ones, and cultivating a community of support are all vital to your long-term success. The last dimension is your soul. Even if you aren’t religious, you can still feed your soul. This can be done through meditation, yoga, or indulging your creative side. When all four dimensions are in balance, you’re living your best life and can accomplish great things.
Final Summary
Being a successful teenager and an effective adult means building good habits from the inside out. It all starts with how you approach life. Are you a sailboat tossed on the seas, or are you a captain capable of surviving rough storms? As you begin taking charge of your life, you start developing a different approach to relationships. You find yourself able to listen and understand before judging or problem-solving. Being able to do this, you then follow a healthier framework for conflict management. At last, you’re able to maintain your health, well-being, and success through intentional self-care and relationship care.
About the Author
Sean Coveyis the son of Dr. Stephen H. Covey, author of the global bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and founder of FranklinCovey, a leadership coaching company. Sean Covey is a business executive, author, speaker, and innovator. He is President of FranklinCovey Education, which fosters transforming education throughout the world through a principle-centered leadership approach.