I alluded to this very briefly in my last post but after speaking with Diego I was compelled to go into further depth into the new awakening I had today.

As I concluded listening to 7 habits I began to think about my life, my motives, my perceptionsm and my paradigms and whether or not they were in line with my personal mission statement thus allowing me to achieve the successes that I desire.

My first question to myself was what motivates me to wake up every day and go to work and do the things I do.  The first answer that popped into my head was money.  Simple enough.  Then I realized it can’t be money.  Money is a means not an end.  So how can my motivator be a means.  So then I asked myself what is the ends that money would allow me to achieve?  My first answer was Freedom.  Liberation from debt, freedom to live where I wanted, drive what I wanted, vacation where I wanted, and eat what I wanted.  But what would those things do for me?  They would make me happy.  The ability to choose would make me happy.  So then I got to the root of it.  I am seeking happiness not money.  So my previous perceptions made me believe money was happiness and even though it can help achieve happiness it can never be happiness.

That then brought me to my next realization.  How can money be my sole motivator for business success.  There is not a single exceptional business that operates under the premise “We are here to make money.”  Then I started thinking about these great businesses.  First that came to mind was Apple “Be exceptional, be extraordinary, be different” was there motto.  Not to make money.  Then the scene from Social Network popped in my head when Mark Zuckerburg was pushed to start making the site profitable since they had begun to gain a lot of traffic.  His response was “we don’t even know what it is yet.”  His first instinct was to protect his “baby,” his why.  If it made money it made money but not at the sacrifice of his ideals.  I knew that is what I wanted.

My next step was figuring out my “Why.”  Why do I do what I do?  What value can I find out of my work if any?  And if I couldn’t than maybe I should find something else to do.  Then I realized my why.  It was there from the beginning when I first interviewed with the company.  Few things in life bring me more pleasure than helping people.  As a recruiter and sales man I am in the perfect position to do so.  I can help those in need of a job or a new career opportunity find something that can drastically change their life for the better.  I can also help those who own or have a hand in operating a business drastically improve their personal and professional lives by providing them with qualified and talented IT people to help save them money and most importantly time they could be spending with family.  If I follow this purpose and believe it in every sense the money will follow.  My genuine care for people will cause them to want to do business with me because I believed in my product and believed in my why.

This new awakening was energizing.  I can feel myself more awake, more enthused, more engaged.  I worked past 5 till 545 without even noticing what time it was.  I didn’t care if I was on the clock I had more people to help.  I began to realize how much the book had affected me.  I was now “putting first things first” as Covey would say.  Making the things that were most important in my life a priority.  I wrote my personal mission statement, I started this journal/blog, and I finally “got around to” getting Rosetta stone on my computer so I can learn spanish.  I was engaging myself in the Quadrant 2 activities that Covey speaks about.  It is empowering, it is enlightening…