Читать книгу The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Стивен Кови - Страница 25

PRINCIPLES OF GROWTH AND CHANGE

The glitter of the Personality Ethic, the massive appeal, is that there is some quick and easy way to achieve quality of life—personal effectiveness and rich, deep relationships with other people—without going through the natural process of work and growth that makes it possible.

It’s symbol without substance. It’s the “get rich quick” scheme promising “wealth without work.” And it might even appear to succeed—but the schemer remains.

The Personality Ethic is illusory and deceptive. And trying to get high quality results with its techniques and quick fixes is just about as effective as trying to get to some place in Chicago using a map of Detroit.

In the words of Erich Fromm, an astute observer of the roots and fruits of the Personality Ethic:

Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth.

In all of life, there are sequential stages of growth and development. A child learns to turn over, to sit up, to crawl, and then to walk and run. Each step is important and each one takes time. No step can be skipped.