[00:04]Excellence Is Not an Act, but a Habit
[00:09]Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits.
[00:13]¡°Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit;
[00:19]sow a habit, reap a character;
[00:21]sow a character, reap a destiny,¡± the maxim goes.
[00:26]Habits are powerful factors in our lives.
[00:29]Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns,
[00:32]they constantly, daily, express our character
[00:36]and produce our effectiveness or ineffectiveness.
[00:39]As Horace Mann, the great educator, once said,
[00:42]¡°Habits are like a cable.
[00:44]We weave a strand of it everyday and soon it cannot be broken.¡±
[00:49]I personally do not agree with the last part of his expression.
[00:53]I know habits can be learned and unlearned.
[00:55]But I also know it isn¡¯t a quick fix.
[00:57]It involves a process and a tremendous commitment.
[01:01]Those of us who watched the lunar voyage of Apollo 11 were transfixed
[01:05]as we saw the first men walk on the moon and return to earth.
[01:10]But to get there, those astronauts literally had to
[01:14]break out of the tremendous gravity pull of the earth.
[01:17]More energy was spent in the first few minutes of lift-off,
[01:20]in the first few miles of travel,
[01:22]than was used over the next several days to travel half a million miles.
[01:27]Habits, too, have tremendous gravity pull¡ª
[01:31]more than most people realize or would admit.
[01:35]Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination,
[01:39]impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness
[01:45]involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives.
[01:49]¡°Lift off¡± takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull,
[01:55]our freedom takes on a whole new dimension.
[01:59]Like any natural force, gravity pull can work with us or against us.
[02:03]The gravity pull of some of our habits may currently
[02:09]be keeping us from going where we want to go.
[02:11]But it is also gravity pull that keeps our world together,
[02:14]that keeps the planets in their orbits and our universe in order.
[02:18]It is a powerful force, and if we use it effectively,
[02:23]we can use the gravity pull of habit to create the cohesiveness and
[02:27]order necessary to establish effectiveness in our lives.