Private Victory

Welcome to Private Victory.

That title references a concept introduced by Stephen Covey in his landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This concept encompasses three “habits”:

1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with the End in Mind
3. Put First things First

Even if you haven’t read the book, each of these should intuitively make sense. I will loosely based this website on exploring each of these habits and applying them to your life. Why dedicate a whole website to this concept? Simply because I find it instrumental in creating a good life. As mentioned at Philosopher’s Notes, “if we want all the joys of outward success, first we must master ourselves”.

Covey also introduces one other concept I will address: Sharpening The Saw. This means to create a daily process of renewal, for example exercising, meditating or reading. In some cases, I will break this into two separate topics:

1. Creating a flexible, efficient daily process that takes little effort to maintain.
2. Defining renewal in a way that uniquely applies to you.

Plenty of people experience private victory everyday, and sometimes those victories become public. They range from the famous:

• Bill Gates - through an almost maniac strength-of-will and dumb luck, this Harvard drop-out started the most successful software company in history.
• Oprah Winfery - despite sexual abuse and poverty, Oprah reigns supreme with a world famous talk show that influences the opinions of millions of Americans on a daily basis.

The pseudo-famous:

• J.K. Rowling - divorced after just giving birth to a new baby girl and diagnosed with a suicidal depression, she rose above welfare to become one of the most well-known authors of the 21st century.
• Randy Pausch - a brilliant and highly respected CMU professor earns a spot on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list for giving the lecture of his life (literally) and through which touched the hearts of millions of Americans, only to succumb to pancreatic cancer months later. As an added note, due to his professed love of Star Trek, J.J. Abrams sent Mr. Pausch a personal email offering him a small part in new movie. He even got to keep the uniform.

And, the almost famous:

• Steve Pavlina - a man whose journey of personal growth started while sitting in a jail cell for shop-lifting, overcame his own inner demons to transform into a well-known and respected voice in the Internet self-improvement community, even publishing a book called Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth.
• Sean Stephenson - the most confident man in the world, due to an incredibly debilitating illness, remains permanently bound to a wheel-chair, but he speaks with a reality so strong and a charm so infectious that chair and disability melt into the background, leaving one of the most inspirational, humble and motivational human beings you’ll ever hear.

Of course, I could list many more. In fact, I will leave you with one of my favorites: the story of Chris Gardner, a self-made millionaire who lived homeless with his young son for a year while training at Dean Witter Reynolds. Will Smith portrayed Gardner in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness and I’ve embedded the trailer here. Do your best to pause it around 2:13:

For me, that image epitomizes the essence of private victory: a man walking in a crowd, yet still alone, appaulding himself for perserving enough to do the impossible while knowing that he can’t ever share the true depth of the experience with anyone.

Private victory.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest you pick it up. Will Smith upped his game and gave the performance of his life…another private victory.