A 21st Century 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

A 12-Year Project Completed

It is not often that one completes a 12-year project.  I recently had the chance to do just that by publishing a groundbreaking new book.  It is called, Self-Action Leadership: The Key to Personal, Professional, & Global Freedom.  

The result is the much anticipated release of a 21st Century analogue to Stephen R. Covey's famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

This Generation Next "Personal Leadership Handbook" is as different from the original 7 Habits as it is similar.  While it's tone, format, length, and anecdotally rich content strikingly diverges from Covey's 1990s work, its commitment to teaching, modeling, and championing correct principles that promote "Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" is just as effervescent and vibrant.

I first read Covey's timeless classic in 2001 to fulfill a requirement in a college leadership course.  Simply stated, the book changed my life.  To this day, with the exception of sacred religious texts that are near and dear to my heart, it has influenced my life more than any other book.  By 2003, I had a pretty clear vision of my life's professional purpose -- to write an analogue to the 7 Habits and start a company that might serve a new generation as ably as Stephen R. Covey and Hyrum W. Smith's contributions and companies served the last.

My son, Tucker, with
my well-worn copy
of the 7 Habits

The difficulty of this ambitious and audacious undertaking has been perennially perplexing and persistently painful, yet inexplicably rewarding and profoundly fulfilling.  Fraught with seemingly endless challenges, rejections, and failure over the course of the past decade, the journey also brought countless moments of satisfaction, success, and even elation.  More importantly, it bore much fruit in my own life, and is now beginning to bear fruit in the lives of others.

I can say without any reservations that the principles Covey and Smith taught in their masterful books over the years are as veracious as they are beneficial.  I know because I have thoroughly tested them in the laboratory of my own life.  Moreover, my careful study and application of them helped pave the way to the production of Self-Action Leadership, which I earnestly desire will help those in the 21st Century as ably as Covey's 7 Habits and Smith's 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time & Life Management assisted those in the 20th Century and beyond.  As I mention in my "Special Tribute" to both FranklinCovey Co-Founders in my book, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." (Isaac Newton).

Click HERE to read my personal tributes to Hyrum W. Smith, Stephen R. Covey, & Charles C. Manz, whose work proved foundational to my own.

Self-Action Leadership presents an original THEORY and MODEL of self-leadership.  This new scholarship has been diligently hewn out of the ore of my own life's crucibles. It is further rooted in doctoral level action research and carefully corroborated by a cornucopia of wisdom literature spanning several millennia.

This insightful guide to freedom, success, and most importantly--personal change--signals a new era in self-help literature and the science of personal development.  It also aims to usher in a whole new cultural era in the Occident, namely, an AGE of AUTHENTICISM -- marked by character, integrity, hard work, and personal reliance -- which is destined to replace the perilous, perjurious, prurient, and pernicious era of POSTMODERNISM that has increasingly dominated Western Culture in the last 50 years.

Click HERE to learn more about the Self-Action Leadership THEORY

CLICK HERE to learn more about the Self-Action Leadership MODEL

Ranging far beyond the home, classroom, schoolhouse, or corporation, SAL aims to lead a resurgence of American Greatness and Leadership on the World Stage by influencing a renaissance of character and integrity by providing an education in True Principles based on Universal Laws of Natural Acquisition.

I love my Country.  I am proud to be an American, and have been saddened to observe the salient decline of our great nation.  Despite the perplexing problems that presently persist throughout our 50 States and other territories, I remain optimistic about her future.  I wrote Self-Action Leadership -- a non-partisan, secular, educational based personal development manual for my Country.  It is my way of saying THANK YOU to this great land, as well as all those who have made it the greatest nation in the world and the "Last best hope of Earth." (Lincoln)

I am who I am, and have accomplished what I have in large part because of the liberty, hope, opportunity, and inspiration I have derived from living in this blessed and magnanimous land of promise.

It is PAYBACK time!

By capitalizing on the tremendous liberty my Country has afforded me, I have been able to pursue and achieve personal freedom in a wonderfully remarkable manner.  It is my earnest hope that this manual will serve my Country in coming years by helping to preserve our liberty and expand the freedoms of others to ensure that our best day's are ahead of us -- not behind us.

Click HERE to watch Dr. Jensen's vision of restoring American Greatness through Education

Self-Action Leadership is written on the premise that organizational, national, and even international change is predicated on personal change; it all starts with the individual.  As individual units of an entity develop character, capacity, and competence, organizational conglomerates improve by a factor of those individual changes, and the accompanying synergistic infusion of efficiency, effectiveness, and prosperity can be staggering.

All lasting SUCCESS begins with EDUCATION

Talk to just about anyone and they'll offer up plenty of blame and point a plethora of fingers at other people and entities as they didactically diagnose the panoply of problems we presently face.  What is unfortunately rare is to find someone willing to look in the mirror, admit the presence of one's own bag full of blemishes, and then begin the process of fixing the only thing any of us has any real control over -- our own thoughts, speech, actions, attitudes, biases, and beliefs.

Our goal at Freedom Focused, and the aim of Self-Action Leadership, is to reverse this depressing trend, and return power to the people as one-by-one, individuals embrace a lifelong commitment to personal change and excellence.

Whatever your political persuasion, sexual orientation, race, culture, gender, or personality, I believe we can all unite in a pursuit of personal purification through self-awareness, personal discipline, and an accession of Universal Laws that govern both the physical world and the metaphysical results we garner by virtue of our thoughts, speech, and actions.

We invite you to join us in this movement aimed at restoring American Greatness and promoting World Peace through a dedication to individual excellence and integrity.  There can be no greater contemporary, national quest.  The impending perils of the future demand that we prepare now to tackle the trials we inevitably face down the road.  Let us prepare now lest we be swallowed up when the fiery heat of the refining fires of the future blast forth to test our mettle and see what we are really made of.

You can begin this preparatory stage now, by reading this new groundbreaking book.

CLICK on one of the links below to buy your own copy of SELF-ACTION LEADERSHIP: The Key to Personal, Professional, & Global Freedom.

Buy a HARD COPY version of Self-Action Leadership

Buy an e-Copy version of Self-Action Leadership

Buy an e-version of SAL at AMAZON.COM

* Best Deal * Buy hard-copy and e-version copies of SAL at BARNES & NOBLE.COM  * Best Deal *

Click HERE to read what the EXPERTS are saying about Dr. Jordan R. Jensen and Self-Action Leadership

Click HERE to read about the AGE of AUTHENTICISM that Freedom Focused is Championing in an effort to prod POSTMODERNISM into the pages of history

Click HERE to read the Book's Foreword, written by Christopher P. Neck, Ph.D., University Master Teacher, Arizona State University; and the Book's Afterword, written by David G. Anthony, Ed.D., CEO of Raise Your Hand Texas

Click HERE to read the Author's Preface

Click HERE to watch Dr. Jensen's Full Speech on Restoring American Greatness through Education

Click HERE to watch Dr. Jensen's Introductory Seminar on Self-Action Leadership

The REAL Problem Facing America

Tonight is the third Republican Presidential Debate. It will be broadcasted live from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The Liberty to Vote is a Great Blessing of a Democracy

Freedom Focused is NOT a political entity, nor does it endorse political parties or candidates. We do, however, encourage everyone to attend to their civic duty to get informed and participate in the political process -- one of the greatest gifts and liberties we possess as citizens of a democratic republic.

Our Country currently faces grave troubles. One of the avenues of addressing societal challenges is politics. As such, it behooves every American to stay informed, support candidates you believe in, and then let your voice be heard at the voting booth.

So far, I have had a chance to watch both Republican debates as well as the first Democratic debate. I enjoyed watching both party debates, and learned a great deal in doing so. The day after one of the debates, a Focus Group was queried as to their thoughts on how a particular debate played out.

With relation to one candidate whose personal and professional character was being scrutinized by the questioner, a member of the Focus Group said (to cheers from his comrades): "we need to move past little personal infractions because our Country has much bigger issues to deal with."

When I heard this man's comment, I thought about the work we are undertaking at Freedom Focused. As a corporation, we believe that the "Quality of the Individual is Supreme" -- a principle taught over a century ago by President Theodore Roosevelt. As such, we are dedicated to developing principle-centered leaders who possess sterling individual character.

All politics aside, the man in the Focus Group man could not have articulated a more eloquent inverse of what the REAL problem is in our country. Little did he -- and his colleagues know -- how backwards his formula for problem solving really is, yet sadly, much of the Country agrees with him, and has for several decades now. It seems almost no one wants to take personal responsibility for their individual, or our collective, problems. Likewise, nearly everyone is eager to blame others while making excuses for, and covering up any evidence of, their own character deficiencies.

It ALL begins with the Individual

You cannot solve macro problems by allowing micro problems to go unchecked. Nor can you save the outside of something by permitting its inside to rot. The only way to sanitize and fix the outer vessel of a person, couple, family, neighborhood, school, organization, state, or nation, is to cleanse and sanctify its inner vessel.

Cleaning the inner vessel through character development is where our focus lies at Freedom Focused. As an organization, we are dedicated to the "Quality of the Individual."

 If you'd like to learn more, please peruse some of the archived articles on this blog, sign up to receive future blog posts by adding your e-mail address in the white box on the right hand side of this page that says, "Follow by E-mail," and check out our website at www.freedomfocused.com

And don't forget to do your civic due diligence to stay informed, including watching ALL of the Presidential Debates as you seek to cast well-informed votes this coming November, as well as in next year's Presidential and other elections.

Timely Advice about Social Media Use from the Father of Time Management

What does the FATHER OF TIME MANAGEMENT have to say about social media use and human productivity?

Hyrum W. Smith

"Much of the time we spend on Social Media is incredibly destructive to human productivity."

- Hyrum W. Smith

Hyrum W. Smith, Co-Founder of FranklinCovey, is sometimes referred to as The Father of Time Management.  As an originator of the world famous Franklin Day Planning system, Smith has trained hundreds of thousands of business professionals all over the world to become more productive and effective in an effort to generate professional success, strengthen relationships, and obtain inner peace.

While a LOT has changed about our world in the past 32 years, one thing remains the same, and that is the existence of Natural Laws in our world and Universe.  Some Natural Laws are physical in nature and govern naturally occurring forces (e.g., gravity, torque, entropy, etc.).  Other Natural Laws are metaphysical in nature and govern consequences related to human thoughts and behavior.

Over two decades ago, Hyrum W. Smith published a best-selling book called The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time & Life Management.  The book sold over one million copies and helped countless individuals (including me -- I read the book back in 1998) become more productive and effective human beings and business professionals.

In a recent interview with Hyrum for an academic project I am working on, I asked Hyrum if there was anything he would change about that book based on his experiences and lessons learned over the past 21 years.  His answer: Not really.  Why?  Because according to Hyrum, nothing has changed over the last 6,000 years about metaphysical natural laws of human productivity and effectiveness.

What has changed?  According to Hyrum, the tools with which we plan our day have changed and will continue to do so with increasing speed, but the principles of effective time management and life leadership have not, nor will they ever change.

As such, he has some timely advice for all of us -- and especially the Millennial Generation -- about how we can be more productive and effective at work and at home, and his advice deals with our use of SOCIAL MEDIA.  According to Hyrum:

"I think social media is probably one of the biggest deterrents to human productivity on the Planet right now.  This is not to say it is all bad.  Clearly it is a two-edged sword.  For example, because of the Internet we can get things done faster and communicate better.  The problem lies with the enticement--the seductive nature of social media which pulls us into avenues of activity that have nothing to do with being productive workers, loving family members, or effective human beings.  Because people allow themselves to get pulled into counterproductive activities on social media, they collectively waste billions of hours every single day all over the Planet.  Posting too often on facebook and instagram, et cetera, can be a horrible waste of time.  If I could get Millennials to do one thing, I would reduce the amount of time they fool around with social medial to less than 30 minutes a day.  Right now they spend hours a day and it’s unbelievably destructive to human productivity." 

So there you have it folks...  While social media can be a wonderful enhancer to relationships and productivity (after all, I am utilizing social medial to proliferate this message about productivity), it can also be a great destroyer of the same.  I invite you to join Hyrum and me in carefully evaluating how much time you spend each day on social media, and then determine whether your social media activities are contributing to, or diminishing, your personal and professional productivity.  

To learn more about Hyrum's latest thinking on TIME MANAGEMENT, I encourage you to check out his new book: The 3 Gaps.  In this new book, Hyrum spells out the three gaps we often find in our lives: 1). The Belief Gap  2). The Time Gap  3). The Value Gap.  The reward for closing these three gaps in your life is the priceless treasure of Inner Peace.  Check out this book to learn what you can do beginning today to close the gaps in your own life to achieve Inner Peace. 

Click HERE to buy The 3 Gaps  

Click HERE to learn about 3 Gaps Training    

30 Days of Real Life Campaign #30DRL

Note: This essay is dedicated to my wife, Lina, as well as to her friends -- especially Amanda Merrell -- who are currently conducting the “30 Days of Real Life” (#30DRL) campaign on Facebook. I love what you are doing, Ladies, and wish to add a few cents to the fire of your authentic efforts.

Real Life is Hard 

No matter how good things may appear on a person’s Facebook wall, real life is HARD, and can sometimes get messy and ugly for even the best of us. I know this is true, not because I am one of the “best of us,” but because regardless how many Facebook pictures and posts that may suggest otherwise, my life is often hard, and sometimes gets messy and ugly—just like everyone else’s.

This article reflects on the “pictures” of life that we are hesitant to post on Facebook or Instagram, but that are just as real as the images we choose to share with the world via our ever-broadening circle of virtual friends.

Happy Birthday!

Just yesterday, I posted a lovely “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” tribute to my beautiful, wonderful, talented, intelligent, dearly beloved, and semi-sweet (inside joke) wife. In doing so, I searched my photo collection to find the most beautiful picture of Lina I could possibly find. This – of course – is the picture I decided to post, along with another pic of the two of us mirthfully laughing in each other’s arms and looking as though are lives were one unremitting span of connubial bliss....  If only!

Before I share “the rest of the story” in the spirit of the #30DRL campaign, I wish to note that Lina really is beautiful, wonderful, talented, etc. It is also true that we really do have a wonderful marriage, and I really am the luckiest man in the world to have found her and convinced her to marry me. It is also true that the Good Lord has exceedingly blessed and prospered our individual and collective lives as we have strived to follow the example of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that all of this is only PART of the story of our lives. It is the BEST part about our lives, and is therefore the part we are most eager to expose online and/or share with others—and rightfully so. No one wants to be friends with someone who is always airing their dirty laundry for others to see—and smell. There’s nothing attractive or inspiring about that. I am not writing this article in an effort to encourage people to start plastering newsflashes and photos detailing their problems all over social media (that is, unless you’ve completed doctoral research and written a book on the subject...SMILE). I am simply writing it to remind us all that no one’s life is as exclusively pretty as the pictures we perpetually post online—as my doctoral research and new book so tellingly evince from my own life’s ugly challenges. (To get a FREE copy of my Personal Narrative that details these life challenges, e-mail me at jordan.jensen@freedomfocused.com and I will send you a PDF copy, at no cost to you).   

ALL Couples Face Challenges

Sometimes We Fight

The unvarnished truth of the matter – which our perpetually perfect and positive Facebook posts often belie – is that Lina and I are just ordinary human beings who wake up every morning and face weaknesses, shortcomings, temptations, irritability, and fatigue just like everyone else. Sometimes we even fight (disagree), and sometimes vehemently so. This is not to say that we are arguing all the time, or even most of the time, but the fact is that we both have minds of our own, and we each use them independently—and that is a good thing, albeit it can sometimes spawn conflict.

Recently, we had a disagreement that left me so emotionally wound up I ended up throwing one of Tucker’s toys across the room and slamming the door of our bedroom in order to puerilely punctuate my frustration. As I reflect back on this childish behavior—which happened just a few weeks ago, I admit to feeling a little embarrassed. I supposed that Lina was probably equally frustrated; to her credit, she responded a LOT more maturely than I did in the situation. Such it often is with men, it seems.

Over a period of a few days, we both had time to reflect on the incident and the issues surrounding it, communicate on a deeper and more respectful level, and eventually reconcile our differences in an amiable and respectful manner that was borne out of a greater understanding of where the other was coming from. But in the meantime, I'm not gonna lie... it got kind of messy. This was not the first time Lina and I had had a fight (disagreement) in our seven years of marriage, and it will not be the last.

When teaching leadership and management seminars with my professional work, I often share the great truth that conflict itself is not inherently bad – even though it can sometimes get messy. Success in relationships – personal or professional – is not contingent on an absence of conflict, but in how conflict is approached, navigated, and resolved. In truth, without conflict, very little actually gets done in life—and very little growth occurs in relationships. This is not to say we should proactively seek out conflict, but when it occurs – and in real life it inevitably will – there is little value in passively running to hide or aggressively bullying your counterpart.  The higher pathway lies in assertively facing up to it and then respectfully resolving the conflict with an eye single to the equal worth of the other person.

Occasionally you’ll hear a husband or wife make the specious claim that they “never fight.” Whenever I hear such a claim, I figure that they are either a LOT more mature than I am, or that they are doing one of the following:

1. Lying 

2. Not thinking for oneself, or

3. Passively acquiescing to what the other person wants without any regard for one’s own desires in the relationship.

ALL three of these scenarios is much more damaging to the long-term vitality and richness of a relationship than temporary conflict that is respectfully resolved, which can actually serve to strengthen a relationship over time.  I know this is true because the ways in which Lina and I have chosen to respond to our various riffs over the years have served as building blocks that have ultimately strengthened our marriage.  Nevertheless, we (and especially I) still have a long ways to go.

So there you have it my (Facebook) friends—all 951 of you: sometimes Lina and I fight. Yes, it is true: our lives are not as perfect as our Facebook posts suggest, and we are certainly far from being perfect individuals or a perfect couple. Despite this reality, we do have a lot going for us and have much to thank our Heavenly Father for, not the least of which are the blessings of having a best friend, a beautiful lover (well, at least I do), and a cherished counselor and confidante. No, it’s not perfect, but till our dying day, we will strive to follow the advice a former Bishop gave us—to take the word “divorce” out of the dictionary, which can be accomplished by living true to the marital covenants we made to God, the community, our families, and to each other by always striving to put the relationship ahead of our individual, selfish desires—with which we both struggle to varying degrees. 

So… the next time you see someone’s beautiful, pristine, and “perfect” life plastered all over Facebook, remember a great truism: Everyone has problems; if you think you know someone who doesn’t, it just means you don’t know them well enough yet.

As we scroll through our “walls” to see the endless posts uploaded for others to see, it is tempting to compare ourselves to others, whereby feelings of either jealousy or superiority can easily arise, accompanied by prideful musings of resentment or smugness. It can be easy to assume that some people have it much harder (or easier) than we do.

In the midst of such musings and emotional contractions and swellings, we would do well to remember the words of Susan Evans McCloud, who once penned the following quatrain in a famous hymn:

Who am I to judge another
When I walk imperfectly?
In the quiet heart is hidden
Sorrow that the eye can’t see. [1]

My life probably looks a lot different (better) on the outside to others on Facebook than it does on the inside to me, which is one of the reasons I decided to publish to the world the hellish experiences I faced with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, and other frightening internal struggles, the vast majority of which were never readily apparent to others. I want to give hope to others who also face challenges, failures, rejections, and disappointments, which in the end, is ALL of us.   

Everyone Faces Challenges

The more I learn about this world’s inhabitants and the diversity of adversity faced by its monumental milieu, the more I realize that in the end, everybody has it hard in one way or another. Moreover, I become increasingly convinced of the great truth taught by Victor Frankl—that masterful psychiatrist and courageous victor of Nazi treachery:

A man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative. [2]

In light of Frankl's astute judgment, let us all strive to judge each other's weaknesses a little less and celebrate each other strengths a little more.  Furthermore, may we not despair when our troubles seem greater than another's; neither let us be jealous when our successes seem less than another's--remembering that for human beings, what seems is often quite different than what actually is.     

In conclusion, I don’t mean to discourage anyone from posting positive (or even perfect looking) pictures on Facebook. Rest assured, Lina and I will continue to do so. Nor do I intend to encourage anyone to begin to unnecessarily or inappropriately air their dirty laundry for others to see. I simply want to influence a greater sense of compassion and a lesser degree of judgment toward our fellows by reminding all of us that we have more in common than we sometimes realize. This is especially true when it comes to our universal experience of life's endless, painful, and often perplexing adversities. Thank God for the hope that Christ has the power to "carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise." [3] 

Lastly, when we do choose to post our perfect pictures, let us do it for the RIGHT reasons—to develop, cultivate, and nurture friendships; to lift, encourage, and inspire others to be happier, healthier, more fulfilled human beings; and to share in the joy of our cherished relationships.

This means that when I post the most beautiful picture I can possibly find of my wife on her birthday, I am picking that photo to honor her and make her feel special and gather the goodwill of our friends to help us celebrate a special occasion -- and not merely to brag to everyone about what a hot wife I have, even though it is true -- I do have a HOT wife!  ... that was also for YOU, Babe.  Xoxo, -JJ

Notes:

[1] Hymn #220, Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1985, p. #220).
[2] Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man's Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Page 44. 

[3] Alma 37:45 (The Book of Mormon).