Journal Entry

My Alternative Center

While reading Covey's book, I came to realize many things, one of which was that I lack self awareness to a point that I did not know what was going on around me. For example, if I was driving, I would look straight ahead of me and take a few glances every few minutes on the rear view mirror but other than that, everything else was dead to me. It was like I was the only one on the road, no pedestrians, no drivers, and no scenic view, just me. I could not put the book down as I realized how much his book was talking about me, and how I should enhance and progress in so many ways. He was speaking directly to me and about me. Relating the example of when I am driving to my lack of principle centeredness are 2 of the same things. My life revolved around where I looked. Straight ahead, and behind me but never around me and how if I am unaware of what is happening around, how things may go wrong.

What I have come to learn throughout his book, is to step outside of my body ,take a look at myself, and see the aspects where I needed to change in order to help myself become better. I am what Covey calls, a spouse centeredness. Spouse centeredness means that I am very emotionally dependent and that my emotional worth comes from my marriage. Whereas, I am highly dependent on my marriage. I am very vulnerable to the moods, feelings, and behavior of my husband. However, what I would really like to be is principle centered, where my security is based on correct principles that do not change, regardless of external conditions or circumstances. It is quite a change and a hard one I would say.

My plan is to keep my emotions separate from my everyday life. For example, if I were to have an argument with my husband, I would try to shut down my feelings and not let that misunderstanding affect my capability to do anything, such as studying. Why? Because the habit of being very emotionally dependent has gotten me nowhere. In fact, I have grown weaker and further away from independency, whereas I would have to work on myself twice as much as hard. The reason why I am very emotionally dependent, spouse centeredness, is due to the major life change I went through recently...Getting married and moving to a new country where I knew no one and nothing, but my husband. It was like a new book with empty white pages to fill, starting over.

Over the days, I noticed that this task was easier than I thought. It is very challenging, but not necessarily difficult. I started applying it by simply detaching my marriage from everything else. For example, last week my husband and I had a slight argument over our points of view regarding politics. Later on, I went out for coffee with some new friends. Over coffee, the only thing that was on my mind was the disagreement we had over the silliest topic, something that will get both my husband and I nowhere. It was beyond our circle of concern.