A gem sitting untouched on the shelf

This summer, I have the opportunity to do an internship with a large seed company called Ball Horticultural in West Chicago, IL. This company is not in downtown Chicago, but about an hour southwest in a suburb called West Chicago. They have some VERY cool plants coming down the pipeline. By the way, for those of you who care (which I know aren't many) breeders have finally created a true red coneflower (Echinacea) called Sombrero 'Salsa'. (It's really more red than the picture shows; I've seen it real life.) Also, I got a sneak peak at a revolutionary color never seen in popular perennial plant that only comes in pinks, blues, purples, and whites. Very cool. In floriculture, the goal is to create unique flowers. Breeders do this by crossing plants that aren't very closely related and normally aren't "crossable". (Kind of like how mules are made by crossing a horse and a donkey.) They do all kinds of crazy, unimaginable things to get very distantly related plants to successfully cross. To give you an example in animal terms, instead of crossing a wolf with a dog or a lion with a tiger, they are making plants that are like a cross between a dog and a cat.

 

Now that I've bored most of you to tears, I will switch gears. I figured I had a little down time in the evenings here in Illinois, so I brought a book that was sitting unread on my bookshelf. This particular book was given to me by my mission president as a wedding gift. The wedding card was still inside the cover and read, "The two books which have had the greatest long-term impact on me are the Book of Mormon and the Seven Habits."
My mission president is one of the most successful men I have ever met and became a second father to me on my mission. He owns an extremely successful specialty lumber supply company. He was the person that suggested to President Hinckley that he use the wood from his dead cherry tree to construct the pulpit in the Conference Center on Temple Square.
He was a fantastic leader that sincerely loved all of us missionaries. I learned a tremendous amount from him, and he still is a role model in my life. If there are 2 books that were key to his character development, I don't know why I would put off reading them.
Back to this book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Although completely wrong, I always thought this book was simply how to accomplish more stuff during the day; really it's about becoming a better person. I have only read up to the second habit, but this book has already started to help me realize how to become a better, more effective person.
I just wanted to share the first habit which is to "be proactive." We all have things that seem to be holding us back in our lives: with this bad weather, I don't feel like doing it; I don't feel like doing much today because someone said hurtful things about me; I can't loose weight not matter what I do because I was born that way; my dad had a terrible temper and that's why I can't control mine. But really it is only us that is holding ourselves back. His point in being proactive is that we must take responsibility for our lives. We are "response-able". In other words, we are able to choose our response no matter the circumstances. It's our choice. If we don't like how things are going in our life, as free agents to ourselves, we can change our lives and perceptions to be what we want--no matter the circumstances. He goes on to say that actually no one but ourselves can change us.
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to develop these 7 habits. If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it. I should have read this 3 years ago.