Self-renewal is preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have- you. It’s renewing the four dimensions of your nature-physical, spiritual, mental, and social. “Sharpen the saw” means excising all four dimension of our nature, regularly and consistently in wise and balanced ways. This is the single most powerful investment we can ever make in life-investment in ourselves.
The physical dimension involves caring effectively for our body-eating the right kind of food, getting sufficient rest and relaxation, exercising on a regular basis. Exercise is one of those high-leverage activities that most of us ignore because it isn’t urgent. And sooner or later we find ourselves dealing with health problems that come as natural result of our neglect. Renewing the spiritual dimension provides leadership to your life. Its a private area of life and a supremely one. It draws upon the sources that inspire and uplift you and tie you to the truth of all humanity. It may be through daily prayerful meditation on the scriptures, good literature or great music. Continuing education and expending the mind is vital mental renewal. Most of our mental development comes through mental development. Serious reading, exploring new subjects, habit of reading good literature and writing are powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. The social and the emotional dimensions of our lives are tied together because our emotional life is primarily, developed out of and manifested in our relationships with others. Renewing our social or emotional dimensions does not take time the same sense that renewing the other dimensions does. We can do it in our normal everyday interactions with other people.
The self renewal process must include balanced renewal in all four dimensions of our nature: the physical, the spiritual, the mental, and the social/emotional. Although renewal in each dimension is important, it only becomes optimally effective as we deal with all four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. To neglect any one area negatively impacts the rest.

communication is the most important skill in our life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. We spend most of our years learning how to read, write and speak. Listening is ignored. Generally people don’t listen to understand, they listen with the intention to reply. They are either speaking or preparing to speak. They are filtering everything through their own paradigms. It happens with so many of us. We are filled with our own rightness, our own autobiography. We want to be understood. Seldom people understand what’s really going on inside other human being. Generally listening is done at one of the four levels. It may be ignoring another person, not really listening at all. People may practice pretending. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Right” Or it may be selective listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation. It may be attentive listening, paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said. But very few of us practice the fifth level, the highest of listening, empathic listening. Empathic listening does not refer to an “active” or “reflective listening” which is skilled based. Here you listen with intent to reply, to control, to manipulate. Empathic listening means listening with intent to understand. It gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, and you understand how they feel. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone, it’s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually. It involves much more than reflecting the words that are said. You listen with your ears, but more importantly, you listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for meaning. As communication expert estimate, that only 10% of our communication is represented by our sounds, 60% by our body language. Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you are dealing with the reality of other person’s heart and mind.

The word proactive is commonly used. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that that as human being, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is the reflection of our decisions, not our conditions. We have the initiative and responsibility to make things happen. Feelings can be subdued by values and ethics. The word responsibility is “response ability”- the ability to choose our response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame situations, circumstances or people for their behavior. Their behavior is the product of their own choices, based on ethics and values, rather than a product of their circumstances, based on feelings. When we choose to empower circumstances to control us, our lives become product of conditioning and conditions. In making such a choice we become reactive. Reactive people often affected by their physical environment. If the circumstances are good they feel good about their selves and the people around them. If it is not, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value and ethics driven and if their value is to provide good quality work, it is not a function of whether the weather is conducive or not. Reactive people are also affected by the social ambiance. They build their emotional lives around the behavior of others. If people treat them well, they feel well, when people don’t, they become defensive. Proactive people subordinate impulse to a value. They are driven by values and ethics, on the other hand reactive people are driven by circumstances, by situations, by conditioning, by their environment. Proactive people carefully think and select their values. Proactive people still influenced by external environment, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to stimuli, conscious or subconscious is a value based choice or response.