Author: Jahnavi Sheth

When you have a background in psychology, your default mode is basically living in your head. Or at least, mine is. You spend years dissecting cognitive loops, unpacking attachment styles, and treating existential dread like a familiar research topic. So when you hear that your workplace is rolling out a year-long “Life Class” anchored in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, your first instinct is to wonder if you’re about to sit through an echo chamber of generic self-help tropes.
Instead, it turned into a genuinely fascinating dive into modern human behavior.

We live in a culture chronically obsessed with aesthetics and performative success; what Covey calls the “personality ethic” or secondary greatness. It’s the LinkedIn humblebrag, the shiny title, the aesthetic desk setup, and the illusion of having your entire life curated to perfection. But psychologically, tying your identity to that stuff is setting yourself up for an emotional crash. The second life gets chaotic or uncertain, that external validation evaporates. Real psychological grounding comes from primary greatness: the quiet, behind-the-scenes work of personal character, emotional honesty, and who you choose to be when nobody is watching or applauding.

A massive part of that character lives in the micro-moments of our day. Viktor Frankl famously noted that between a stimulus and our response, there is a tiny pocket of space, and inside that space lies our power to choose. On paper, it’s classic cognitive reframing. In reality? When life gets overwhelming or frustrating, our human default is to completely short-circuit and react. We burn our finite emotional battery obsessing over the chaotic black hole of our “Circle of Concern”; the things driving our stress through the roof that we have zero power to change. Taking back our agency isn’t about toxic positivity or believing everything is fine. Anger and frustration are valid emotional data that need to be felt and released. The real flex is pulling your energy back into your “Circle of Influence”: the words, boundaries, and deliberate responses you actually own.

That search for agency hits hardest when you confront your own finitude. Sitting down to write your own obituary after an emotionally heavy reflection on mortality has a way of stripping away every shred of superficial noise. When you’re forced to confront what remains once the credits roll, productivity metrics and polished résumés instantly lose their grip. Sitting there, my entire reflection distilled down to something very simple: I just want to be remembered as someone who led with kindness and empathy, who made the people around her feel genuinely seen and valued. It was an essential reality check on how easy it is to let the “sand”—the endless trivial urgencies and busywork—crowd out the “big rocks” that actually give life meaning.

Having spent years immersed in psychology, the behavioral models and cognitive tools themselves weren’t unfamiliar territory for me. These frameworks are practically the permanent wallpaper of my brain. But what felt genuinely cool was seeing an organization actively carve out the time and space to teach this.