Stephen Covey Quotes
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The highest challenge inside organizations is to enable each person to contribute his or her unique talents and passion to accomplish the organization's purpose.
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A mission statement is not something you write overnight... But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.
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When it comes to developing character strength, inner security and unique personal and interpersonal talents and skills in a child, no institution can or ever will compare with, or effectively substitute for, the home's potential for positive influence.
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The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interaction with the hearts and minds of other human beings.
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Want to improve your relationships? See love as a verb rather than as a feeling?
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Will we act upon life, or will we merely be acted upon?
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All things are created twice, but not all first creations are by conscious design. In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances outside our Circle of Influence to shape much of our lives by default. We reactively live the scripts handed to us by family, associates, other people's agendas, the pressures of circumstance - scripts from our earlier years, from our training, our conditioning.
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Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience.
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...people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well.
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True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon.
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Reactive people... are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior.
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In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.
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Would you not agree that relationships are built on trust? Would you not also agree that most individuals think more in terms of "me-my wants, my needs, my rights? What would wisdom dictate - would it not direct us to focus on trust-building principles and sacrificing 'me' for 'we'?"
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In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment - independent will - that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.
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The key to success is dedication to life-long learning.
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Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.
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The principle of fasting is taught in almost all major world religions as a means of developing a higher level of self-mastery and self-control, and also a deeper awareness of how really dependent we are.
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You have to water the flowers you want to grow.
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There is so much we can do to render service, to make a difference in the world - no matter how large or small our circle of influence.
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Once we are self-aware, we must choose purposes and principles to live by; otherwise the vacuum will be filled, and we will lose our self-awareness and become like groveling animals who live primarily for survival and propagation. People who exist on that level aren't living; they are "being lived".
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Highly effective people tend to be proactive. They decide to find a better job or to have better health, rather than of responding to whatever curves life throws at them.
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Being humble does not mean being weak, reticent, or self-effacing. It means recognizing principle and putting it ahead of self. It means standing firmly for principle, even in the fact of opposition.
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If we want to make a change in our lives, we should first focus on our personal attitudes and behaviors.
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Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.