Stephen Covey Quotes
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The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.
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The process of building trust is an interesting one, but it begins with yourself, with what I call self trust, and with your own credibility, your own trustworthiness. If you think about it, it's hard to establish trust with others if you can't trust yourself.
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The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
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All things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default.
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The first principle of ethical power is Purpose. By purpose, I don't mean your objective or intention-something toward which you are always striving. Purpose is something bigger. It is the picture you have of yourself-the kind of person you want to be or the kind of life you want to lead.
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Link yourself to your potential, not to your past.
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The more people train their counsciousness, the more sensitivie they are to it. It's like you had your own voice coming to you.
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Effective people do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they prioritize.
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Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other.
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By centering our lives on correct principles and creating a balanced focus between doing and increasing our ability to do, we become empowered to the task of creating effective useful and peaceful lives.
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The exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power.
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Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.
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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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Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.
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Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought.
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Be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.
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I think the most significant work we'll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.
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If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
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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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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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If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.
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Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.
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Nevertheless, the only way we can move from where we are now to where we would like to be is to accept where we are now.
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While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.