Stephen Covey Quotes
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The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.
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Link yourself to your potential, not to your past.
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Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?
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When you make a commitment to yourself, do so with the clear understanding that you're pledging your integrity.
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The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass - when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in our lives.
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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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The key to motivation is motive. It's the why. It's the deeper yes! burning inside that makes it easier to say no to the less important.
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Our behavior is governed by principles. Living in harmony with them brings positive consequences; violating them brings negative consequences.
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When we look through the lens of each others' weaknesses, we make others' strengths irrelevant and their weaknesses more evident.
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The more deeply you understand other people, the more you will appreciate them, the more reverent you will feel about them. To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
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When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier, elevating and improving every dimension of your organization and your life.... In a company, high trust materially improves communication, collaboration, execution, innovation, strategy, engagement, partnering, and relationships with all stakeholders.
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We can act instead of being acted upon.
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The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.
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Conscience connects us with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart.
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Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.
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Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.
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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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Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities - what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction - what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of "time management."
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The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.
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It's not only a matter of when to do things, but whether or not to do them at all.
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The way we see the problem is the problem.
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Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people's agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits.
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Trust is the glue that holds everything together.
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How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.