Stephen Covey Quotes
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My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.
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The deepest hunger of a child's human heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms, validates, recognizes and appreciates the intrinsic worth of another.
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People with a scarcity mentality think there is only so much in the world to go around. It's as if they see life as a pie. When another person gets a big piece, then they get less. Such people are always trying to get even, to pull others down to their level so they can get an equal or even bigger piece of the pie.
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Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual phrased, it, "like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic".
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If there is no gardener there is no garden.
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...churchgoing is not synonymous with personal spirituality. There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that sourround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply.
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Building and repairing relationships are long-term investments.
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We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.
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Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of "fun," constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger "high." A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now.
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Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit, and do on increasingly higher planes. We deceive ourselves if we think that any one of these is sufficient. To keep progressing, we must learn, commit, and do-learn, commit, and do-and learn, commit, and do again.
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The great contributors in life are those who, though afraid of the knock at the door, still answer it.
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It takes courage to realize that you are greater than your moods, greater than your thoughts, and that you can control your moods and thoughts.
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Petty things become unimportant when people are impassioned about a purpose higher than self.
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The reality is that everybody makes mistakes. The issue isn't whether you will make them, it's what you will do about them. It's whether you will choose the path of humility and courage or the path of ego and pride.
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Once you have a clear picture of your priorities - that is values, goals, and high leverage activities - organize around them.
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If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won't require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external.
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One thing's for sure. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
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It's not what people do to us that hurts us. In the most fundamental sense, it is our chosen response to what they do to us that hurts us.
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An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It gives meaning and purpose to all you do.
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It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It's how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It's how we view our problems and where we focus our energies. It's the language we use.
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Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.
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A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
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Some people achieve the top of the ladder and only then realise it was standing against the wrong wall.
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Satisfied needs do not motivate. It's only the unsatisfied need that motivates. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival - to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.