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Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
Stephen Covey -
Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).
Stephen Covey
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When two people in a marriage are more concerned about getting the golden eggs, the benefits, than they are in preserving the relationship that makes them possible, they often become insensitive and inconsiderate, neglecting the little kindnesses and courtesies so important to a deep relationship. They begin to use control levers to manipulate each other, to focus on their own needs, to justify their own position and look for evidence to show the wrongness of the other person. The love, the richness, the softness and spontaneity begin to deteriorate.
Stephen Covey -
I'm convinced that we can write and live our own scripts more than most people will acknowledge. I also know the price that must be paid. It's a real struggle to do it. It requires visualization and affirmation. It involves living a life of integrity, starting with making and keeping promises, until the whole human personality the senses, the thinking, the feeling, and the intuition are ultimately integrated and harmonized.
Stephen Covey -
If you focus on principles, you empower everyone who understands those principles to act without constant monitoring, evaluating, correcting, or controlling.
Stephen Covey -
Be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.
Stephen Covey -
Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them.
Stephen Covey -
In the absence of wake-up calls, many of us never really confront the critical issues of life.
Stephen Covey
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When a person has access to both the intuitive, creative and visual right brain, and the analytical, logical, verbal left brain, then the whole brain is working...And this tool is best suited to the reality of what life is, because life is not just logical-it is also emotional.
Stephen Covey -
Integrity is conforming reality to our words - in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.
Stephen Covey -
The problems in life come when we're sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.
Stephen Covey -
We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices.
Stephen Covey -
Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
Stephen Covey -
Look at the word responsibility-"response-ability"-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
Stephen Covey
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Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.
Stephen Covey -
Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.
Stephen Covey -
If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror - from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us - our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.
Stephen Covey -
It doesn't really matter how fast you're going if you're heading in the wrong direction.
Stephen Covey -
To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.
Stephen Covey -
Executives need to understand the economic benefits of trust dividend, especially when the behavior is real, not artificially or superficially created as PR to manipulate trust.
Stephen Covey
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People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.
Stephen Covey -
To me, the essence of keeping the soul nourished is obedience to one's conscience. I don't think that the soul can be nourished unless people have a strong sense of conscience that they have educated and developed and soaked in the universal and timeless principles of integrity and service. This way, the individual's soul becomes part of the universal soul of service, contribution, and making a difference.
Stephen Covey -
The only thing that endures over time is the 'Law of the Farm.' You must prepare the ground, plant the seed, cultivate, and water if you expect to reap the harvest.
Stephen Covey -
It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it and appropriately act on it.
Stephen Covey