Stephen Covey Quotes
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What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. There are people we trust because we know their character. Whether they're eloquent or not, whether they have human-relations techniques or not, we trust them and work with them.
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In the absence of wake-up calls, many of us never really confront the critical issues of life.
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You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.
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Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).
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Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It's not what they're not doing or should be doing that's the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is "out there," stop yourself. That thought is the problem.
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If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.
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Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools.
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True effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset (the goose).
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We exhaust ourselves more from the tension and the consequences of internal disharmony than from hard, unremitting work.
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I define discipline as the ability to make + keep promises and to honor commitments.
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It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it and appropriately act on it.
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When you engage in a work that taps your talent and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.
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Interdependence is a higher value than independence
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Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.
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Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
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Principles are deep fundamental truths... lightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty and strength through the fabric of life.
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Effective communication is built on the cement of trust. And trust is based on trustworthiness, not politics.
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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.
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Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
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Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and of contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly, your intergenerational family.
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You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.
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People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.
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Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.
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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.