Stephen Covey Quotes
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Many people think in terms of either/or: either you're nice or you're tough. Win-win requires that you be both. It is a balancing act between courage and consideration. To go for win-win, you not only have to be empathic, but you also have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you also have to be brave. To do that-to achieve that balance between courage and consideration-is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to win-win.
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By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective.
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There are principles that govern human effectiveness - natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably there as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension.
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We tend to get what we expect - both from ourselves and from others. When we expect more, we tend to get more; when we expect less, we tend to get less.
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To ignore the unexpected (even if it were possible) would be to live without opportunity, spontaneity, and the rich moments of which "life" is made.
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Always surround yourself with people who are even more talented and competent than you.
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An empowering mission statement has to become a living document, part of our very nature, so that the criteria we've put into it are also in us, in the way we live our lives day by day.
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Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.
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Humility is the mother of all virtues: the humble in spirit progress and are blessed because they willingly submit to higher powers and try to live in harmony with natural laws and universal principles. Courage is the father of all virtues; we need great courage to lead our lives by correct principles and to have integrity in the moment of choice.
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Sacrifice really means giving up something good for something better.
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In many situations involving service recovery - the problem itself became the catalyst for the creation of even greater trust as the companies took the issues head-on and worked through the difficult problem in a way that restored confidence.
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Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy.
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I believe that the habit of constant reading of good books and scholarly periodicals and magazines in many disciplines is vital to give a larger perspective and to constantly sense the interdependent nature of life.
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Highly effective people tend to be proactive. They decide to find a better job or to have better health, rather than of responding to whatever curves life throws at them.
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But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.
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Perhaps the greatest role of parenting, more than directing and telling children what to do, is helping children connect with their own gifts, particularly conscience.
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All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result.
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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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All the well-meaning advice in the world won't amount to a hill of beans if we're not even addressing the real problem.
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The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.
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Real excellence does not come cheaply. A certain price must be paid in terms of practice, patience, and persistence - natural ability notwithstanding.
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...to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.
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An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
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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.