Stephen R. Covey Quotes

To Retain those who are present, be loyal to those who are absent.

Unless there are good feelings between people, reasoning intelligently is almost impossible.

Happiness - in part at least - the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice waht we want for what we want eventually

Systems. They are self-evident and can easily be validated by any individual. It's almost as if these principles or natural laws are part of the human condition, part of the human consciousness, part of the human conscience. They seem to exist in all human beings, regardless of social conditioning

We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the personality ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently

One of the most inspirational people I have ever known is Viktor Frankl,

Unless you're influenced by my uniqueness, I'm not going to be influenced by your advice.

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.

Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it / immediately.

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase.

Sow a thought, reap an action;

Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on four levels: 1) personal (my relationship with myself); 2) interpersonal (my relationships and interactions with others); 3) managerial (my responsibility to get a job done with others); and 4) organizational (my need to organize people - to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and create aligned structure, strategy, and systems).

Inside-Out" means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self -- with your paradigms, your character, and your motives

In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.

Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make

Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It doesn't begin and end with the writing of a personal mission statement. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things.

right" will have little to do with being found out. Ironically, you'll find that as you care less about what others think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves and their worlds, including their

There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.

It comes from within.

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

I realized that Sandra and I had been getting social mileage out of our children's good behavior, and, in our eyes, this son simply didn't measure up.

It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

Chasing after the poisonous snake that bites us will only drive the poison through our entire system. It is far better to take measures immediately to get the poison out.

We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

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.

If you wait to be acted upon, you will be acted upon. And growth and opportunity consequences attend either road.

The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the way you really see your priorities.

Remember that quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time.

We often think of change and improvement coming from the outside in rather than from the inside out. Even if we recognize the need for change within, we usually think in terms of learning new skills, rather than showing more integrity to basic principles. But significant breakthroughs often represent internal breaks with traditional ways of thinking. I refer to these as paradigm

If you don't let a teacher know what level you are
by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance
you will not learn or grow

Where we stand depends on where we sit.

In the words of William George Jordan, "Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil - the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be." T

My friend, love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her.

Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Effectiveness lies in the balance - what I call the P/PC Balance. P stands for production of desired results, the golden eggs. PC stands for production capability, the ability or asset that produces the golden eggs.

So in this section I also deal with the attitudes, skills, and strategies for creating and maintaining trustful relationships with other people. In effect, once we become relatively independent, our challenge is to become effectively interdependent with others. To do this we must practice empathy and synergy in our efforts to be proactive and productive.

We often get into ruts, on treadmills, caught up in patterns and habits that aren't useful. We don't stop to ask, what can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially being a repeat of the same?

Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other people's golden eggs - the eternal student syndrome.

Being is seeing in the human dimension.

Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the "power look," or to intimidate their way through life.

It's sometimes a painful process. It's a change that has to be motivated by a higher purpose, by the willingness to subordinate what you think you want now for what you want later.

People often find themselves achieving victories that are empty, successes that have come at the expense of things they suddenly realize were far more valuable to them.

A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.

Only basic goodness gives life to technique. To

The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.

habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire.

People have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well.

Independent people can get what they want through

I think the most significant work we'll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.

Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physically interdependent, I am self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone.

We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world. Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we "see" ourselves - our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitudes and behaviors, but also how we see other people. It becomes our map of the basic nature of

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.

If I were emotionally dependent, my sense of worth and security would come from your opinion of me.

With the dizzying rate of change in technology and increasing competition driven by the globalization of markets and technology, we must not only be educated, we must constantly re-educate and reinvent ourselves. We must develop our minds and continually sharpen and invest in the development of our competencies to avoid becoming obsolete.

Courage isn't absenct of fear, it is the awareness that something else is important

what is the truth about the inner motivations, character, and ambition of those who hold power?

Frankl hypothesized that we have three parts to our nature:

I have seen the consequences of attempting to shortcut this natural process of growth often in the business world, where executives attempt to "buy" a new culture of improved productivity, quality, morale, and customer service with strong speeches, smile training, and external interventions, or through mergers, acquisitions, and friendly or unfriendly takeovers. But they ignore the low-trust climate produced by such manipulations. When these methods don't work, they look for other Personality Ethic techniques that will - all the time ignoring and violating the natural principles and processes on which a high-trust culture is based.

Quality begins with me. And I need to make my own decisions based on carefully selected principles and values." Proactivity cultivates this freedom. It subordinates your feelings to your values. You accept your feelings: "I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm upset. I accept those feelings; I don't deny or repress them. Now I know what needs to be done. I am responsible." That's the principle "I am response-able.

Treat them all the same by treating them differently.

Show me someone who is humble enough to accept and take responsibility for his or her circumstances and courageous enough to take whatever initiative is necessary to creatively work his or her through or around these challenges, and I'll show you supreme power of choice.

It's the nature of reactive people to absolve themselves of responsibility. It's so much safer to say, "I am not responsible." If I say "I am responsible," I might have to say, "I am irresponsible." It would be very hard for me to say that I have the power to choose my response and that the response I have chosen has resulted in my involvement in a negative, collusive environment, especially if for years I have absolved myself of responsibility for results in the name of someone else's weaknesses.

Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce- to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That's true financial independence. It's not having wealth; it's having the power to produce wealth. It's intrinsic.

Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and actinterdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players

My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.

You can't change the fruit without changing the root.

Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification - not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight.

Integrity also means avoiding any communication that is deceptive, full of guile, or beneath the dignity of people. "A lie is any communication with intent to deceive," according to one definition of the word. Whether we communicate with words or behavior, if we have integrity, our intent cannot be to deceive.

You can't be successful with other people if you haven't paid the price of success with yourself.

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities

While we must learn from good examples and keep always in mind the bigger goal, we must compare ourselves only with ourselves. We can't focus or base our happiness on another's progress; we can focus only on our own.

When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd.

But borrowing strength builds weakness.

When all you want is a person's body and you don't really want their mind, heart or spirit, you have reduced a person to a thing.

People simply feel better about themselves when they're good at something.

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions

Don't compromise, when you can synergize.

When man created the mirror, he began to lose his soul. He became more concerned with his image than with his self.

Becomes obvious that 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.

The children of blame are cynicism and hopelessness.

A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief. They feel increasingly victimized and out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny. They blame outside forces - other people, circumstances, even the stars - for their own situation.

Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

self-initiated and feeds upon itself. You will develop your abilities faster by learning to make and keep promises or commitments. Start by making a small promise to yourself; continue fulfilling that promise until you have a sense that you have a little more control over yourself. Now take the next level of challenge.

As a principle-centered person, you see things differently. And because you see things differently, you think differently, you act differently. Because you have a high degree of security, guidance, wisdom, and power that flows from a solid, unchanging core, you have the foundation of a highly proactive and highly effective life.

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.

Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.

The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be

Inevitably, anytime we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds. So we resort to sarcasm, cutting humor, criticism
anything that will keep from exposing the tenderness within. Each partner tends to wait on the initiative of the other for love, only to be disappointed but also confirmed as to the rightness of the accusations made.

My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can i do?"
"The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked.
"That's right," he reaffirmed. "And we have three children we're really concerned about. What do you suggest?"
"love her," I replied.
"I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore."
"Love her."
"You don't understand. the feeling of love just isn't there."
"Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her."
"But how do you love when you don't love?"
"My friend , love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?

You can't talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into!

Remember, it isn't the snake bite that does the serious damage; it's chasing the snake that drives the poison to the heart.

One man asked another on the death of a mutual friend, "How much did he leave?" His friend responded, "He left it all.

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand.
We listen to reply.

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.

As you care less about what people think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves.

When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.

He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.

Self awareness gives us ultimate human freedom.

The degree to which we have developed our independent will in our everyday lives is measured by our personal integrity. Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves. It's our ability to make and keep commitments to ourselves, to "walk our talk." It's honor with self, a fundamental part of the Character Ethic, the essence of proactive growth.

Family-centered parents do not have the emotional freedom, the power, to raise their children with their ultimate welfare truly in mind. If they derive their own security from the family, their need to be popular with their children may override the importance of a long-term investment in their children's growth and development. Or they may be focused on the proper and correct behavior of the moment. Any behavior that they consider improper threatens their security. They become upset, guided by the emotions of the moment, spontaneously reacting to the immediate concern rather than the long-term growth and development of the child. They may yell or scream. They may overreact and punish out of bad temper. They tend to love their children conditionally, making them emotionally dependent or counterdependent and rebellious.