Stephen R Covey Quotes

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

But borrowing strength builds weakness. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values & priorities ~ Stephen R. Covey

One of the most inspirational people I have ever known is Viktor Frankl, ~ Stephen R. Covey

Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make ~ Stephen R. Covey

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. ~ Stephen R. Covey

If you want to have a more pleasant,cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, emphatic, consistent, loving parent. ~ Stephen R. Covey

To Retain those who are present, be loyal to those who are absent. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

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

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Family itself is a "we" experience, a "we" mentality. And admittedly, the movement from "me" to "we" - from independence to interdependence - is perhaps one of the most challenging and difficult aspects of family life. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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 ~ Stephen R. Covey

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 relationship with you. You'll no longer build your emotional life on other people's weaknesses. In addition, you'll find it easier and more desirable to change because there is something - some core deep within - that is essentially changeless. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Through imagination, we can visualize the uncredited worlds of potential that lie within us. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world... Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feeling to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Remember that quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time. ~ Stephen R. Covey

If people have not agreed to a common set of principles that guide them and a common purpose, then they get their security from the outside and they tend to freeze the structure, systems, and processes inside and they cease becoming adaptable. They don't change with the changing realities of the new marketplace out there and gradually they become obsolete. ~ Stephen R. Covey

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Sow a thought, reap an action; ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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 ~ Stephen R. Covey

All of us are interested in things outside of our stewardships, and we should be, but the most important way to do anything about them is to magnify our own stewardships. When you focus on your own responsibility, you become relatively unconcerned with other peoples stewardships. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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? ~ Stephen R. Covey

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand.
We listen to reply. ~ Stephen R. Covey

what is the truth about the inner motivations, character, and ambition of those who hold power? ~ Stephen R. Covey

Often, people with a Scarcity Mentality harbor secret hopes that others might suffer misfortune - not terrible misfortune, but acceptable misfortune that would keep them "in their place." They're always comparing, always competing. They give their energies to possessing things or other people in order to increase their sense of worth. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile. While we do control our choice of action, we cannot control the consequences of our choices. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Only basic goodness gives life to technique. To ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The thing I learned is that you don't invent your mission, you detect it. You uncover it, as it were. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Independent people can get what they want through ~ Stephen R. Covey

What lies behind us is nothing compared to what lies within us and ahead of us. ~ Stephen R. Covey

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Unless there are good feelings between people, reasoning intelligently is almost impossible. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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 ~ Stephen R. Covey

In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Begin each day with the blueprint of my deepest values FIRMLY in mind then when challenges come, make decisions BASED on those values. ~ Stephen R. Covey

At some time in your life, you probably had someone believe in you when you didn't believe in yourself. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Where we stand depends on where we sit. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Keep in mind that when you're working with your family, "slow" is "fast" and "fast" is ~ Stephen R. Covey

It is much more ennobling to the human spirit to let people judge themselves than to judge them. And ~ Stephen R. Covey

Out of his private victories, public victories began to come. ~ Stephen R. Covey

understanding. As one successful parent said about raising children, "Treat them all the same by treating them differently." Attending to the Little Things ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

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 ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

I believe that there are parts to human nature that cannot be reached by either legislation or education, but require the power of God to deal with. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The way we see the problem is the problem. ~ Stephen R. Covey

You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness. ~ Stephen R. 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 R. Covey

When we talk about time management, it seems ridiculous to worry about speed before direction, about saving minutes when we may be wasting years. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Changing a planning tool or a method won't create significant change in the results we're getting in our lives - although the implied promise is that it will. It's not a matter of controlling things more, better, or faster; it's questioning the whole assumption of control. ~ Stephen R. Covey

As Marilyn Ferguson observed, No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

Don't compromise, when you can synergize. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

So you have to weigh that consequence against the other consequence and make a choice. I know if it were me, I'd choose to go on the tennis trip. But never say you have to do anything. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Attending church does not necessarily mean living the principles taught in those meeting. You can be active in a church but inactive in its gospel. ~ Stephen R. Covey

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Is it logical that two people can disagree and that both can be right? It's not logical: it's psychological. And it's very real. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

The message sent to one is truly sent to all because everyone is a "one," and they know that if you treat one that way, all it takes is a change of circumstances and you'll treat them that way, too. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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 ~ Stephen R. Covey

If we do not teach our children, societ will. And they-and we-will live with the results. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The little-understood concept of interdependence appears to many to smack of dependence, and therefore, we find people, often for selfish reasons, leaving their marriages, abandoning their children, and forsaking all kinds of social responsibility - all in the name of independence. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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 ~ Stephen R. Covey

It takes an enormous amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, the spirit of discovery, the spirit of creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown wilderness. You become a trailblazer, a pathfinder. You open new possibilities, new territories, new continents, so that others can follow. ~ Stephen R. Covey

You must be open and influenceable; then ironically, you will also discover an increase in your own power to influence ~ Stephen R. Covey

Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. ~ Stephen R. Covey

To judge someone before understanding that person is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself. It intensifies personal insecurities, necessitating more judgment (prejudice) and less understanding. The processes continue in this vicious cycle. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Many people who give mechanically or refuse to give and share in their marriages and families may never have experienced what it means to possess themselves, their own sense of identity and self-worth. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

People simply feel better about themselves when they're good at something. ~ Stephen R. Covey

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. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do, ~ Stephen R. Covey

Just as faith without works is dead, so also works without faith. ~ Stephen R. Covey

The term paradigm shift was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his highly influential landmark book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. ~ Stephen R. Covey