Stephen Covey #Quotes

• Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.
• Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.
• As a principle-centered person you try to stand apart from the emotion of the situation and from other factors that would act on you, and evaluate the options. Looking at the balanced whole--the work needs, the family needs, the other needs that may be involved, and the possible implications of the various alternatives -- you'll try to come up with the best solution taking all factors into consideration. We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations.
• The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
• One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present.
• Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.
• While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.
• We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.
• Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
• The greatest risk is the risk of riskless living.
• Live out of your imagination, not your history.
• Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them.
• Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
• The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
• Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.
• We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.
• There are three constants in life… Change, choice and principles
• The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in.
• Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
• Strength lies in differences, not in similarities
• If you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.
• Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses often are the reincarnation of cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose/Win mentality. Disproportionate rage or anger, overreaction to minor provocation, and cynicism are other embodiments of suppressed emotion. People who are constantly repressing, not transcending feelings toward a higher meaning find that it affects the quality of their relationships with others
• 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
• It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.
• In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment-independent will-that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.
• The character ethic, which I believe to be the foundation of success, teaches that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.
• Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.
• Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people's lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.
• To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you'll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.
• The Inside-Out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness 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. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.