Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent.

When you exercise your patience beyond your past limits, the emotional fiber is broken, nature overcompensates, and next time the fiber is stronger.

And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. T

came into focus. Through continued calm, respectful, and specific communication, each of us in the room was finally able to see the other point of view. But when we looked away and then back, most of us would immediately see the image we had been conditioned to see in the ten-second period of time. I frequently use this perception demonstration in working with people and organizations because

Question 1: What one thing could you do (something you aren't doing now) that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life? Question 2: What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results? We'll come back to these answers later. But first, let's put Habit 3 in perspective.

Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon. As well as enabling us to choose our response to particular circumstances, this empowers us to create circumstances.

such as letting the weaknesses of other people ruin our emotional lives or feeling victimized by people and events out of our control.

Without involvement, there is no commitment.

If we work upon marble, it will perish. If we work upon brass, time will efface it. But if we work upon immortal minds, and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.

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.

Your body is the only instrument through which you operate in life. If you don't get control of your body, how can you control the expressions that come through your body and your mind?

It's hard not to get impatient. It takes character to be proactive, to focus on your Circle of Influence, to nurture growing things, and not to "pull up the flowers to see how the roots are coming.

While individuals may look at their own lives and interactions in terms of paradigms or maps emerging out of their experience and conditioning, these maps are not the territory. They are a "subjective reality," only an attempt to describe the territory.

But I kept thinking about it. I really went inside myself and began to ask, 'Do I have the power to choose my response?

The same is true with parenting. If you want to raise responsible, self-disciplined children, you have to keep that end clearly in mind as you interact with your children on a daily basis. You can't behave toward them in ways that undermine their self-discipline or self-esteem.

The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: "Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

the outside-in paradigm is unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, who focus on the weaknesses of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant situation. I've seen unhappy marriages where each spouse wants the other to change, where each is confessing the other's "sins

Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives?

attitude determines your altitude," "Smiling wins more friends than frowning

It says if you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.

Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need.

As we look at those things within our Circle of Concern, it becomes apparent that there are some things over which we have no real control and others that we can do something about.

Siembra un pensamiento, cosecha una acción; siembra una acción, cosecha un hábito. Siembra un hábito, cosecha un carácter; siembra un carácter, cosecha un destino

Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.