Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

We choose—either to live our lives or to let others live them for us. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and to others, little by little we increase our strength until our ability to act is more powerful than any of the forces that act upon us.

Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective.

Dad, that's okay," she replied.

In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.

It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It's how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It's how we view our problems and where we focus our energies. It's the language we use.

DIRECT, INDIRECT, AND NO CONTROL The problems we face fall in one of three areas: direct control (problems involving our own behavior); indirect control (problems involving other people's behavior); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities). The proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence.

Principles, unlike values, are objective and external. They operate in obedience to natural laws, regardless of conditions. Values are subjective and internal. Values are like maps

But you just can't do it; you simply have to travel the road. You can't be successful with other people if you haven't paid the price of success with yourself.

We project our intentions on the behavior of others.

I'm convinced that too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling.

Goals that are connected to our inner life have the power of passion and principle. They're fueled by the fire within and based on "true north" principles that create quality-of-life results.

the wisdom literature of thousands of years of history repeatedly validates the reality that the greatest fulfillment in improving ourselves comes in our empowerment to more effectively reach out and help others. Quality of life is inside-out.

Pygmalion effect

It means to be responsible for my own first creation, to rescript myself so that the paradigms from which my behavior and attitude flow are congruent with my deepest values and in harmony with correct principles.

The Golden Rule says to "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." While on the surface that could mean to do for them what you would like to have done for you, I think the more essential meaning is to understand them deeply as individuals, the way you would want to be understood, and then to treat them in terms of that understanding. As one successful parent said about raising children, "Treat them all the same by treating them differently.

El «despegue» exige un esfuerzo tremendo, pero en cuanto nos despegamos de la atracción gravitatoria, nuestra libertad adquiere una dimensión totalmente nueva.

The best way to predict your future is to create it. You can use the same power of creative imagination that enables you to see a goal before you accomplish it or plan a meeting to create much of the quality of your own reality before you live

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically

Once you have that sense of mission, you have the essence of your own proactivity. You have the vision and the values which direct your life. You have the basic direction from which you set your long- and short-term goals.

The cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals.

He saw creating the 7 Habits not primarily as a means to his own success, but as an act of service.

I can change. I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory.

This significantly limits our personal potential and our ability to relate to others as well. But because of the unique human capacity of self-awareness, we can examine our paradigms to determine whether they are reality- or principle-based or if they are a function of conditioning and conditions.

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.