Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

It is said that wars are won in the general's tent. Sharpening the saw in the first three dimensions—the physical, the spiritual, and the mental—is a practice I call the "Daily Private Victory." And I commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it—one hour a day for the rest of your life.

As we give grace to others, we receive more grace ourselves. As we affirm people and show a fundamental belief in their capacity to grow and improve, as we bless them even when they are cursing or judging us—we build primary greatness into our personality and character.

The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others.

a great majority of them fall under seven key activities: 1. Improving communication with people 2. Better preparation 3. Better planning and organizing 4. Taking better care of self 5. Seizing new opportunities 6. Personal development 7. Empowerment

You cannot pretend for long, for you will eventually be found out.

I know this idea is a dramatic paradigm shift for many people. It is so much easier to blame other people, conditioning, or conditions for our own stagnant situation. But we are responsible—"response-able"—to control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are.

In Habit 2, Stephen challenges us to envision our own funeral, and consider, "What would you like each of the speakers to say about you and your life?… What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember?

You live your life in terms of roles—not in the sense of role-playing, but in the sense of authentic relationships and responsibilities you've committed to. You may have important roles in your family, in the community, at work, or in other areas of your life. Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.

you become truly independent, you have the foundation for effective interdependence. You have the character base from which you can effectively work on the more personality-oriented "Public Victories" of teamwork, cooperation, and communication in Habits 4, 5, and 6.

The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it. This literally turns a failure into a success. "Success," said IBM founder T. J. Watson

When we act reactively in anger with family members, we risk destroying the trust that exists within our most important relationships. We rupture—not nurture—our family culture.

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.

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.

And most important, start applying what you are learning. Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.

We have to water, cultivate, and weed on a regular basis if we're going to enjoy the harvest.

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).

Coherence suggests that there is harmony, unity, and integrity between your vision and mission, your roles and goals, your priorities and plans, and your desires and discipline.

To deal only with the superficial trivia without seeing deeper, more tender issues is to trample on the sacred ground of another's heart.

When you have No Deal as an option in your mind, you feel liberated because you have no need to manipulate people, to push your own agenda, to drive for what you want.

It was not the luck of being at the right moment in history that separated Bill Gates, but his proactive response to being at the right moment (Habit 1: Be Proactive).

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.

They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind. You can do it in every area of your life. Before a performance, a sales presentation, a difficult confrontation, or the daily challenge of meeting a goal, see it clearly, vividly, relentlessly, over and over again. Create an internal "comfort zone." Then, when you get into the situation, it isn't foreign. It doesn't scare you.

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively. They have genuine Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number is comparatively small. They keep P and PC in balance by focusing on the important, but not urgent, high leverage capacity-building activities of Quadrant II.

My teenage son is rebellious and on drugs. No matter what I try, he won't listen to me. What can I do?