Stephen Covey
Stephen Covey
Stephen Richards Coveywas an American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. His most popular book was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His other books include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader In Me — How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time. He was a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University at the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth24 October 1932
CitySalt Lake City, UT
CountryUnited States of America
My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.
To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.
Courage isn't absenct of fear, it is the awareness that something else is important
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.
You can't change the fruit without changing the root.
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.
Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.
We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.
Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition - such as lifting weights - we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.
We can never really change someone; people must change themselves.
Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside.
The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.
We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.
The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.