Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It's not what they're not doing or should be doing that's the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is "out there," stop yourself. That thought is the problem.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: choice response weakness blame problem thought

We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: attitude behavior assumptions perception cynicism

The "Inside-Out" approach to personal and 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 precedes 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.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: effectiveness relationship growth change paradigms character motives victory promises personality self-improvement

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character...
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: character habits patterns

Private victories precede public victories. You can't invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: victory self-improvement growth change

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.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: weakness blame mistake learning apology

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally 'being lived.' They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: freedom life independence co-dependence

Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: love friendship action

We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: limitations growth self-improvement

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth change creativity imagination past future

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: change principles values self-knowledge vision

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.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: proactive circumstances creativity mission vision learning growth

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.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: character apology sorry principles values

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: love friendship relationships business understanding

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.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: potential synergy creativity growth learning living values principles

Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: happiness desire sacrifice delayed gratification vision goal

Until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: perception self-image self-knowledge security understanding love friendship relationships intentions behavior

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: growth change vision patience

Between stimulus and response, one has the freedom to choose.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: choice behavior attitude reaction responsibility freedom

The way we see the problem is the problem.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: problem perception

All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation of all things. You have to make sure that the blueprint, the first creation, is really what you want, that you've thought everything through. Then you put it into bricks and mortar. Each day you go to the construction shed and pull out the blueprint to get marching orders for the day. You begin with the end in mind.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: creation planning creativity action

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.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: principles values emotion balance work family

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.'
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: priorities planning responsibility no

Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: problems effectiveness opportunity business

Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really?...True effectiveness requires balance.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: success balance effectiveness business compartmentalization

How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Categories: priorities balance planning focus action

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.
Stephen Covey First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
Categories: control issues unhappiness perfectionism acceptance

Personal leadership is not a singular experience.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: vision values action leadership

Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: giving sharing volunteering commitment

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: education growth self-improvement self-awareness

As you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: values character identity self-awareness inner peace joy self-esteem self-confidence

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power -- the freedom to choose.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: choice personal responsibility attitude

...until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise."
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Categories: choice personal responsibility decisions

Be loyal to people in their absence. Then watch how others begin having more faith and confidence in you, because they know you won't be talking about them behind their backs.
Stephen Covey "Unit of One," Fast Company, April 1999
Categories: loyalty gossip trust integrity character

Nothing is more validating and affirming than feeling understood. And the moment a person begins feeling understood, that person becomes far more open to influence and change.
Stephen Covey "Unit of One," Fast Company, April 1999
Categories: relationships teamwork team work change growth influence leadership mentoring

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: vision goal plan

I can change. I can live out my imagination instead of my memory. I can tie myself to my limitless potential instead of my limiting past.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: change potential vision imagination possibilities choice

Rather than focusing on things and time, focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: focus priorities balance success

Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more weight than the total of the weight held by each separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: teamwork cooperation win-win

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.
Stephen Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Categories: values

Almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They began with the end in mind. You can do it in every area of your life. Before 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.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: success achievement visualization mental preparation stage fright

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.
Stephen Covey Daily Reflections for Highly Effective People: Living the Seven Habits
Categories: choice will achievement decision-making