The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

by Stephen R. Covey

Security and clear guidance bring true wisdom, and wisdom becomes the spark or catalyst to release and direct power.

Your power lies somewhere between immobilization or being a puppet pulled by someone else’s strings to high proactivity, the power to act according to your own values instead of being acted upon by other people and circumstances.

FAMILY CENTEREDNESS.

do not have the emotional freedom, the power, to raise their children with their ultimate welfare truly in mind.

They become upset, guided by the emotions of the moment, spontaneously reacting to the immediate concern rather than the long-term growth and development of the child.

They may yell or scream. They may overreact and punish out of bad temper.

They tend to love their children conditionally, making them emotionally dependent or count...

Sometimes there are apparently noble reasons given for making money, such as the desire to take care of one’s family. And these things are important. But to focus on money-making as a center will bring about its own undoing.

But work and money, per se, provide no wisdom, no guidance, and only a limited degree of power and security.

“The work will come again, but childhood won’t.”

If my sense of security lies in my reputation or in the things I have, my life will be in a constant state of threat and jeopardy that these possessions may be lost or stolen or devalued.

too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life.

When someone feels he has been unjustly dealt with by an emotionally or socially significant person, it is very easy for him to become preoccupied with the injustice and make the other person the center of his life.

But I pointed out to him that he was allowing one individual and his weaknesses to distort his entire map of life, to undermine his faith and the quality of his relationships with his loved ones.

Many “older” children go through life either secretly or openly hating their parents. They blame them for past abuses, neglect, or favoritism and they center their adult life on that hatred, living out the reactive, justifying script that accompanies it.

There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that surround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply.

We are limited, but we can push back the borders of our limitations. An understanding of the principle of our own growth enables us to search out correct principles with the confidence that the more we learn, the more clearly we can focus the lens through which we see the world. The principles don’t change; our understanding of them does.

The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

If you’re self-centered, you’ll be focused on what will do you the most good. Would it be better for you to go out for the evening? Or would it be better for you to make a few points with the boss? How the different options affect you will be your main concern.

And if that center does not empower you as a proactive person, it becomes fundamental to your effectiveness to make the necessary paradigm shifts to create a center that will.

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

mission statement is not something you write overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce it in final form.

As you do, other people begin to sense that you’re not being driven by everything that happens to you. You have a sense of mission about what you’re trying to do and you are excited about it.3

“Assume you only have this one semester to live,” I tell my students, “and that during this semester you are to stay in school as a good student. Visualize how you would spend your semester.”

The dominant, central theme of their activities, the underlying principle, is love.

The futility of bad-mouthing, bad thinking, put-downs, and accusation becomes very evident when they think in terms of having only a short time to live. Principles and values become more evident to everybody.

If you visualize the wrong thing, you’ll produce the wrong thing.

I believe the higher use of imagination is in harmony with the use of conscience to transcend self and create a life of contribution based on unique purpose and on the principles that govern interdependent reality.

Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts.

After you identify your various roles, then you can think about the long-term goals you want to accomplish in each of those roles.

They reflect your deepest values, your unique talent, your sense of mission.

And they grow out of your chosen roles in life.

The best mission statements are the result of family members coming together in a spirit of mutual respect, expressing their different views, and working together to create something greater than any one individual could do alone.

When we read the phrases about the sounds of love in our home, order, responsible independence, cooperation, helpfulness, meeting needs, developing talents, showing interest in each other’s talents, and giving service to others it gives us some criteria to know how we’re doing in the things that matter most to us as a family.

light of these principles, what are the goals we’re going to work on? What are our action plans to accomplish our goals and actualize these values?”