Stephen Covey Quotes

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

life is a mission and not a career,

بعضنا يشعر بفقدان الاتجاه ، والبلبلة . هؤلاء لا يوجد لديهم تقدير حقيقي للأمور التي تعد الاهم في حياتهم . فهم ينتقلون من نشاط إلى آخر بتلقائية وعفوية ، وبطريقة ميكانيكية بحتة . وبين الحين والآخر يتساءل هؤلاء : هل هناك معنى لما نقوم به من عمل ؟
وبدلا من أن ننظر إلى الأسباب الحقيقية في عدم رؤيتنا للأهم فإنا نتحايل على ذلك بالمسكنات والحلول السريعة لنتجاهل المشكلة ، محصنين بالراحة المؤقتة اللتي تحققها تلك الحلول المؤقتة ، فنصبح مشغولين أكثر وأكثر .

Courage is not the absence of fear but the awareness that something else is more important.

Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Our life is result of our choices.

I have seen the consequences of attempting to shortcut this natural process of growth often in the business world, where executives attempt to “buy” a new culture of improved productivity, quality, morale, and customer service with strong speeches, smile training, and external interventions, or through mergers, acquisitions, and friendly or unfriendly takeovers. But they ignore the low-trust climate produced by such manipulations. When these methods don’t work, they look for other Personality Ethic techniques that will — all the time ignoring and violating the natural principles and processes on which a high-trust culture is based.

"Inside-Out" means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self — with your paradigms, your character, and your motives

It 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. In the words of Thoreau, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.

Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. 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 those assumptions. The way we see things is the source of the way we think and the way we act.

Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physically interdependent, I am self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I derive a great sense of worth within myself, but I also recognize the need for love, for giving, and for receiving love from others. If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own.

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. You’ll no longer build your emotional life on other people’s weaknesses. In addition, you’ll find it easier and more desirable to change because there is something — some core deep within — that is essentially changeless.

Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality. Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won’t be good leaders or team players. They’re not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality.

Because of the space between stimulus and response, people have the power of choice; therefore, leaders are neither born nor made — meaning environmentally trained and nurtured. They are self-made through chosen responses, and if they choose based on principles and develop increasingly greater discipline, their freedom to choose increases.