Stephen Covey - The 8th Habit (2004)

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When you have too many top priorities, you effectively have no top priorities.

Stephen Covey
Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly your intergenerational family.

Stephen Covey
Vision is seeing a future state with the mind's eye. Vision is applied imagination.

Stephen Covey
The key to the many is often the one; it is how you regard and talk about the one in that one's absence or presence that communicates to the many how you would regard and talk about them in their presence or absence.

Stephen Covey
The principle of fasting is taught in almost all major world religions as a means of developing a higher level of self-mastery and self-control, and also a deeper awareness of how really dependent we are.

Stephen Covey
Sacrifice really means giving up something good for something better.

Stephen Covey
The great contributors in life are those who, though afraid of the knock at the door, still answer it.

Stephen Covey
Would you not agree that relationships are built on trust? Would you not also agree that most individuals think more in terms of "me-my wants, my needs, my rights? What would wisdom dictate - would it not direct us to focus on trust-building principles and sacrificing 'me' for 'we'?"

Stephen Covey
Affirm people. Affirm your children. Believe in them, not in what you see but in what you don't see - their potential.

Stephen Covey
Once you've found your own voice, the choice to expand your influence, to increase your contribution, is the choice to inspire others to find their voice.

Stephen Covey
The exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power.

Stephen Covey
Vision is about more than just getting things done, accomplishing some task, achieving something; it is about discovering and expanding our view of others, affirming them, believing in them, and helping them discover and realize the potential within them-helping them find their own voice.

Stephen Covey
The greatest and most inspiring mountain climbing achievements in history are not so much stories of individual achievement, but are stories of the extraordinary power of a unified, talented, prepared team that stays loyally committed to one another and to their shared vision to the end.

Stephen Covey
The key to creating passion in your life is to find your unique talents, and your special role and purpose in the world.

Stephen Covey
The fire inside people is like a match; the way to ignite that flame is initially through friction, then other matches are lit through warmth.

Stephen Covey
If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won't require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external.

Stephen Covey
Passion is the fire, enthusiasm and courage that an individual feels when she is doing something she loves while accomplishing worthy ends, something that satisfies her deepest needs.

Stephen Covey
If you say to one flower, 'Grow,' but you water another, the first one won't grow.

Stephen Covey
Being proactive is more than taking initiative. It is recognizing that we are responsible for our own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or condition. Proactive people are agents of change and choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others.

Stephen Covey
When we say that leadership is a choice, it basically means you can choose the level of initiative you want to exercise in response to the question, 'What is the best I can do under the given circumstances?'

Stephen Covey
To achieve goals you've never achieved before, you need to start doing things you've never done before.

Stephen Covey
We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.

Stephen Covey
Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for.

Stephen Covey
Principles are universal — that is, they transcend culture and geography. They're also timeless, they never change — principles such as fairness, kindness, respect, honesty, integrity, service, contribution. Different cultures may translate these principles into different practices and over time may even totally obscure these principles through the wrongful use of freedom. Nevertheless, they are present. Like the law of gravity, they operate constantly.

Stephen Covey
Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.

Stephen Covey
Human beings are not things needing to be motivated and controlled; they are four dimensional - body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Stephen Covey
Involve people in the problem and work out the solution together.

Stephen Covey
Fundamentally, we are a product of choice, not nature (genes) or nurture (upbringing, environment).

Stephen Covey
Values are social norms — they're personal, emotional, subjective, and arguable. All of us have values. Even criminals have values. The question you must ask yourself is, Are your values based upon principles? In the last analysis, principles are natural laws — they're impersonal, factual, objective and self-evident. Consequences are governed by principles and behavior is governed by values; therefore, value principles!

Stephen Covey
My temptation is emotional, and resisting will further my needed weight loss and strengthen my character. Furthermore, nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

Stephen Covey