Top 745 Quotes & Sayings by Stephen Covey - Page 4

We must never be too busy to take time to sharpen the saw.

All things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default.

It is possible to be busy-very busy-without being very effective.

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

What does it matter how much we do if what we're doing isn't what matters most?

Seek to understand rather than be understood.

When you make a commitment to yourself, do so with the clear understanding that you're pledging your integrity.

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.

By behaving in ways that build trust with one, you build trust with many.

Our lives are the results of our choices. To blame and accuse other people, the environment, or other extrinsic factors is to choose to empower those things to control us.

We develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and obstacles.

Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what's urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.

Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe this is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds.

Our greatest joy and our greatest pain comes in our relationships with others.

If you put good people in bad systems you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.

Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don't see themselves as leaders.

"If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you'll get my meaning anyway. You won't make me "an offender for a word." When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective."

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.

Leadership is a choice, not a position

Listen to your conscience regarding something that you simply know you should do, then start small on it - make a promise and keep it. Then move forward and make a little larger promise and keep it. Eventually you'll discover that your sense of honor will become greater than your moods, and that will give you a level of confidence and excitement that you can move to other areas where you feel you need to make improvements or give service.

Internal victories precede external victories.

It takes humility to seek feedback. It takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it and appropriately act on it.

Habit 1: Be Proactive Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Habit 3: Put First Things First Habit 4: Think Win/Win Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Habit 6: Synergize Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.

Response-ability is the ABILITY to choose our response to any circumstance or condition.

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.

You have to water the flowers you want to grow.

Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.

The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.

To listen with empathy is the most important human skill.

Don't cheat people of their growth. Empower them to solve problems and generate ideas. Watch them grow!

Most leaders would agree that they’d be better off having an average strategy with superb execution than a superb strategy with poor execution. Those who execute always have the upper hand.

Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside.

The more deeply you understand other people, the more you will appreciate them, the more reverent you will feel about them. To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.

Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them.

The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions

Want to improve your relationships? See love as a verb rather than as a feeling?

One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present.

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience.

What you see often depends on what you are looking for.

If you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.

Unless people feel that they are accepted and that they have a right to express their feelings without fear of embarrassment or ridicule, all they will do is react and rebel and struggle for their identity.

The 'Inside-Out' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness 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. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes 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.

An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It gives meaning and purpose to all you do.

Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.

It's not what people do to us that hurts us. In the most fundamental sense, it is our chosen response to what they do to us that hurts us.

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

If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.

Effective communication is built on the cement of trust. And trust is based on trustworthiness, not politics.

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

How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.

If we want to make a change in our lives, we should first focus on our personal attitudes and behaviors.

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.

Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.

It's not enough to have values without vision ; you want to be good, but you want to be good for something. On the other hand, vision without values can create a Hitler . An empowering mission statement deals with both character and competence; what you want to be and what you want to do in your life.

Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.

To know and not to do is not to know.

When we listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building. Opportunities to then speak openly and to be understood come much more naturally and easily.