To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
—Stephen Covey
Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree. “What are you doing?” you ask. “Can’t you see?” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree”. “You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?” “Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work”. “Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster”. “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Win, Action
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
Topics: Circumstance, Chance
Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Habit, Act, Power, Thoughts, Learn, Experience, Learning
When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air.
—Stephen Covey
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.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Act, Persona, Action, People, Power, Knowledge, Attitude, War, Rest
The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Time Management, Spending time wisely
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
Trust is the highest form of human motivation.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Habit, Trust
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Imagination
Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Challenges
The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Do the important things first – because where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Habit
Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don’t see themselves as leaders.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Leadership
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Motivation
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 begin with the end in mind.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Mind, Act, Experience
Empathy takes time, and efficiency is for things, not people.
—Stephen Covey
When you have a challenge and the response is equal to the challenge, that’s called “success”. But once you have a new challenge, the old, once-successful response no longer works. That’s why it is called a “failure.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Challenges
Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit, and do on increasingly higher planes. We deceive ourselves if we think that any one of these is sufficient. To keep progressing, we must learn, commit, and do—learn, commit, and do—and learn, commit, and do again.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Progress, Habit, Learn, War, Think, Sin
Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Problem-solving, Commitment
This represents one of the great tragedies and wastes in life, because so much potential remains untapped — completely undeveloped and unused. Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.
—Stephen Covey
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Discipline, Leadership, Effectiveness, Management
Interdependency follows independence.
—Stephen Covey
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
Topics: Potential
The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focused on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Act, Character, Achieve, Focus, Values, Principles, Achievement, Mind, Persona, Habit, Doing
Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.
—Stephen Covey
The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Integrity, Rest, Commitment, Act
While you can think in terms of efficiency in dealing with time, a principle-centered person thinks in terms of effectiveness in dealing with people.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Think, People, Habit, Effectiveness
It’s easy to say “no!” when there’s a deeper “yes!” burning inside.
—Stephen Covey
The ability to manage well doesn’t make much difference if you’re not even in the right jungle.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Management
To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you’ll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Talent
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Tom Peters American Management Consultant
- Orson Scott Card American Author
- Peter Senge American Management Consultant
- Robin Sharma Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker
- Margaret J. Wheatley American Management Consultant
- Peter Drucker Austrian-born Management Consultant
- Thomas S. Monson American Religious Leader
- Gordon B. Hinckley American Mormon Religious Leader
- Sheryl Sandberg American Executive, Author
- Marvin J. Ashton American Religious Leader
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