Quotes from Stephen Covey

You can buy a person's hand, but you can not buy his heart.

But much of our current emphasis on independence is a reaction to dependence—to having others control us, define us, use us, and manipulate us.

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole."2

While we can't always control what happens to us, we can always choose how we react to life's challenges.

The principles you live by create the world you live in.

Creating the unity necessary to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage.

The PC principle is to always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.

The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will infinitely impact our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors.

I'm convinced that too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling. And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.

In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and to inspire others to do so as well.

In an interdependent situation, the golden eggs are the effectiveness, the wonderful synergy, the results created by open communication and positive interaction with others. And to get those eggs on a regular basis, we need to take care of the goose. We need to create and care for the relationships that make those results realities.

As a college quarterback, one of my sons learned to snap his wristband between plays as a kind of mental checkoff whenever he or anyone made a "setting back" mistake, so the last mistake wouldn't affect the resolve and execution of the next play.