The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

As you care less about what people think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves.

“To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors do very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow.”

“Principles are the territory. Values are maps. When we value correct principles, we have the truth—a knowledge of things as they are.”

“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.”

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

“Paradigms are inseparable from character. Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are.”

“Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.”

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

1. Be proactive2. Begin with the end in mind3. Put first things first4. Think win/win5. Seek first to understand then be understood6. Synergize7. Sharpen the saw

On practices vs. principles: “Practices are situationally specific. Principles are deep, fundamental truths that have universal application.”

Leadership is communicating others’ worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.

Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value-driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.

Effectiveness lies in the balance—what Stephen calls the P/PC Balance. P stands for production of desired results, the golden eggs. PC stands for production capability, the ability or asset that produces the golden eggs.

“We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world.”

Proactive people work on the things they can do something about.

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

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.

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.

There is no effectiveness without discipline, and there is no discipline without character.

We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power — the freedom to choose.

Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them.

If you look at things through the paradigm of correct principles, what you see in life is dramatically different from what you see through any other centered paradigm.

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Interdependence is a higher value than independence.

The way we see the problem is the problem.

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

Win/Win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions.

The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.

To achieve that balance between courage and consideration is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to Win/Win.

Synergy means that 1 + 1 may equal 8, 16, or even 1,600. The synergistic position of high trust produces solutions better than any originally proposed, and all parties know it.