Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

half a dozen different planning systems. They've helped some, but I still don't feel I'm living the happy, productive, peaceful life I want to live.
    The personality ethic tells me there must be something out there -- some new planner or seminar that will help me handle all these pressures in a more efficient way.
    But is there a chance that efficiency is not the answer? Is getting more things done in less time going to make a difference -- or will it just increase the pace at which I react to the people and circumstances that seem to control my life?
    Could there be something I need to see in a deeper, more fundamental way -- some paradigm within myself that affects the way I see my time, my life, and my own nature?
    My marriage has gone flat. We don't fight or anything; we just don't love each other anymore.
    We've gone to counseling; we've tried a number of things, but we just can't seem to rekindle the feeling we used to have.
    The personality ethic tells me there must be some new book or some seminar where people get all their feelings out that would help my wife understand me better. Or maybe that it's useless, and only a new relationship will provide the love I need.
    But is it possible that my spouse isn't the real problem? Could I be empowering my spouse's weaknesses and making my life a function of the way I'm treated?
    Do I have some basic paradigm about my spouse, about marriage, about what love really is, that is feeding the problem?
    Can you see how fundamentally the paradigms of the personality ethic affect the very way we see our problems as well as the way we attempt to solve them?
    Whether people see it or not, many are becoming disillusioned with the empty promises of the personality ethic. As I travel around the country and work with organizations, I find that long-term THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart thinking executives are simply turned off by psyche up psychology and "motivational" speakers who have nothing more to share than entertaining stories mingled with platitudes.
    They want substance; they want process. They want more than aspirin and band-aids. They want to solve the chronic underlying problems and focus on the principles that bring long-term results.

A New Level of Thinking
    Albert Einstein observed, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
    As we look around us and within us and recognize the problems created as we live and interact within the personality ethic, we begin to realize that these are deep, fundamental problems that cannot be solved on the superficial level on which they were created.
    We need a new level, a deeper level of thinking -- a paradigm based on the principles that accurately describe the territory of effective human being and interacting -- to solve these deep concerns.
    This new level of thinking is what Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is about. It's a principle-centered, character-based, "Inside-Out" approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness.
    "Inside-Out" 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.
    It says if you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.
    The Inside-Out approach says that Private Victories TM precede Public Victories TM, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says