“The more authentic you become, the more genuine in your expression, particularly regarding personal experiences and even self-doubts, the more people can relate to your expressions and the safer it makes them feel to express themselves. That expression in turn feeds back on the other person’s spirit, and genuine creative empathy takes place, producing new insights and learnings and a sense of excitement and adventure that keeps the process going.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Sometimes there are apparently noble reasons given for making money, such as the desire to take care of one’s family.  And these things are important.  But to focus on money-making as a center will bring about its own undoing.”

• Stephen R. Covey

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”
– Michael Jordan

“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.”
– Stephen R. Covey

Habit 7 – Sharpen the Saw
“Sharpen the Saw is essentially the habit that this book represents. It is using our unique gifts and endowments to constantly renew ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually, and to renew our relationships. In so doing, we counteract entropy – the tendency of all things to eventually break down. One of the most effective ways to renew its through daily reflection and meditation.

You’re able to sidestep negative energy rather than give away your “space” to those people or things that seem to control or victimize you.

Habit 7 has many hard moments. For me, the hardest is to simply get up at 5:30 AM and climb aboard that stationary bike and start reading when I don’t want to – when I’m longing to get back between the sheets, and the siren call of the mattress is ever so seductive.

My next hard moment is paying the price early in the day to develop a frame of mind and hear that’s in total alignment with the vision and principles of my personal mission statement – to truly “win” a private victory.

Reflecting is like “priming the pump.” The familiar saying goes, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” It takes conscious effort to ponder and meditate – to slow down the rush and the urgency addiction long enough to get perspective and ask “What’s it all about?” Putting thoughts from the mind into the heart is the essence of meditation and reflection.

Plato said, The unexamined life is not worth living,” yet keeping a journal so as to observe one’s own involvement in life, distilling one’s learnings, experiences, feelings and insights, is a hard moment for many. Turning off the mindless TV viewing and getting back into a challenging, interesting, enlightening, or inspiring book is a hard moment for others.” – Stephen R. Covey

Habit 6 – Synergize
“The hard moment or test of Habit 6 comes when you have a difference with someone and you are tempted to simply compromise. It’s taking the course of least resistance by trying to quickly and efficiently find some middle position satisfactory to both, even though you know in your heart it does not optimize the situation. You know there are other unexplored alternatives out there, but there has not yet been enough t Habit 5 to really understand the issue and the underlying needs and concerns of the people involved. In short, the temptation is to satisfy rather than to optimize. …

Creating a third alternative that is felt by each person to be superior to those originally proposed becomes one of the most bonding experiences in relationships and in life.” – Stephen R. Covey

“ … is now two problems.”
― Seth Godin

Habit 5 – Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
The second hardest moment I face, and the greatest mistakes I make, usually come from violating Habit5. It’s judging before I understand and acting before I really understand either the big picture or another person. Once the collective monologue begins, you start investing more and more of your ego into your convictions and into your own need to be understood. The other just isn’t listening. Oh, what a hard moment that is – to reach deep inside and subordinate your need to be understood and really work to get into the frame of mind and hear of the other. It is listening empathically and having the discipline and the patience to simply hold your tongue. It’s constantly relearning the anatomy lesson that we have two ears and one mouth, and we should use them accordingly.” – Stephen R. Covey

Habit 4 – Think Win-Win
Perhaps the hardest moment and test of Habit 4 is when we are absolutely convinced we are right. We know exactly what should be done, what the decision should be, what we want. It is truly going for win-win when all you really want is your own way – simply winning. Or perhaps it’s going for win-win when another takes you on and opposes you, and you are so stirred up that you want to go for win-lose. You see it as a contest of wills; you don’t want to give in. Or perhaps the hard moment is when you are threatened by the possibility of displeasing someone and you need their acceptance and approval so badly that you want to go or lose-win. You capitulate and give in, rather than combining courage with consideration.”
– Stephen R. Covey

Habit 3 – Put First Things First
“It is the habit that draws upon the independent will to literally act upon those things which we, in Habit 2, determined are first things. The hard moments of Habit 3 come at us constantly. Will we carry forth our resolve? Will we execute? The deeper the resolve, the easier the execution – and vice versa.

For instance, perhaps the most powerful form of minority vocal control ever contemplated takes place when a few million taste buds are screaming “Yes, yes!” to something you shouldn’t eat, when at the same time, billions of unvocal cells in the rest of the body are crying out “no, no!

This is hard moment. When I fail this hard moment, I live with the consequences of not sleeping as deeply, of putting on unnecessary girth, of not having the same energy the next afternoon. I then also have the feeling that I have betrayed my integrity and stewardship to model what I teach and to champion other people’s growth around the same principles. True minority control!”- Stephen R. Covey

“There is also great value in recognizing the horrendous price we pay, both personally and socially, when we are weak in the hard moments. It’s like trading dust for diamonds. Shakespeare beautifully capture the effects of “giving in” to the pleasure of the moment rather than subordinating it to the real joy of contribution and growth:

What win I, if I gain the think I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute’ mirth to wail a week?
Or seeks eternity to get a toy?
For one sweet grape, who will the vine destroy?
The Rape of Lucrece,
Lines 211-215”

Stephen R. Covey