The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I've set and met my career goals and I'm having tremendous professional success. But it's cost me my personal and family life. I don't know my wife and children any more. I'm not even sure I know myself and what's really important to me. I've had to ask myself-is it worth it?

There is no real excellence in all this worldwhich can be separated from right living. DAVID STARR JORDAN

I'd really like to think there was meaning in my life, that somehow things were different because I was here.

I have a forceful personality. I know, in almost any interaction, I can control the outcome. Most of the time, I can even do it by influencing others to come up with the solution I want.

"Where we stand depends on where we sit."

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are-or, as we are conditioned to see it.

astern?" the captain called out. Lookout

The way we see the problem is the problem.

T. S. Eliot's observation: We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

We are what we repeatedly do.Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ARISTOTLE

Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.

Marilyn Ferguson observed, "No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal."

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent."

In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them."

Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world.

"Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Like the Dead Sea in Israel, it accepts but never gives. It becomes stagnant.

The principles don't change; our understanding of them does.

"If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other."

In the words of Abraham Maslow, "He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail."

"begin with the end in mind."

Things which matter mostmust never be at the mercy of things which matter least. GOETHE

The enemy of the "best" is often the "good."

"If you want to get something done, give it to a busy man."

you have to like yourself before you can like others.

If you value a relationship and the issue isn't really that important, you may want to go for Lose/Win in some circumstances to genuinely affirm the other person. "What I want isn't as important to me as my relationship with you. Let's do it your way this time."

If you can't reach a true Win/Win, you're very often better off to go for No Deal.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They're either speaking or preparing to speak. They're

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They're either speaking or preparing to speak.

own experience; or we interpret-we try to figure people out, to explain their motives, their behavior,

The early Greeks had a magnificent philosophy which is embodied in three sequentially arranged words: ethos, pathos, and logos.

Notice the sequence: ethos, pathos, logos-your character, and your relationships, and then the logic of your presentation.

Like the Far Eastern philosophy, "We seek not to imitate the masters, rather we seek what they sought,"

"The person who doesn't read is no better off than the person who can't read."

he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.

How is technology going to change business in the future? I believe in Stan Davis's statement that "When the infrastructure changes, everything rumbles,"