7 Habits of Highly Effective People

When you reflect on highly effective people around you, who do you think of?  You probably have already begun to go through the list of character traits and qualities that define them.  In his most famous book entitled The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey discusses core leadership principles that enable people from all walks of life, to take an honest personal inventory and examine the character traits that will either ultimately build them up or tear them down.  

Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits.  "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny," the maxim goes.  Habits are powerful factors in our lives.  Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness...or ineffectiveness. 

It is interesting to note that Covey is not focusing on what necessarily makes a person successful, likable, or financially well-off.  He is addressing the core of each of our beings, because the root of who we are lies in how we behave, not in what we say we believe.  Our actions (or habits, as he refers to them), do the best job at revealing our deepest beliefs about life and what we find to be necessary for happiness and success.  Covey elaborates on the principle of habits, in terms of what it means to cultivate effective habits.

The Seven Habits are habits of effectiveness.  Because they are based on principles, they bring the maximum long-term beneficial results possible.  They become the basis of a person's character, creating an empowering center of correct maps from which an individual can effectively solve problems, maximize opportunities, and continually learn and integrate other principles in an upward spiral of growth.  

Covey also gives a brief overview of what this book will explore.

Albert Einstein observed, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"...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 all 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.

What About You?  What habits have you cultivated, which guide your life from the inside out?

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