Quote

Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.

Stephen Covey

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Stephen Covey
Age: 79 †
Born: 1932
Born: October 24
Died: 2012
Died: July 16
Author
Businessperson
Professor
Writer
Salt Lake City
Utah
Stephen Richards Covey
Firsts
Putting
First
Value
Executing
Mean
Principles
Organizing
Important
Values
Surrounding
Things
Force
Agendas
Living
Priorities
Means
Forces
Around
Driven

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The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in. The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
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Where there's no gardener, there's no garden.
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When your happiness comes primarily from the happiness of others, you know you have moved from a 'me' experience to a 'we' experience. And the whole problem-solving and opportunity-seizing process changes.
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Effective people are not problem-minded they're opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.
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The nature of life is to be a study of contrasts: joy/sadness, full/empty. The Main Thing is to Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing.
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Success is when you realize obstacles you face are challenges to help you become better - and your response equals the challenge.
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..people are working harder than ever, but because they lack clarity and vision, they aren’t getting very far. They, in essence, are pushing a rope...with all of their might.
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Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
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It is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
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The character ethic, which I believe to be the foundation of success, teaches that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.
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Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.
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You can't have the fruits without the roots.
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Everyone has values even criminal gangs have values. Values govern people's behavior but principles govern the consequences of those behaviors.
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Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.
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Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy.
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Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
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People and organizations don't grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses
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Satisfied needs do not motivate. It's only the unsatisfied need that motivates. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival - to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.
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You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.
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