5. David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1992), pp. 177204.
6. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 16465.
7. You might want to read the following: Frank Walters, Book of the Hopi (New York: Ballantine, 1963).
James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1983).
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (New York: Carlton House, 1940).
William Bennett, The Book of Virtues (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul (Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications, 1993).
From Survival . . . to Stability . . . to Success . . . to Significance
1. Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Special Science (New York: Harper, 1951), p. 183.
2. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982), pp. 6667.
3. Urie Bronfenbrenner, as quoted in Susan Byrne's interview, "Nobody Home: The Erosion of the American Family," Psychology Today, May 1977, pp. 4147. See also a study by E. E. Maccoby and J. A. Martin, "Socialization in the Context of the Family: Parent-Child Interaction," in P. H. Mussen (ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology, vol. 4 (New York: John Wiley, 1983), pp. 1101.
4. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 165.
5. The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), p. 197.
6. Albert E. N. Gray, "The Common Denominator of Success," a speech given at the Prudential Insurance Company of America (Newark, New Jersey, 1983).
GLOSSARY.
Abundance mentality: The view that there is more than enough to go around for everybody.
Agent of change: A person who brings about change in a relationship or situation.
Big rocks: Those activities that are the most important priorities in our lives.
Circle of Concern: All matters that a person or family is concerned about.
Circle of Influence: Those things that a person or family can directly impact.
Compass: A person's internal guidance system consisting both of principles and the four human gifts.
Conscience: An inner sense of what is right and wrong.
Driving force: Something that motivates, excites, and inspires us and our family.
Effective family: A nurturing, learning, enjoyable, contributing, and interdependent family.
Emotional Bank Account: The amount of trust or the quality of a relationship with others.
Entropy: The tendency for things to deteriorate or fall apart.
Faithful translator: One capable of truly reflecting the content and feeling of another's comments.
Family culture: The climate, character, spirit, feeling, and atmosphere of the home and family.
Family mission statement: A combined, unified expression from all family members of what the family is all about, what family members want to do and be, and the principles that will guide the family's flight plan.
Family time: Weekly time set aside to be together as a family.
Four human gifts: See Self-awareness, Conscience, Imagination, and Independent will.
Framework/Paradigm: Our perspective or map or the way we think about and see things.
Habit: An established pattern or way of thinking and doing things.
Imagination: The ability to visualize something in our mind beyond the present reality.
Independent will: The ability to choose and act on our own inner imperatives and determinations.
Inside-out: Initiating change by changing self rather than trying to change others.
Leadership Influence: See Modeling, Mentoring, Organizing, and Teaching.
Mentoring: Relating to another individual in a one-on-one, personal, and helpful way.
Modeling: Setting a principle-based pattern for another person to follow.
Nuclear family: The core or essential family around which the extended family (grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins) is grouped.
One-on-one bonding time: Regular time set aside to have meaningful, relationship-building interactions.
Opportunity minded: Being focused on bringing something into existence.
Organizing: Creating order and systems to help accomplish what is valued by the family.
Outside-in: Influenced more by external surroundings than internal commitments.
Paradigm/Framework: Our perspective or map or the way we think about and see things.
Pause button: Something that reminds us to stop, think, and act in a better way.
Primary Laws of Life: The basic principles or natural laws of effectiveness that govern in all of life.
Primary Laws of Love: Natural laws that affirm the inherent worth of people and the power of unconditional love.
Principles: Universal, timeless, self-evident, natural laws that govern in all of life's human interactions.
Proactive: Being responsible for our own choices; having the freedom to choose based on values rather than moods or conditions.
Problem minded: Being focused on eliminating something. Compare with Opportunity minded.
Restraining force: Pressure that hinders or prevents us from achieving our goals.
Scarcity mentality: A mind-set of competition and being threatened by others' successes.
Self-awareness: The ability to stand apart and examine our own thoughts and behaviors.
Sharpening the Saw: Renewal, rejuvenation, and re-creation of one's spiritual, mental, social-emotional, and physical self and family.
Significance: A condition in which the family has developed a beautiful family culture and is making a larger contribution both inside and outside of the family.
Social will: The norms and the moral or ethical force created by the culture of the family.
Stability: A condition in which the family is predictable, dependable, and functional with basic structure and organization, and has some communication and problem-solving ability.
Stewardship: Something we are entrusted with.
Success: The condition in which the family is accomplishing worthy goals, feels genuine happiness, has fun and meaningful traditions, and is serving one another.
Survival: A condition in which the family is struggling physically, economically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually to live and love at the minimum day-to-day existence level.
Synergy: The result of two or more people producing together more than the sum of what they could produce separately (one plus one equals three or more).
Teaching: Intentionally sharing with, explaining to, and informing other people.
Transcending ourselves: Overcoming past negative scripting and becoming the creative force in our own lives.
Transition person: One who stops negative tendencies and cycles and becomes an agent of change.
Trim tab: A person who influences and helps set the direction of the family, like the rudder of a ship.
Win-win agreement: A shared expectation and commitment regarding desired results and guidelines.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Stephen R. Covey, husband, father, and grandfather, is an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, founder of the former Covey Leadership Center, and co-chairman of Franklin Covey Company. He has made teaching Principle-Centered Living and Principle-Centered Leadership his life's work. He holds an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate from Brigham Young University, where he was a professor of organizational behavior and business management, and also served as director of university relations and assistant to the president. For more than thirty years he has taught millions of individuals and families and leaders in business, education, and government the transforming power of principles or natural laws that govern human and organizational effectiveness.
Dr. Covey is the author of several acclaimed books including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has been at the top of the best-seller lists for over seven years. More than ten million copies have been sold in twenty-eight languages and seventy countries. His books Principle-Centered Leadership and First Things First are two of the best-selling business books of the decade.
Dr. Covey and other Franklin Covey authors, speakers, and spokespersons, all authorities on leadership and effectiveness, are consistently sought by radio and television stations, magazines, and newspapers throughout the world.
Among recent acknowledgments, Dr. Covey has received the Thomas More College Medallion for continuing service to humanity, the Toastmaster's International Top Speaker Award, Inc. magazine's National Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and several honorary doctorates. He has also been recognized as one of Time magazine's twenty-five most influential Americans.
Stephen, his wife, Sandra, and their family live in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.
ABOUT FRANKLIN COVEY.
Stephen R. Covey is co-chairman of Franklin Covey Company, a four-thousand-member international firm devoted to helping individuals, organizations, and families become more effective through the application of proven principles or natural laws. In addition to working with and creating products for individuals and families, the company's client portfolio includes eighty-two of the Fortune 100 companies, more than two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies, thousands of small and midsize companies, and government entities at local, state, and national levels. Franklin Covey has also created pilot partnerships with cities seeking to become principle-centered communities, and is currently teaching the 7 Habits to teachers and administrators in more than three thousand school districts and universities nationwide and through statewide initiatives with education leaders in twenty-seven states.
The vision of Franklin Covey is to teach people to teach themselves and become independent of the company. They encourage organizations to be family friendly, and they teach skills and provide products to help people balance work and family life. To the timeless adage by Laotzu: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime," they add: "Develop teachers of fishermen, and you lift all society." This empowerment process is carried out through programs conducted at facilities in the Rocky Mountains of Utah, custom consulting services, personal coaching, custom on-site training, and client-facilitated training, as well as through open enrollment workshops offered in over three hundred cities in North America and forty countries worldwide.
Franklin Covey has more than nineteen thousand licensed client facilitators teaching its curriculum within their organizations, and it trains in excess of 750,000 participants annually. Implementation tools, including the Franklin Day Planner, the 7 Habits Organizer, and a wide offering of audio- and videotapes, books, and computer software programs enable clients to retain and effectively utilize concepts and skills. These and other family products carefully selected and endorsed by Franklin Covey are available in more than 120 Franklin Covey 7 Habits Stores throughout North America and in several other countries.
Franklin Covey products and materials are now available in twenty-eight languages, and their planner products are used by more than fifteen million individuals worldwide. The company has over fifteen million books in print, with more than one and a half million sold each year. Business Week lists Dr. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as a number one best-selling trade business book of the year and its First Things First time management book as a number three.
For information on the Franklin Covey 7 Habits Store or International Office closest to you, or for a free catalog of Franklin Covey products and programs, call or write: Franklin Covey 2200 West Parkway Boulevard Salt Lake City, Utah 84119-2331 USA Toll Free: 1-800-372-6839 Fax: 801-496-4252 International Callers: 801-229-1333 or fax 801-229-1233 Internet: http://www.franklincovey.com
THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE FAMILIES.
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Families and family members are responsible for their own choices and have the freedom to choose based on principles and values rather than on moods or conditions. They develop and use their four unique human gifts-self-awareness, conscience, imagination, and independent will-and take an inside-out approach to creating change. They choose not to be victims, to be reactive, or to blame others.