7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Personal & Professional Development Template For The Thinking Person!
Comment: The key to success for individuals and business leaders alike, Stephen Covey gives a delicious and very readable step-by-step template for living with integrity and dignity, secure in your wisdom and power to take advantage of and celebrate the opportunities life brings your way. It would appeal to those who want more than 'fluff', who would enjoy knowing some antecedants to the ideas and models proposed and who recognise that change of life style is the key to enduring behavioural changes.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: An Exceptional Book
Comment: In browsing my book shelf I came upon and then found myself rereading this incredibly simple yet profound book. The principles and ideas Stephen writes about are truly ways to discover how to live your life as the person you want to be. I especially found the section where Stephen writes about how powerful unexamined attitudes and perceptions influence how I react toward situations and others. Once I started looking at my predetermined thoughts...those same situations became less mundane and irritating. My experiences became more authentic, meaningful and enjoyable instantaneously. Stephen writes of this as a "paradigm shift", where our attitudes and behaviors, left unexamined, shape how we feel and act in our life in mechanical patterns.

Two authors that have also inspired and ignited my passion for living a magnificent life are Ariel & Shya Kane. The Kanes works: "Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment", "Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life","How to Create a Magical Relationship: The 3 Simple Ideas that Will Instantaneously Transform Your Love Life: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Love Life" and their internet radio show "Being Here" on Voiceamerica.com are all indispensable sources I turn to in supporting my well-being in all areas of my life. I highly recommend the Kanes and Stephen Covey classic, timeless book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People."

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Live by Principles, not Personality
Comment: I don't think A Customer read it properly. You define 'effective' as the ability to produce YOUR excellent results (whatever they are) consistently - a balance of production and production capability. YOU also define your own happiness and seek it out - effectively. The rest of the book provides a systematic way of doing so, in a way that recognises that we achieve NOTHING meaningful without the
input, or for the benefit,of other people.

This is one of the two GREATEST books on personal development I have ever read. It shows how recognition of the principles that guide our lives WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT can enhance rather than defeat our lives, instead of playing to the personality 'I can do what I like' ethic that defeats so many politicians, celebrities and other powerful people.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A hard, but worthwhile read.
Comment: Its easy to see why this book has been so successful for so long.
This is the first `Self Improvement' book I ever read. At the time, I was stuck in a dead end job with very few prospects thoroughly miserable.
This book showed me that life is not about `have too's' and `must do's' but about `choices'. Its only when you realise this that you can truly take hold of your life.
Habit 2 which covers time management is truly inspirational.
Since reading this book in 2002, I have more that tripled my income and halved the amount of hours a week I spend doing so.
This book is a hard slog of a read sometimes but stick with it and it may change your life!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not an E-Z read.
Comment: For a personal change book, I found it rather a hard read. The book to me is, well, complicated. The seven habits make sense and all, but the whole process seems to involve making layers of change, with each layer being a whole book in itself. Not a very quick read, and I'm not saying its not worthwhile and all, it's more a book that you have to be willing to work with. Readers who like less sophisticated personal change books might enjoy The Sixty-Second Motivator.

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According to Steven R. Covey, to live with security and wisdom, and to have the power to take advantages of the opportunities that change creates, we need fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity. Quite a tall order when you consider that most of us live our lives in a permanent state of flux, questioning our ideals and values and fighting a daily battle with the lack of self-confidence that stops us from taking risks of any kind. But, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey manages to make it sound as if changing the way we look at ourselves and the world around us so that we can become more successful both personally and professionally an absolute doddle. He defines the "habits" as "the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire" and states that the "Seven Habits" of the title are not mutually exclusive, but rather when developed together help to form a well-rounded, sensitive, confident and effective human being.

As with many self-help books, much of what you read here is based on basic common sense and can at times be irritatingly obvious. However, what Covey manages to do so successfully is to break down the barriers which prevent all of us from taking a long hard look at ourselves, and then gradually introduces new rules which allow us to move first from dependence to independence and then towards the ultimate goal of interdependence. But of course, the only real way to test the value of The Habits--be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think "win/win", seek first to understand and then to be understood, synergise, sharpen the saw-- is to work on them. This book is as good as any place to start on the road to self-awareness and self-improvement in the workplace and in the home without becoming too irritatingly smug and self-satisfied. --Susan Harrison