The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is an excellent book about personal growth and self-development. Stephen Covey’s manuscript is something more than just a list of seven habits or general traits of highly effective people. Covey will tell the reader about eternal principles that make up our system of values, and will show how important it is to develop character within yourself. Just as the stability of a building depends on the strength and integrity of its foundation, so character is like the foundation of a truly full life.

The book is divided into two parts: Private Victory and Public Victory. To avoid retelling the entire book, I’ll mention only the most important points.

The first habit we learn from the book sounds like this: be proactive! Proactivity is the ability of a person to take responsibility for their life. Our behavior depends on our decisions, not on our environment. Proactive people build their own reality. A proactive person can subordinate an impulsive reaction to their principles and act according to their goals. In other words, a person is the creator of their own destiny. In my opinion, this is the most important principle. Covey did the right thing by starting the book with it.

The second habit. Begin by imagining the end goal. As they say, without a goal life loses meaning. But sometimes it’s very hard for a person to set any goal at all. For this case, the book includes a set of simple exercises that can help you determine your goal. Habit 2 is based on the principle of two creations. There is the mental, or first creation, and the physical, or second creation. Most things in our lives have their first creation.

The third habit is about the principles of personal management. I won’t go into it too deeply, but I’ll only say that Covey has his own approach to time management, which he devoted a separate book to.

Habits four through six are devoted to Public Victory. They are:
Think win/win—seek the best solution for both sides.
First seek to understand, then to be understood—if you want to interact with me effectively, if you want to influence me, then first of all you must understand me.
Achieve synergy—value differences among people. Synergy assumes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is, together two people can do ten times more than one person can.

Finally, habit 7 says: sharpen the saw! Sharpening the saw means constant self-renewal and self-development. The last habit combines all the others—precisely because of it, their application becomes possible.

Reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People made me think about many things. Honestly, the book changed me and helped me understand myself. It’s like assembling a puzzle: the picture comes together and suddenly everything falls into place. I’ll list several important moments I learned from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

You have to live the way you want, not the way others want you to.
Without the right and reliable principles, a person can’t hope for long-term success. Principles are the foundation of our life, our roadmap in this world.
Now I understand that true success isn’t measured in money or property— and the concept of success is quite relative.
A person always has a choice. And don’t tell me there are situations where there’s no choice. There is always a choice.
There are no problems—only opportunities. Pain is not caused by what happens, but by our attitude toward what happens.

Huge thanks to Stephen Covey for his work. His book is a real bible for the modern person.