Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey Read Online Free PDF

wife, parent or grandparent, manager or leader.
    We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the personality ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently.
    It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
    In the words of Thoreau, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.

Seeing and Being
    Of course, not all Paradigm Shifts are instantaneous. Unlike my instant insight on the subway, the paradigm-shifting experience Sandra and I had with our son was a slow, difficult, and deliberate process. The approach we had first taken with him was the outgrowth of years of conditioning and experience in the personality ethic. It was the result of deeper paradigms we held about our own success as parents as well as the measure of success of our children. And it was not until we changed those basic paradigms, quantum change in ourselves and in the situation.
    In order to see our son differently, Sandra and I had to be differently. Our new paradigm was created as we invested in the growth and development of our own character.
    Our Paradigms are the way we "see" the world or circumstances -- not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, and interpreting. Paradigms are inseparable from character. Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are. We can't go very far to change our seeing without simultaneously changing our being, and vice versa.
    Even in my apparently instantaneous paradigm-shifting experience that morning on the subway, my change of vision was a result of -- and limited by -- my basic character.
    I'm sure there are people who, even suddenly understanding the true situation, would have felt no more than a twinge of regret or vague guilt as they continued to sit in embarrassed silence beside the THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart grieving, confused man. On the other hand, I am equally certain there are people who would have been far more sensitive in the first place, who may have recognized that a deeper problem existed and reached out to understand and help before I did.
    Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world. The power of a Paradigm Shift is the essential power of quantum change, whether that shift is an instantaneous or a slow and deliberate process.

    The Principle-Centered Paradigm

    The character ethic is based on the fundamental idea that there are principles that govern human effectiveness -- natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably "there" as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension.
    An idea of the reality -- and the impact -- of these principles can be captured in another paradigm-shifting experience as told by Frank Kock in Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute.
    Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell.
    The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
    Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
    "Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain called out.
    Lookout replied, "Steady, captain," which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with