12 Personal Lessons from Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"

1.  No shortcuts. The law of sowing and reaping is non-negotiable.
2. What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.
3. The way we see a problem is the problem.
4. It is not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurt us. We are free to choose our response in any situation, but in doing so, we choose the attendant consequences.
5. Effectiveness does not depend solely on how much effort we expend , but on whether or not the effort is in the right jungle.
6. We accomplish all that we do through delegation. If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness. Transferring responsibility to other skilled and trained people enables you to give your energies to other high-leverage activities.
7. The more genuine your character, the higher your level of proactivity, the more committed you really are to win-win, the more powerful your influence will be with that other person.
8. Seek first to understand. Before the problems come up, before you try to evaluate and prescribe, before you try to present your own ideas - seek to understand. It's a powerful habit of effective interdependence. People want to be understood. And whatever investment of time it takes to do that will bring much greater returns of time as you work from an accurate understanding of the problems and issues and from the high Emotional Bank Account that results when a person feels deeply understood.
9. Synergize! The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more.
10. Sameness is not oneness; Uniformity is not unity. Unity, or oneness, is complementariness, not sameness. Sameness is uncreative...and boring. The essence of synergy is to value the difference.
11. Unless we value the differences in our perceptions, unless we value each other and give credence to the possibility that we are both right, that life is not a dichotomous either/or, that there are always Third Alternatives , we will never be able to transcend the limits of that condition. When you see only two alternatives - yours and the "wrong" one, you can look for a synergistic Third Alternative, and if you work with a win-win philosophy and really seek to understand, you usually find a solution that will be better for everyone concerned.
12. A tendency that's run through your family for generations can stop with you. You're a transition person - a link between the past and the future. And your own change can affect many, many lives downstream.

C'est finis.

DISCLAIMER: All lessons were extracted directly from the book. Author's words solely used.