Stephen Covey Quotes

A lot of people go through life thinking that they don't have any control, that life is just happening to them. But that's not true.

In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances to shape our lives by default.

All things are created twice, but not all first creations are by conscious design. In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances outside our Circle of Influence to shape much of our lives by default. We reactively live the scripts handed to us by family, associates, other people's agendas, the pressures of circumstance - scripts from our earlier years, from our training, our conditioning.

I believe the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.

You drift through life and let things happen to you, or go by design and say, 'This is what I'm intended to do.' The Bible is very clear that God has a purpose. But even if I know that purpose, I can't fulfill it if I'm out of shape.

A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.

Wherever you are, design your life. Live the values of your generation.

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

I choose to live, not just exist.

I have no control over people's perceptions of me at all and that's one of the things I decided very early on is that I can't control the way other people think of me. All I can do, especially when it comes to my career is go out there and do cool unique kinds of things.

You drift through life and let things happen to you, or go by design and say, 'This is what I'm intended to do.'

I can't control what people say, but I can control what I do.

But I don't pay much attention to outside influences. People can say what they want. I always try to focus on my own environment.

You can end half your troubles immediately by no longer permitting people to tell you what you want.

Learn how to set goals. That's the key to everything. That includes designing your own success. You define what the goal is, it's not somebody else's goal, it's yours.

The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.

If you don't live by priorities, you'll live by pressures. Either you determine what's important in life or other people will determine it for you.

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

Every day can be a platform to get you closer to your mountaintop. And yet, too many people live life by accident.

You make yourself what you are. You have control of your own destiny.

I've decided I can't really control people's perceptions of me. All I can do is decide on what I work on and how hard I work on it.

People who let events and circumstances dictate their lives are living reactively. That means that they don't act on life, they only react to it.

Optimism sprouts from the knowledge that you are in control of your own life, not your past and not those around you. Part of being in control is taking responsibility for how you feel. This means not just admitting to uncomfortable feelings but then examining your circumstances to see what can be done to change these feelings at the source.

Some people drift along like a cork on a river, feeling that they cannot do anything except drift, moment to moment. This is an attitude of mind. Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways.