Stephen Covey Quotes

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.

We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices.

If you're blaming something or someone else for the way you are, then that person, those people, those circumstances or those energies, are going to have to change in order for you to get better; that's most likely never going to happen. It's also a way to manipulate other people.

Highly proactive people don't blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice.

Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.

Look at the word responsibility-"response-ability"-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

I believe that everyone chooses how to approach life. If you're proactive, you focus on preparing. If you're reactive, you end up focusing on repairing.

I have lived by one crucial principle since I was 24 years old. I don't blame or complain about things like the economy, the government, taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don't have control over. The only thing I have control over is my response to these things.

At the end of the day, you are solely responsible for your success and your failure. And the sooner you realize that, you accept that, and integrate that into your work ethic, you will start being successful. As long as you blame others for the reason you aren't where you want to be, you will always be a failure.

I've always told Will, 'You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay.' Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I'm here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be, and that's not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.

We are each responsible for all of our experiences.

I like people who take responsibility for their lives.

I haven't had an easy life, but at some point, you have to take responsibility for yourself and shape who it is that you want to be. I have no time for moaners. I like to chase my dreams and surround myself with other people who are chasing their dreams, too.

What a man has made himself he will be; his state is the result of his past life, and his heaven or hell is in himself.

All of the things that have happened in my life have been self-propelled. I can't blame anybody else or point a finger at anybody.

We almost always have choices, and the better the choice, the more we will be in control of our lives.

When you go independent, if you fail, you're totally responsible for it. If you succeed, you're totally responsible for it. You are responsibly for who you are... and what you do and what you make.

My grand uncle was a traditional priest, and he would always say to me as a kid, 'We stand in our own light,' which essentially for him meant we were entirely responsible for a lot of what happens to us and for the ways in which our lives play out.

That person has to be accountable for himself. I think that's what we have to do in society today is to be accountable for yourself. I think we have the tendency to always want to live someone else's life.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.

If I'm not happy with what's going on, I try to change it myself.

Be brave and take accountability for your thoughts and beliefs.

Ultimately, I play for myself, and I take responsibility for my own actions.

I am a leader, I am not a follower. I create my own path, and that way, I cannot blame anyone else if I do not succeed.

If you continue to blame other people for “making” you feel guilty, they still have power over you, and you are saying that you will only feel good when they stop doing that. You are giving them control over your life. Stop blaming other people.