To have successful relationships with your wife, husband, children, friends, or business partners, we must learn to listen. This requires emotional strength. Listening involves patience, openness, and a desire to understand – highly developed character qualities. It is much easier to operate from a low emotional level and give high-flying advice.
You can buy a man's hand, but you can't buy his heart, where his enthusiasm and loyalty lie. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain, where his creativity, ingenuity, and originality reside.
The word proactivity means more than just taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our lives. Our behavior is a result of our own decisions, not circumstances. We can subordinate feelings to values. We take initiative and responsibility to make things happen.
Do not prove others' weaknesses. Do not defend your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it – immediately.
In business, the market changes so quickly that many products and services that successfully met consumer needs and tastes a few years ago are now obsolete. Proactive and energetic leadership must constantly keep up with environmental changes, especially consumer buying habits and motives, while also providing the necessary strength to develop in the right direction.
You must decide what you give the highest priority to and be brave enough to – kindly, with a smile, without apologizing – say no to other things. And you can do this if a greater yes burns within you. Good is often the enemy of the best.
The minds of successful people are not focused on problems but on opportunities. They feed on opportunities and avoid problems.
It takes a very strong character to apologize immediately and from the heart. A person must have good self-control and a deep sense of security that comes from basic principles and values to be able to apologize sincerely.
Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration. If a person can express their feelings and beliefs with courage, balanced by consideration of the feelings and beliefs of another person, especially if the matter at hand is important to both parties, we can say they are mature.
Very often, the problem lies in the system, not in people. If you put good people in bad systems, you will get bad results. If you want your flowers to grow, you must water them.
Einstein stated: The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
If my sense of security is only in reputation or things I have, I will live in a constant state of threat and danger that I can lose all this property, have it stolen, or devalued. In the presence of someone who is richer, more famous, or in a higher position, I feel inferior. If I am near someone who is not as rich, who is less famous, or in a lower position, I feel superior. The sense of self-worth constantly fluctuates. I have no sense of solidity or safe harbor or stable personality. I am constantly striving to secure and protect property, possessions, security, position, reputation.
You cannot solve problems caused by your behavior with conversation.
We all tend to believe that we see things as they are, that we are objective. But it is not so. We do not see the world as it is, but as we are – or as we are taught to see it.
Always treat your employees as you would like them to treat your best customers.
In truly competitive circumstances and when trust is really low, win/lose thinking may be appropriate. But life is mostly not a competition. We don't have to live in competition with our spouse, children, colleagues, neighbors, and friends. Who is winning in your marriage is a ridiculous question. If both are not winning, both are losing.
Almost all world-class athletes and other top performers visualize. They see, feel, experience before they actually do. They start with a clear consideration. You can visualize in all areas of life. Before a performance, before presenting sales products, before a difficult confrontation or daily challenge, clearly, vividly, persistently envision the goal. Create an inner comfort zone. When you find yourself in the situation, it is not unfamiliar to you. It does not scare you.
When parents view their children's problems as opportunities to build a relationship rather than as negative, burdensome, irritating situations, it completely changes the nature of the relationship. Parents are more willing, even excited, to deeply understand and help their children. When a child is in distress and comes to them, they don't think: "Not another problem." They come from a different paradigm: "A great opportunity for me to truly help the child and invest in our relationship." Many interactions transform from transactional to transformational, and strong bonds of love and trust are woven, as children feel how much value parents place on their problems and them as individuals.
The golden rule states that you should treat others as you would like them to treat you. Although this, on the surface, might mean treating them as you would like them to treat you, I think the essential meaning of the rule is to deeply understand them as human beings, just as you would want them to understand you, and let this understanding be the basis for dealing with them.
Whether you will create a successful business depends on how clearly and precisely you have envisioned everything. Most business failures stem from the initial creation, the cause being undercapitalization, misunderstanding of the market, and lack of a business plan.
Empathic listening has a very healing effect because it gives a person psychological air. Would you continue reading a book with interest if all the air were suddenly sucked out of the room you are currently in? You wouldn't care about it anymore; you wouldn't care about anything else but air. Survival would be the only motivation. But because you have air, it doesn't motivate you. This is one of the deepest insights in the field of human motivation: satisfied needs do not motivate. Only unsatisfied needs motivate. Immediately after physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival – to be understood, affirmed, validated, appreciated.
One of the most important ways to show integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. By doing so, you build trust with those who are. When you defend the absent, you maintain the trust of those present.
It is one thing to make a mistake, something completely different not to admit it. People forgive mistakes, as mistakes are usually a product of the mind, a product of judgment. But mistakes of the heart, bad intentions, ugly motives, and arrogant covering up of the first mistake are not so easily forgiven.
You can respect the diversity in other people. When someone disagrees with you, you can say: "Good. You see it differently." You don't have to agree with them; you can just acknowledge them. And strive to understand.
Trust is the highest form of motivation. It brings out the best in a person. However, it requires time and patience, and sometimes people need to be taught and encouraged for their competence to rise to the level of trust.
7 habits of highly successful people:
- Be proactive:
The habit of proactive behavior or the habit of personal vision means taking responsibility for your own attitudes and actions. Take initiative and responsibility to make things happen.
- Begin with the end in mind: The habit of personal leadership. Start with a clear goal to understand where you are now, where you are going, and what you value most.
- Put first things first: The habit of self-management, which involves organizing and managing time and events. Manage yourself. Organize and execute decisions according to a priority list.
- Think win/win: Win/win is the habit of mutual leadership. It is the search for mutual benefits. The mindset begins with a committed exploration of all options until you reach a mutually satisfactory solution or agree to no deal.
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood: The habit of empathic communication. Understanding shapes the skill of empathic listening, which encourages openness and trust.
- Synergize: The habit of creative cooperation or teamwork. Synergy arises from valuing differences and considering different perspectives in a spirit of mutual respect.
- Sharpen the saw: The habit of self-renewal. Maintain and enhance the most important asset you have, yourself, by renewing the physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional dimensions of your nature.
Summary from the book Daily Reflections of Highly Successful People by Stephen R. Covey
