What "Principles" was Stephen Covey speaking of?

quora.com/What-Principles-was-Stephen-Covey-speaking-of

The principles important to being effective are all written in The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People, but they are buried inside the text, and they take some digging out. I’ve been
working with 7 Habits since 1995, and teaching it to others. So please allow me to present a
pretty thorough summary.

As some readers of this answer may not have read the book, I’ll begin with a summary of
what a principle is.

What Is a Principle?

A principle is an operant law of the universe, an absolute fact of how things work. The laws
of physics, such as the laws of motion and gravity, are examples. Covey, and many other
philosophers, propose that there are laws that are just as absolute that create
consequences of human intentional actions and human errors. To be an effective athlete,
one must run, jump, and fall down well. That is, one must deal with the laws of motion and
gravity. If we don’t do it well - by intent or by clumsy error - we get hurt. As Covey says, we
cannot break a principle, we cannot break a natural law; we can only break ourselves upon
it.

So, get these wrong, and we hurt ourselves, or, at least, miss achieving our goals. That
means that understanding these principles and working in accordance with them is
essential to being effective, to achieving our goals in life.

The principle itself exists, and statements of the principles are approximations of the
principle. Just as Newton’s, and even Einstein’s, descriptions of motion and gravity are not
motion and gravity themselves, so any words that describe a principle may be partly on
target, and not full and accurate. As we grow in 7 Habits, we find that there are many ways
to state each principle. We find our favorite words and use them to remind us of the
principle that lies beneath. Then we live by these principles simply because they work.

Principles are not values. Whatever we value: Love, or friendship, or athletic achievement, or
money, living by principles will help us achieve our goals in life and experience value in life.

Categories of Principles for Effective People

We can break the principles of effective living down into six groups:

Principles of the Fundamental Framework

Principles underlying habits and habit change

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 Principles of growth, development, and maintenance
Principles of Individuality and Interdependence
Principles of Cooperation and Interdependence
Principles related to each of the 7 Habits

Now, let’s take a look at the principles in each group:

Principles of the Fundamental Framework

We begin with the principle of cause and effect. There are many ways of stating this one law:

The law of karma: intentional actions (and clumsy or foolish errors) have
consequences.
Biblical: As you sow, so shall you reap.
Jesus: By their fruits will they be known.
Gandhi: The ends and the means are one.

Being aware of life in relation to this law, we see that we can observe actions and results,
and learn what actions will, and will not, achieve our intended results. This then helps us
understand three other laws:

The Law of Love

Harmless love produces harmless, loving result. The intent to heal directs us towards
healing. The intent of living a healthy life directs us towards a healthy life.

The Law of Truth

Truth is composed of honesty and integrity:

Honesty is when our words match reality. It requires seeing reality as it is, that is, not
being deluded. It also requires being able to say, “I don’t know,” “I don’t want to tell
you,” and “I don’t see any way of telling you this now.”
Integrity is when our actions match our words. We do what we say we will do.

Truthfulness opens us to a deeper level called Wisdom.

The truth that we are not separate

It does not work to wish good for ourselves, and harm to others, or good to others and not
to ourselves. Love, in intent and action, acts on the actor, no matter who the intended
recipient is. Barriers to love, including unwillingness to give love, unwillingness to receive
love, and harmful intent, affect the person within whom these qualities reside, no matter
the intended target.

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Principles underlying habits and habit change

We can understand habits and habit change as an extension of “as you sow, so shall you
reap” through repetition over time.

“Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.”
This is true for both healthy and unhealthy habits. So, to change from one to the other, we
must stop sowing unhealthy actions and start, and continue to, sow healthy actions.

“Everything is created twice, first in the mind.” This has two consequences:

1. Nothing ever popped into being. Things come into being in the physical, emotional,
and social worlds first in the thoughts and motivations of one person, then later in
reality.
2. If we think a thought or feel a desire, even it we do not act on it, this leaves karmic
traces, including unfulfilled desires. So each harmful thought or hurtful feeling will
play out unless and until we bring it into awareness and heal it.

With these basic principles in place, we are ready to look at how to grow a healthy life.

Principles of growth, development, and maintenance

Although mental creation is nearly instantaneous, creating actual results (such as habits or
achieved goals) in the emotional, physical, material, and social realms takes time and
cultivation.

Cultivation includes planting seeds more than once, watering, fertilizing, and weeding. It
also includes not pulling up plants by the roots to see if they are growing yet. Cultivation
requires patience, persistence, observation, and loving action guided by caring intelligence.

Principles of Individuality and Interdependence

Functionally, each person has freedom of choice. It is interesting to note that Covey’s work
in this area follows the work of Viktor Frankl, who survived the concentration camps of the
Nazi Holocaust and went on to form Logotherapy, which teaches the importance of
meaning in life.

We each see life in our own way. Each of us has our own framework, what Covey calls a
paradigm. It contains our assumptions about life, ourselves, and the world. It is partially
unconscious, and if affects our perceptions. We interpret our world through our paradigm,
and thus, we often see and hear what we expect to see and hear. For example, if we criticize
ourselves, then we believe that that others criticize us. However much we are, or are not,
free to create our own lives, we create the meaning we perceive in each and every event of
our lives.

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Each of us has freedom of choice. We can become aware of our paradigm, of our actions at all
levels: thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds. Once we are aware of them, we can develop
our ability to take control of of each of these, stop old habits, create new ones, build and
transform our character, and change our destiny.

There is one very difficult aspect of freedom of choice. It means that, even when we believe
that our problems are caused by life, other people, or bad luck, in actuality, we are the
central player in creating our own life and experience. This is what Stephen Covey calls “the
bitter pill.” We must take responsibility for our lives - including all the painful aspects -
before we can begin to make deep healthy changes.

We begin those healthy changes by developing Habits 1, 2, and 3 below. See those sections
for the relevant principles.

Principles of Cooperation and Interdependence

Two independent people or more choosing to work together towards common goals can do
much more than any one of us alone. There are two principles behind this.

Interdependence requires independence. To be independent is a crucial step on the path to

being effective. If two people try to work together when either one or both are not
independent, then the relationship will be off-balance. The one who is not independent may
not be able to show up on time and do the work. No one has to be perfect, but people have
much more to contribute to genuine, beneficial, cooperative efforts when each of us is
independent. When one person is persistently not independent, then this creates an out of
balance relationship called codependence, which is ineffective and unhealthy for everyone
involved.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Two people working together can accomplish
much more than they can working separately. The song Lean on Me explores the many ways
that this is true. And the potential is exponential: Two people in cooperation can, at times,
achieve what 50 people might do, working alone.

Principles related to each of the 7 Habits

Habit 1: Proactivity

Increasing our awareness and our freedom to choose aligns us with the principle that each
of us has that freedom. People who blame others are living under the weight of an untruth.
It is our job to change our situation, create the opportunity, then live proactively and
responsively in the opportunity we are proactively creating.

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In my view, the single most proactive thing that anyone can do is increase his or her own
proactivity. How do we do this: by practicing habits of awareness, healthy conscience,
imagination, and independent will.

Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind

We can achieve our goals. As awareness is beneficial, it is easier to achieve our goals if we
are aware of what we truly want.

People are not necessarily unitary, and have apparently conflicting desires. If we can unify
the functions of our mind, we achieve inner synergy. Thus, through vision, we “lead from the
right,” and allow our lives to be guided by our inner intuition and sense of rightness. Then
we “manage from the left,” rationally laying out a schedule of activities that will shape our
character and achieve our goals. Covey is using the terms right and left to refer to two
different human capacities: Creative experiential living and rational, committed planning
and action.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Several principles come into play in Habit 3, where we turn our long-term goals into a
weekly schedule, week after week:

The first principle is that the priorities in our mind create the priorities in our lives.
The second is that work fills time allotted.
The third is that success comes through first planning, and then carrying out the plan.
The fourth is that unexpected things happen.

The first step of the solution is to set weekly goal towards our long-term goals. Then we
make a schedule where we put what matters most first in our minds and, as much as we
can, first each day. Then we live that schedule, and rearrange as needed when unexpected
things happen. Doing this for 52 weeks, we achieve our goals for the year. Doing this year
after year, we create our destiny.

Habit 4: Seek win-win; win-win or no deal

The underlying principle is that only what is beneficial for everyone involved is beneficial for
each one of us. There is no real case of “I win; you lose.” Even in competitive sports, the real
benefits come from participating more than from winning, so, when competitive sports are
done in a healthy way, everyone wins.

Understanding this is challenging because each of us carries a very deep paradigm of

competitiveness. Some feel they must win; others that they must lose. To achieve Habit 4,
we take deep responsibility for our own individual adaptation of the competitive mentality

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of our society, and we seek something better. We seek relationships where everyone
benefits. We even come to a place where we engage only in such relationships. That’s called
win-win or no deal.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand

Principles behind habit 5 include:

Humility. Let us not rush ahead thinking we understand when, in all likelihood, we do
not understand deeply enough.
Easing of anxiety and fear. Everyone lives with some anxiety and fear, often a lot of it.
The principle here is that people listen better when we feel safe, and we feel safe
when we know we are heard.
Speak within another person’s language and way of thinking, so they can work with what
they hear.

Putting these together, we listen first. We understand first. We ensure the other person feels
safe and feels understood. Then we ask permission to share our view. Once we do this, we
have their attention, and genuine communication is possible.

Habit 6: Synergy

This habit is very hard to write about. The underlying spiritual principle is harmony.
Harmony: when each person is in harmony with himself or herself, and true to himself or herself,
and we share common goals and are responsive to one another, unexpected and wonderful
results arise.

Habit 7: Self-care and self-improvement

All people, all living systems, are constantly changing. We need renewal. Healthy habits
create a healthy body and mind. We are creative and self-creative. If we are not being
creative, we get sick, or get tangled in unhealthy habits of time-wasting and even addiction.
Thus it is necessary to develop and maintain healthy habits of body, emotions, mind,
energy, Creative Soul, and Spirit.

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