One of the greatest books I have read so far in my life is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. This book presents 7 habits to assist you with personal development and change. It also helps you improve on your interactions with others – “effectiveness with others”. It’s all about communication, teamwork, cooperation, and understanding each other to bring about great results together!
The first 3 Habits talk about personal development and improvement to work from a state of dependence to independence. From there, we then work on the last 4 Habits, which use the foundation of our self improvement and development from the first 3 Habits to focus on improving our interactions with others. These last 4 Habits help us move from a state of independence to interdependence. Life is highly interdependent.
The 7 Habits have made a huge positive influence on my life in many aspects, such as being more proactive to make things happen, weekly planning to fit a lot of activities that I want to do and find important in my life, and find a better life balance while prioritizing people first. It also helped me improve on my interactions with others in the sense of understanding the other person and their point of views on different topics and decisions, which helped improve my working experience with others at both my professional job and my volunteering activities.
I highly recommend everyone to read through this book thoroughly and see which areas in your lives you can improve on. I have created a video series for the 7 Habits summarizing what the author explains for each of the Habits to help spread his great wisdom and knowledge to others. It’s a truly great book to read and is available for purchase everywhere, especially Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime, then you can read the e-book for free on the Kindle app.
Amazon Link to Purchase the Book
The 7 Habits are the following:
- Habit 1 – Be Proactive
- Habit 2 – Begin with the End in Mind
- Habit 3 – Put First Things First
- Habit 4 – Think Win/Win
- Habit 5 – Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
- Habit 6 – Synergize
- Habit 7 – Sharpen the Saw