The 7 HABITS of HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE by Stephen R. Covey #bookreview

Hello all beautiful readers out there!

Hope life is treating you well! Today, firstly, I want to thank each one of you reading this post because gratitude is what made me what I am today. And also, because I believe that each one of you out there has something special to share with me, from which at least I can truly be inspired. 🙂 (Just a happy thought in my mind!)

Secondly, today’s book review is a very special one. It is about a very talked about book in the history of international best seller. It took me time to digest the concepts and envision the author’s main learnings because I know; even if it took long enough to finish up with this one, it was worth the investment of my time.

Excerpt:
“The reason: our problems and pain are universal and increasing, and the solutions are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.”

-Foreword (Page 7)

Key highlights of the book:

The book cover-
These typical kinds of books generally don’t have really fancy or thought out book covers because the internal piece speaks volumes. Still the edition I read had the book title and author name printed on a very basic golden blue colored cover. They have another edition with a different book cover style as shown below.

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The Plot-

Excerpt:
“If you don’t let a teacher know what level you are- by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance- you will not learn or grow. You cannot pretend for long, for you will eventually be found out. Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.”

-Page 37

The title pretty much explains what the author is going to talk about in the entire length of the book. The book talks about a lot of general day to day instances, which, if treated with right frame of mind and correct responses, can turn your life into a more meaningful one, not that we don’t have a meaningful life at the moment, but the focus or the point we are missing in our life is clear with the author’s theory.

Excerpt-
“When we read the phrases about the sounds of love in our home, order, responsible independence, cooperation, helpfulness, meeting needs, developing talents, showing interest in each other’s talents, and giving service to others it gives us some criteria to know how we’re doing in the things that matter most to us as a family.“

-Page 138

The author introduces the readers into three zones in which they have to mentally and psychologically enter before they could begin to learn about 7 habits to be highly effective. This book conveniently talks about various aspects of relationship behavior amongst family and work culture. The beauty of the book is that author beautifully puts readers mind into work with his deep, meaningful examples carefully picked up from his personal or from pre-historic learnings. There are innumerable concepts in this book from which the readers can derive a sense of better living, one of which is the concept of abundance and scarcity mentality (my personal favorite and the best take away from this book).

Quote-
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. And this can best be done in the context of the week.”

-Page 161

The beauty of grasping all the habits is to read what the author has offered with easily applicable concepts and tasks to do by end of every chapter. The 7 habits, as we speak of, are illustrated in this diagram.

This book is not just a literature for self development, but a guide, more like a manual, with step by step instructions of how to go about changing your life by changing simple habits. This book has focused on relationships in every aspect an individual should actually focus.

Best Characteristics:

Excerpt-
“If all the air were suddenly sucked out of the room you’re in right now, what would happen to your interest in the book? You wouldn’t care about the book; you wouldn’t care about anything except getting air. Survival would be your only motivation.

But now that you have air, it doesn’t motivate you. This is one of the greatest insights in the field of human motivation: Satisfied needs do not motivate. It’s only the unsatisfied need that motivates. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of human being is psychological survival- to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.”

-Page 241 (My favorite excerpt)

• Life examples– Yeah sure we all want to learn our bit from a book, or well at least give it a read to expand our knowledge, but only theory won’t do justice to that experience. The best part of the book is its ability to break the monotony of explaining habits and being told what to do or not by actually providing life examples.
• Microscopic depth– This book is absolutely not a scanning one. It has such microscopic details about concepts, behavioral skills, discipline and methods of development that one needs to keep away all distractions and give it a thorough read, possibly even more than once.
• Mind reader– This book reads your mind. Literally! While reading many times some thoughts came to my mind which I could relate to and equated with my life, and believe me or not in the following paragraphs those unquestioned thoughts were answered very tactfully. The author has really portrayed a very well written bible of all times.

Flaw:
It’s not actually a flaw but no matter how easy the language has been used in this book, it definitely is not a one time read. You will have to read it couple of times to get the gist in its entirety.

Quote-
“The enemy of the best is often the good.”

-Page 157

Book in a line: A bible to rediscover self discipline and improve relationships by manifolds.

Quote-
“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.“

-Page 46

That’s all for this one. Let me know in comments below about your reviews of this book or any other recommendation from this author!

Also check out my other book reviews here!!

Have a great day guys!