文档介绍：A summary of the bestselling
book by Stephen R. Covey.
From The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Published by Simon & Schuster.
INTRODUCTION
Our character, basically, is posite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often
unconscious patterns, habits constantly express our character and produce our effectiveness -
or our in effectiveness. In the words of Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence,
then, is not an act, but a habit.”
I identify here seven habits shared by all truly effective people. Fortunately, for those of us not
born effective (no one is), these habits can be learned. Furthermore, the collective experience
of the ages shows us that acquiring them will give you the character to eed.
Some years ago, I decided to read all the ess literature published in the United States since
its beginning in 1776 - hundreds of books, articles, and essays on self-improvement and
popular psychology.
I noticed a startling thing: Almost all the writings that helped build our country in its first 150
years or so identified character as the foundation of ess. The literature of what we might
call “The Character Ethic” helped Americans cultivate integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance,
courage, justice, patience, industry, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is
a prime example.
Compared with the early ess literature, the writings of the last 50 years seem superficial to
me - filled with social image consciousness, techniques, and quick fixes. There, the solutions
derive not from the Character Ethic, but the Personality Ethic:
ess is a function of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, of skills that lubricate the process
of human interaction. I don’t say these skills are unimportant. But they are secondary.
If there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental goodness behind what you do, the challenges of
life will cause true motives to surface, and human relationship