The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People By Steven R. Covey

This week we were assigned to read portions of the book titled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey. I saw this week’s reading as a sort of introduction to the actual list of habits that Covey is going to share with us later in the book. I identified four main points that Mr. Cover talked about. The first one is the “Pygmalion Effect” (Covey, 1989, 2004). Covey then talked about Character Ethic and Personality Ethic. Then he discussed paradigm shifts. I understood Covey to say that the Pygmalion Effect is that if you expect something to be a certain way then it is or will be that way. This would also be called a self-fulfilling prophecy. I felt that Covey considers this to be a bad thing because if we expect the worst, then we will get the worst. I would like to look at the world in a different way, if we expect better and change the way we view the world we will get better. A person’s character is how they act when nobody is looking. The behaviors that create successful characters include integrity, humility, …show more content…
To understand the fundamental principles of human effectiveness and embody the habits of effective people, we must understand our own views of the world to be able to change things or to make a paradigm shift. “A simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as a map” (Covey, 1989, 2004, p. 31). Although we may have numerous maps in our heads, we divide them into how we see things right now or realities and the way things should be or values. We use these paradigms or maps with every action or interaction we have, even though we are not even aware that they are even there. We never question their accuracy because, “we simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be” (Covey, 1989, 2004, p.