Daily Reflections For Highly Effective Teens - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sean Covey is a business executive, author, speaker, and innovator. He is President of FranklinCovey Education and is devoted to transforming education throughout the world through a principle-centered leadership approach. Sean is a New York Times bestselling author and has written several books, including the Wall Street Journal #1 business bestseller The 4 Disciplines of Execution, The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, which has been translated into twenty languages and sold over 8 million copies worldwide. Sean and his wife, Rebecca, live with their children in the Rocky Mountains.

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Sean Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens has helped hundreds of thousands of teens find a path toward success and personal fulfillment. Now, with Daily Reflections for Highly Effective Teens, comes a book that will inspire teens to understand, appreciate, and internalize the power of the 7 Habits. With this day-by-day success guide, teenagers will learn how to improve their self-image, build friendships, resist peer pressure, achieve their goals, make important decisions, and live healthier, more self-confident lives. Packed with great quotes, excellent ideas, and inspiration, Sean Covey's warm, insightful, and humorous guide gives teens a road map for surviving and thriving in adolescence and beyond.

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January

January 1

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

Who am I?

I am Habit.

January 2

Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do.

p. 8*

*All page references are to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

January 3

Sow a thought, and you reap an act;

Sow an act, and you reap a habit;

Sow a habit, and you reap a character;

Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

-- Samuel Smiles

p. 8

January 4

Luckily, you are stronger than your habits. Therefore, you can change them. For example, try folding your arms. Now try folding them in the opposite way. How does this feel? Pretty strange, doesn't it? But if you folded them in the opposite way for thirty days in a row, it wouldn't feel so strange. You wouldn't even have to think about it. You'd get in the habit.

pp. 8-9

January 5

The 7 Habits can help you:

• Get control of your life
  
  
• Improve your relationships with your friends
  
  
• Make smarter decisions
  
  
• Get along with your parents
  
  
• Overcome addiction
  
  
• Define your values and what matters most to you
  
  
• Get more done in less time
  
  
• Increase your self-confidence
  
  
• Be happy
  
  
• Find balance between school, work, friends, and everything else
  
  

p. 9

Paradigms and Principles

January 6

Another word for perceptions is paradigms [pair-a-dimes]. A paradigm is the way you see something, your point of view, frame of reference, or belief. As you may have noticed, our paradigms are often way off the mark, and, as a result, they create limitations. For instance, you may be convinced that you don't have what it takes to get into college. But, remember, Ptolemy was just as convinced that the earth was the center of the universe.

p. 13

January 7

Paradigms are like glasses. When you have incomplete paradigms about yourself or life in general, it's like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. That lens affects how you see everything else. As a result, what you see is what you get. If you believe you're dumb, that very belief will make you dumb. On the other hand, if you believe you're smart, that belief will cast a rosy hue on everything you do.

p. 13

January 8

Just as negative self-paradigms can put limitations on us, positive self-paradigms can bring out the best in us.

pp. 14-15

January 9

You may be wondering, "If my paradigm of myself is all contorted, what can I do to fix it?" One way is to spend time with someone who believes in you and builds you up. My mother was such a person to me. She was always saying stuff like "Sean, of course you should run for class president" and "Ask her out. I'm sure she would just die to go out with you." Whenever I needed to be affirmed I'd talk to my mom and she'd clean my glasses.

p. 15

January 10

Ask any successful person and most will tell you that they had a person who believed in them...a teacher, a friend, a parent, a guardian, a sister, a grandmother. It only takes one person, and it doesn't really matter who it is.

p. 16

January 11

Don't be afraid to lean on and get nourished by this person who believes in you. Go to him or her for advice. Try to see yourself the way he or she sees you. As someone once said, "If you could envision the type of person God intended you to be, you would rise up and never be the same again."

p. 16

January 12

We have paradigms not only about ourselves, but also about other people. And they can be way out of whack too. Seeing things from a different point of view can help us understand why other people act the way they do. We too often judge people without having all the facts.

p. 16

January 13

A teen named Monica had this experience:

I used to live in California, where I had a lot of good friends. I didn't care about anybody new because I already had my friends and I thought that new people should deal with it in their own way. Then, when I moved, I was the new kid and wished that someone would care about me and make me part of their group of friends. I see things in a very different way now. I know what it feels like to not have any friends.

From now on Monica will treat new kids on the block very differently, don't you think? Seeing things from another point of view can make such a difference in our attitude toward others.

p. 17

If you'd like to submit your own story about applying the 7 Habits in your life for possible future publications, e-mail your story to us at 7Hteen@7Habits.com

January 14

Our paradigms are often incomplete, inaccurate, or completely messed up. Therefore, we shouldn't be so quick to judge, label, or form rigid opinions of others, or ourselves for that matter. From our limited points of view, we seldom see the whole picture, or have all the facts.

p. 18

January 15

We should open our minds and hearts to new information, ideas, and points of view, and be willing to change our paradigms when it becomes clear that they are wrong.

p. 18

January 16

It is obvious that if we want to make big changes in our lives, the key is to change our paradigms, or the glasses through which we see the world. Change the lens and everything else follows.

p. 18

January 17

If you'll look closely, you'll find that most of your problems (with relationships, self-image, attitude) are the result of a messed-up paradigm or two. For instance, if you have a poor relationship with, say, your dad, it's likely that both of you have a warped paradigm of each other. You may see him as being totally out of touch with the modern world, and he may see you as a spoiled, ungrateful brat. In reality, both of your paradigms are probably incomplete and are holding you back from real communication.

p. 18

January 18

Besides having paradigms about ourselves and others, we also have paradigms about the world in general. You can usually tell what your paradigm is by asking yourself, "What is the driving force of my life?" "What do I spend my time thinking about?" "Who or what is my obsession?" Whatever is most important to you will become your paradigm, your glasses, or, as I like to call it, your life-center.

p. 18

January 19

Some of the more popular life-centers for teens include Friends, Stuff, Enemies, Self, and Work. They each have their good points, but they are all incomplete in one way or another, and they'll mess you up if you center your life on any one of them to the exclusion of the others.

p. 18

January 20

There's nothing better than belonging to a great group of friends and nothing worse than feeling like an outcast. Friends are important but should never become your center. Why? Well, occasionally they're fickle. Now and then they're fake. Sometimes they talk behind your back or develop new friendships and forget yours. They have mood swings. They move.

In addition, if you base your identity on having friends, being accepted, and being popular, you may find yourself compromising your standards or changing them every weekend to accommodate your friends.

Believe it or not, the day will come when friends will not be the biggest thing in your life.

p. 19

January 21

Make as many friends as you can, but don't build your life on them alone. It's an unstable...