How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
Stephen CoveyRead
The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Proactive individuals can control their impulses by aligning them with their values.
This quote emphasizes that a truly proactive person has the capacity to manage their immediate impulses and desires by anchoring their actions in their core values. It suggests that self-control and conscious decision-making are crucial for personal effectiveness and growth, allowing individuals to respond to situations thoughtfully rather than reactively.
Themes
ProactiveImpulseValuesSelf-ControlDecision-Making
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a leadership seminar to illustrate the importance of self-regulation.
More from Stephen Covey
All quotes βIf you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee.
Stephen CoveyRead
Listen with your eyes for feelings.
Stephen CoveyRead
If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, _x000D_ we're tied to that which is infinite.
Stephen CoveyRead
Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.
Stephen CoveyRead
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent and urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.
Stephen CoveyRead
Similar quotes
Knowledge is great. Competence is great. But the combination of both encourages people to trust you and increases your powers of enchantment. And in this world, the combination is a breath of fresh air.
Guy KawasakiRead
Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a 'real' experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information which you give to it from your forebrain. Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what you THINK or IMAGINE to be 'true.
Maxwell MaltzRead
Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.
Alice WalkerRead
God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable.
J. I. PackerRead
Probably the hardest question I get asked is, 'How do I choose between passion and practicality?' I can't answer that. I had to do both. I was passionate about pursuing a career in financial services. But I was also passionate about feeding my child.
Chris GardnerRead
There is no creation without faith and hope. There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.
Thornton WilderRead