The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Steven Covey - Essay Example

of Affiliation Cause The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Part One Summary-Paradigms and Principles- INSIDE-OUT Stephen Covey submits that the 7 habits are anchored on an inside-out dimension to living. While there is so much effort and interventions that people seek to quickly fix their challenges, very few of them experience long term successes. The fundamental cause for this frustrating failure is that people tend to focus on personality ethics rather than character ethics. Personality ethics emphasizes on social consciousness and aims at making an individual likeable in the eyes of others.

It forces its way to the desired results. On the other hand, character ethics recognizes the role played by private victories and advocates for principles such as fairness, integrity, human dignity, and service. Unlike the former ethics, character ethics guarantees long term success that is able to withstand further pressure from the world. Essentially, this chapter presents that life-long success begins by first working on the “inside” part of self which include one’s paradigms, character and motives.

The inside-out approach submits that private victories come before public victories, and that making and accomplishing promises to oneself precedes making and accomplishing promises to others. Also, the chapter asserts that perception of the world is based on how one conditions themselves to see it. In order to illustrate this, Covey uses a popular optical illusion that can be interpreted as either a beautiful young lady or an old and ugly woman. Using the case of Harvard Business School where half of the participants were set to see the young lady and the other half were set to see the old woman, Covey insists that people act basing on how they see the world rather than how the world actually is.

This illustration simply adds weight to inside out approach to life where change begins by changing oneself rather than the world or others.Work CitedCovey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. New York: Free Press, 2004. Print.