If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control-myself. I can stop trying to shape up my wife and can work on my own weaknesses. I can focus an being a great marriage partner, a source of unconditional love and support. Hopefully, my wife will feel the power of proactive example and respond in kind. But, whether she does or doesn't, the most positive way I can influence my situation is to work on myself, on my being.
Stephen CoveyAs you live your values, your sense of identity, integrity, control, and inner-directedness will infuse you with both exhilaration and peace. You will define yourself from within, rather than by people's opinions or by comparisons to others.
Stephen CoveyPerhaps a sense of possessing needs to come to come before a sense of genuine sharing.
Stephen CoveyIneffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people's lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.
Stephen CoveyWe may be very busy, we may be very 'efficient', but we will also be truly 'effective' only when we begin with the end in mind.
Stephen CoveyFulfilling the four needs in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a "critical mass" of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion - an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life.
Stephen Covey