No doubt, this book is a worldly famous self-help book. The author, Sean Covey , was influenced by his father Stephen Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and made it simpler especially for teens. Personally I am highly positively influenced by it. If I hold it to read again, I am not sure if I can stop. Just a little exaggeration, though! And this is why you see this review.
Knowing what is right is difficult. However, urging or forcing ourselves to do the right thing is ways more difficult. Part I of this book is about knowing what is right. So what is right then? To develop yourself, although you sometimes deny it, you know that you are the driver, the main driver, of your life. Thus, be responsible for your life. If you disagree to this, you can stop reading this review and burn the book down (except you bought its e-book version).
This is book is divided into 4 main parts. Because the flow of his book is superb, I will have to just review it accordingly.
Then, part II is about forming the habits. Again, it begins with perceptions. He calls it paradigms. You have to form a habit of thinking that you can do. Define your goals and its possibility. Prioritize what is more important and do it in that order.
Part I and II are about yourself. Make them habits for yourself, the habits that after repetitions no longer burdens but what you like doing. Part III is about dealing with other people. There is only one truth. Christianity refers this as the Golden Rule. Other people have good intentions like us as well. They find it difficult to raise themselves up as well. They misunderstand, sometimes do bad deeds intentionally like us as well. Thus, to grow is to grow together. That is how we should think and do.
Part IV is about doing it as a habit. Repetitive, is it not? You keep thinking positively, do it till it becomes a habit, do it with others, do it together, and then your life would be effective.
Do you see what the most special point of this book is? There is a high chance that you got it. There are too numerous books on self-help. Another one you might hear about or read is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I read this one as well but I must admit that it does not influence me much or at all. I am sorry to its fan, and I know there are a lot! Of course the latter offers enormous number of good theories. The reason for its low rating being that it does not show me HOW to make those good theories applicable or how to force oneself to apply the theories. As I previously said above, people can know what the right thing to do is easily, but it is hard for them to do the right thing. For instance, people tend to know that reading is good for them, but they just do not read. Because the 7 Habits could do this, I give it the crown, which effectively means my rating for it is 5/5.
Author: Sean Covey
Publisher: Touchstone, newest edition (May 27, 2014)
