Just sharing some vital lessons I have had learned from one of my favourite senseis, productivity strategist Stephen R Covey back in the early nineties.

Covey wrote his magnum opus, ''7 Habits of Highly Effective People', during the early nineties.

In reality, I have had gotten a lot of mileage from reading his above book, which I believe is the distillation from 200 years of the success literature in USA.

Henceforth, I always hold the explicit view that '7 Habits' is more or less a condensation of Napolean Hill's 'Law of Success' to suit contemporary times.

Here's a few of my valuable takeaways from my sensei, other than the '7 Habits':

"Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know."

As I have maintained so far, the propensity or bias for action is fundamental to personal and organisational success, because only action produces results.

In the corporate world, it's called 'disciplined execution'.

Another one:

"The way you see the problem is the problem."

In terms of problem solving as well as potential problem solving, what Covey had so eloquently advocated holds the vital key to personal as well as organisational success.

To put it bluntly, change your perspective and you will find that it is easy for you to change your world.

In fact, the father of lateral thinking Dr Edward de bono has earlier termed it as "enhancing your perceptual sensitivity" to the environment, and he has even added that one should also embrace fluidity and multiplicity of our perception about the world.

In a nut shell, what he had been saying is this: get as many viewpoints as you can as you see a problem, so as to expand your mental horizon.

Achieving this mental flexibility is not going to be easy, as there are numerous mental blocks in our heads (perceptual, emotional, cultural, environmental, intellectual, and expressive) that prevent us from realizing the full potential of our fertile minds.

[I recommend reading James Adams' 'Conceptual Blockbusting'].

One last one: The 90/10 Principle:

According to Covey, 10% of our life is made up of what happens to us and 90% is decided by how we react and respond to life's problems.

As I have understood him, we really have no control over 10% of what happens to us.

The other 90% is different. We have control over it. How?

It boils down to how we interpret our reaction and choose to respond to the problem.

Wow! what an epiphany when I first understood him.

During the heydays of my own strategy consulting and training development business (after leaving the corporate world for good), I have often shared with folks in business as well as in schools, how best one can survive and thrive in the 21st Century by learning and applying these critical learning points during their journey on the Highway of Life.