The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Dick LaFever

Posted At : January 27, 2009 1:00 AM
Related Categories: Science & Social Science

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Taken from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen R. Covey, published by St. Martin's Griffin.

Contributed by Kate Nasse of San Francisco. Read by Dick LaFever: "My wife Mary, a music teacher, tells me the rests, or spaces between notes, are essential, even more so than the notes alone. As I become older and, I hope, wiser, I find this to be true in many areas of my life." Dick is a 30-year resident of Alaska, and has traveled to over 100 communities throughout Alaska working with clients. Crossroads Leadership Institute (CLI) provides strategic planning, team building, conflict resolution services, and quality improvement programs for organizations.

In several of his books, Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, mentions this experience:

"...many years ago when I was in Hawaii on a sabbatical, I was wandering through some stacks of books in the back of a college library. A particular book drew my interest, and as I flipped through the pages, my eyes fell on a single paragraph that was so compelling, so memorable, so staggering that it has profoundly influenced the rest of my life.
In that paragraph were three sentences that contained a single powerful idea:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

I cannot begin to describe the effect that idea had on me. I was overwhelmed by it. I reflected on it again and again. I reveled in the freedom of it."

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I looked through Covey's book for this reference after I heard this on the radio. I finally looked here and am so glad to see it. Thank you for this thought. It is revolutionary.

# Posted By Kim McGee | 1/29/09 6:15 PM

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