
Covey discloses his struggles with his weight, the lack of discipline with diet, and his manipulative tendencies of controlling any outcome forcefully from people. He not only feels a dire need to achieve success for him and his family, but he also feels the pressure to copycat the process of the success of his friends. In his book, Covey admits to having both internal and external struggles to the myriad of incompetency in his life. For the latter reason, Covey urges the reader not to cease exploring since its only exploration that can get people to better destinations. The latter shows that people need to dig deeper into their reasoning and rationality when solving problems since a repetitive pattern of doing something is madness. He quotes Albert Einstein’s words that most of the problems faced by humanity can never be solved using the same channel of thinking that was when they created.

Stephen Covey gives a new way of thinking as the key ingredient to the habits of efficient people. Covey urges people to appreciate the process of paradigm change since it is a slow but sure process which in the end, yields quantum change. Listening is also key to seeing things differently since Covey only understood the man and children at the park after enquiring what was wrong. Covey adds that for him and his wife Sandra to impact change on their son, they had to begin seeing him. Seeing and being are concepts that help people to find better perspectives on their problems. Covey advocates for a society that gets to the cause of matter from which are the base for paradigms of attitude and behavior. Some things make one realize that their first school of thought is questionable after listening and finding out more information. Covey argues that it was not until people discovered the presence of germs that they began being keen on the treatment of a wound. He gives examples of historical paradigm shifts in science and astronomy by Kuhn and Ptolemy respectively. Covey adds that the paradigm shift just as the scientific and mathematical meanings, in this case, is the shift from one’s perspective and point of view of the world.Ĭovey describes the power of a change in a paradigm which he further details as the ‘aha’ moment in one’s life.

Covey adds in this part of the book that, the most objective way of making a difference in one’s life is by having a paradigm shift. People instead seek a personalized channel of empowering what the son can do and be giving him independence as an inside-out change. Through the experience with his son, Covey realizes that the way he viewed his son as a problem was the problem. After trying the protective measures of cheering and coaching their son on academics and baseball, Covey realizes that they have a distorted method of approaching the problem.

He describes the concept of inside out by including experiences on primary and secondary greatness, the aspect of seeing and being, and the perspective of people towards a problem and their solution to it. The actual difference in the life of people as Covey argues does not necessarily come from the outside in but in essence from the inside out. Covey has the problem with his marriage of a dwindling flame of compassion to his wife thus leading him to seek the conventional ways that other people use to rekindle the love life in marriage. In this part, Covey states that people tend to see the massive success of their fellow friends and feel the urge to find out how their friend did it nursing the idea that they also, could follow a similar process like a quick bullet list and succeed.

He gives the analogy of the quick fixes he and his wife Sandra tried on their son who was mediocre at baseball. Covey states that a majority of people seek to have quick fixes to their problems rather than follow the working channels of problem-solving.
