Stephen Covey brings up a really interesting point in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. He talks about how he studied over the 200 or so years of our US history and found that there was a pattern in the literature written about the topic of success. Over the last 50 years or so, there has been a pattern of books that have been written which he categorizes as books on “Personality Ethic”. Basically, books that help you manage your relationships better, but are somewhat superficial and just social band aids. This makes sense based on our microwave and drive through culture. His thoughts are that they appear to temporarily solve some problems but do not address underlying issues, which when not dealt with, only tend to fester and resurface.

He compares this to the literature found in the other 150 years of our US history. He classifies this as “Character Ethic”. The focus of those books tend to be on and I quote, “things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule.” Basically, it is centered around the understanding that there are bed rock foundations to success which are deep in who you are and not what you do. I think he says in it that “Who you are screams so much louder than what you say”.

This shift seemed to happen after World War I. Alright, lunch is about to end, so its time to hit the phones again, but I definitely wanted to get to share this before I forgot. Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this.

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