Stephen Covey was giving a seminar on the Oregon coast and a man came to him and said he really didn’t enjoy coming to the seminars. He lamented that while everyone enjoyed the coastline, he spent his day worrying about the grilling he’s going to get from his wife at night.
She grilled him every time she was away – What did he eat for breakfast? Who else was there? What happened at lunch? Who was with him? What did they talk about?
And he knew that what she really wanted to know was who she could call to verify everything he told her. Her nagging took the fun out of the whole experience.
They talked for a while and he then made an interesting comment. “I guess she knows all the questions to ask,” he said a little sheepishly. “It was at a seminar like this that I met her … when I was married to someone else!”
“You’re kind of into ‘quick fix’, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’d like to take a screwdriver and just open up your wife’s head and rewire that attitude of hers really fast, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure, I’d like her to change,” he exclaimed. “I don’t think it’s right for her to constantly grill me like she does.”
“My friend,” Covey said, “you can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.”
This remains one of my all-time favorite 7 Habits stories. And “you can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into” is one of the quotes that has stayed with me since the first time I read it.
