One of the best books I have ever read is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.
I bought that in the bookstore many years ago.
It tells vividly how you can win friends in so short time and how to get people like you, regardless of your status in life.
Almost every person we meet everyday is fighting a hard battle in their lives, fellas, and that includes you and me. Most often, people like to talk about their problems, accomplishments, about themselves. They tend to forget that they are talking to a human being who also like to talk about himself. They like to be the hero always.
But I don’t shun away from these people. I listen to them patiently and praise them for their strength and wisdom in coping up with their problem.
“You are indeed very wise. With the way you handled the situation, you are indeed very brilliant,” I often comment after listening to their lengthy discourse.
And what else will your speaker say except the words, “Thank You.?”
Why do I love to listen and praise more than I go talking and talking and talking, fellas?
It’s because I have read Dale Carnegie’s book.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other
people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in
you. Why should people be interested in you unless you are first interested in
them? The road to someone’s heart is to talk to them about the things they
treasure most.
Almost every man you meet feels himself superior to you in some way, and a sure
way to his heart is to let him realize in some subtle way that you recognize
his importance in his little world, and recognize it sincerely.
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing
that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about. The first thing to
learn in intercourse with others is noninterference with their own peculiar
ways of being happy.
“I’m sorry to trouble you…Would you be so kind as to…Won’t you
please…Would you mind…Thank you…This may, perhaps, be worth thinking of,
gentlemen…you might consider this…do you think that would work? What do you
think of this? Maybe if we were to rephrase it this way it would be better…It
so appears to me at present…”
To make a woman fall in love with you, all you have to do is to talk to her
about herself!
Carnegie adds: Everyone is hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to
them, and they will love you. The child eagerly displays his injury, or even
inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same
purpose adults show their bruises, relate their accidents and illnesses.
Self-pity for misfortunes, real or imaginary, is practically a universal
practice.
“Tis not love’s goings hurt my days, but that it went in little
ways.”
When someone returns at item to you, listen to their story from beginning
to end without saying a word. Then say, “What would you like me to do with
this product? I’ll do anything you say. If it isn’t satisfactory, we’ll give
you one that is. We are sorry to have caused you this inconvenience.”
A customer denied owing 15 dollars. After getting letters from credit
department, he went to the manager and said not only is he not going to pay the
bill, but he won’t buy anything else from them again. The manager listened
patiently to all he had to say without interrupting him.
Then he said, “I want to thank you for coming to me to tell me
about this. You have done me a great favor, for if our credit department has
annoyed you, it may annoy other good customers. Believe me, I am far more eager
to hear this than you are to tell it. We’ll wipe off the 15 dollar charge,
because you are a very careful man with only one account to look after, while
we have to look after many. Therefore, you are less likely to be wrong than we
are.”
Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let
him save face? He didn’t ask for your opinion. He didn’t want it. Why argue
with him? You can’t win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if
you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have
made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his
judgment, and his self-respect, and he’ll resent your triumph. That will make
him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind.
“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion
still,” Carnegie says.
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your
friends excel you. When our friends excel us, that gives them a feeling of
importance, but when we excel them, that gives them a feeling of inferiority
and arouses envy and jealousy.
In talking with people, don’t begin by discussing the things on which you
differ, but emphasize the things which we agree. Keep emphasizing that you are
both striving for the same end and our only difference is one of method and not
of purpose. Remember the other man may be totally wrong, but he doesn’t think
so. Don’t condemn him, any fool can do that. Try to understand him.
“I don’t blame you at all. If I were you, I should undoubtedly feel just
as you do.” An answer like that will soften the most cantankerous old cuss
alive.
Influencing others is quite more difficult because it takes a lot of patience.
It is not what I want but what the other wants.
You see, everyone wants to be important, fellas, and when you and your friend feel that way at the same time, you may not agree,
Ralph Waldo Emerson and his son one day tried to get a calf into the
barn, but they made the common mistake of thinking only of what they wanted.
Emerson pushed and his son pulled. But the calf did just what they did; he
thought only of what he wanted; so he stiffened his legs and stubbornly refused
to leave the pasture. The Irish housemaid saw their predicament. She thought of
what the calf wanted; so she put her maternal finger in the calf’s mouth, and
let the calf suck her finger as she gently led him into the barn.
Andrew Carnegie’s sister-in-law was worried sick over her two boys. They were
at Yale, and they were so busy with their own affairs that they neglected to
write home and paid no attention whatever to their mother’s frantic letters.
Carnegie offered to wager a hundred dollars that he could get an answer by
return mail, without even asking for it! Someone called his bet; so he wrote
his nephews a chatty letter, mentioning casually in a postscript that he was
sending each one a five-dollar bill. He neglected, however, to enclose the
money. That did the trick. Back came the replies by return mail thanking
“Dear Uncle Andrew” for his kind note and …you can finish the
sentence yourself.
The next time you want to persuade someone to do something, before you speak,
pause and ask, “How can I make him want to do it?” Get the other man’s point of view and
see things from his angle as well as from his own.
As simple as that, fellas!
Next time, I’ll share you some more.
