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Develop a defense against people who want to convince you that you can’t do it. Accept negative advice only as a challenge to prove that you can do it.
Negators are everywhere. Some negators, like the one who almost tripped me, are well-meaning folks. But others are jealous people who, not moving ahead themselves, want you to stumble too. They feel inadequate themselves, so they want to make a mediocre person out of you.
MAKE IT A RULE TO SEEK ADVICE FROM PEOPLE WHO KNOW
There’s a lot of incorrect thinking that successful people are inaccessible. The plain truth is that they are not. As a rule, it’s the more successful people who are the most humble and ready to help.
1. Do circulate in new groups. Restricting your social environment to the same small group produces boredom, dullness, dissatisfaction; equally important, remember that your success-building program requires that you become an expert in understanding people. Trying to learn all there is to know about people by studying one small group is like trying to master mathematics by reading one short book.
2. Make new friends, join new organizations, enlarge your social orbit. Then too, variety in people, like variety in anything else, adds spice to life and gives it a broader dimension. It’s good mind food.
Meditate on this thought for just a moment: Taking an axe and chopping your neighbor’s furniture to pieces won’t make your furniture look one bit better; and using verbal axes and grenades on another person doesn’t do one thing to make you a better you or me a better me.
1. Dig into it deeper. Make this little test. Think of two things in which you have little or no interest—maybe cards, certain kinds of music, a sport. Now ask yourself, “How much do I really know about these things?” Odds are 100 to 1 that your answer is “Not much.”
Dig into it deeper, and you’ll develop enthusiasm. Put this principle to work next time you must do something you don’t want to do. Put this principle to work next time you find yourself becoming bored. Just dig in deeper and you dig up interest.
2, In everything you do, life it up. Enthusiasm, or lack of it, shows through in everything you do and say. Life up your handshaking. When you shake hands, shake. Make your handclasp say, “I’m glad to know you.” “I am glad to see you again.” A conservative, mouse-like handshake is worse than no handshake at all. It makes people think, “This guy is more dead than alive.” Try to find a highly successful person with a conservative handshake. You’ll have to look a long, long time. Life up your smiles. Smile with your eyes. Nobody likes an artificial, pasted-on, rubbery smile. When you smile,
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No one ever won a friend, no one ever made money, no one ever accomplished anything by broadcasting bad news.
It pays to make “little” people feel like big people.
Make someone feel important, and he cares about you. And when he cares about you, he does more for you.
1. Practice appreciation. Make it a rule to let others know you appreciate what they do for you. Never, never let anyone feel he is taken for granted. Practice appreciation with a warm, sincere smile. A smile lets others know you notice them and feel kindly toward them.
Don’t waste time or mental energy trying to classify people as “very important persons,” “important persons,” or “unimportant persons.” Make no exceptions. A person, whether he is garbage collector or company vice president, is important to you. Treating someone as second-class never gets you first-class results.
Two special things you must remember. Pronounce the name correctly, and spell it correctly. If you mispronounce or misspell someone’s name, that person feels that you feel he is unimportant.
This manager knew that praise, like money, can be invested to pay dividends. She knew that passing the credit on to her salespeople would make them work even harder next year.
Get the family on your team. Give them planned attention.
I’ve worked out a schedule that enables me to give attention to my family as well as to my work. From 7:30 to 8:30 every evening I devote my time to my two young children. I play games with them, read them stories, draw, answer questions—anything they want me to do. After an hour with those kids of mine, they’re not only satisfied, but I’m 100 percent fresher. At 8:30 they trot off to bed, and I settle down to work for two hours. “At 10:30 I quit working and spend the next hour with my wife. We talk about the kids, her day at work, our plans for the future. This hour, undisturbed by anything,
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Money, then, is a desirable objective. What’s puzzling about money is the backward approach so many people use in trying to make it. Everywhere you see people with a “money-first” attitude. Yet these same people always have little money. Why? Simply this: People with a money-first attitude become so money conscious that they forget money can’t be harvested unless they plant the seeds that grow the money.
Always give people more than they expect to get. Each little extra something you do for others is a money seed.
1. Grow the “I’m activated” attitude. Results come in proportion to the enthusiasm invested. Three things to do to activate yourself are: Dig into it deeper. When you find yourself uninterested in something, dig in and learn more about it. This sets off enthusiasm. Life up everything about you: your smile, your handshake, your talk, even your walk. Act alive. Broadcast good news. No one ever accomplished anything positive telling bad news.
2. Grow the “You are important” attitude. People do more for you when you make them feel important. Remember to do these things: Show appreciation at every opportunity. Make people feel important. Call people by name.
Success depends on the support of other people. The only hurdle between you and what you want to be is the support of others.
In at least nine cases out of ten, the “likability” factor is the first thing mentioned. And in an overwhelmingly large number of cases, the “likability” factor is given far more weight than the technical factor.
well. A person is not pulled up to a higher-level job. Rather, he is lifted up. In this day and age nobody has time or patience to pull another up the job ladder, degree by painful degree. The individual is chosen whose record makes him stand higher than the rest.
1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing. 2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe kind of individual. 3. Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you. 4. Don’t be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all. 5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you. 6. Study to get the “scratchy” elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
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Actually, it’s a mark of real leadership to take the lead in getting to know people. Next time you are in a large group, observe something very significant: the most important person present is the one person most active in introducing himself.
“I may not be very important to him, but he’s important to me. That’s why I’ve got to get to know him.”
Here are six ways to win friends by exercising just a little initiative: 1. Introduce yourself to others at every possible opportunity—at parties, meetings, on airplanes, at work, everywhere. 2. Be sure the other person gets your name straight. 3. Be sure you can pronounce the other person’s name the way he pronounces it. 4. Write down the other person’s name, and be mighty sure you have it spelled correctly; understandably people have a thing about the correct spelling of their own names! If possible, get their address and phone number, also. 5. Drop a personal note or make a phone call to
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Take the initiative. Be like the successful. Go out of your way to meet people. And don’t be timid. Don’t be afraid to be unusual. Find out who the other person is, and be sure he knows who you are.
You have a right to your own opinion, but sometimes it’s better to keep it to yourself.
Bear in mind that the longer you stay tuned to either Channel P or Channel N, the more interested you become and the harder it is to switch channels. This is true because one thought, positive or negative, sets off a whole chain reaction of similar thought. You may, for example, start off with such a simple minor negative thought as a person’s accent and find yourself soon thinking negatively about such unrelated topics as his political and religious beliefs, the car he drives, his personal habits, his relationship with his wife, even the way he combs his hair. And thinking this way surely
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If Channel N cuts in, say stop. Then switch channels. To make the switch, all you must do is think of one positive quality about the individual. In true chain reaction style, this one thought will lead to another and another. And you will be glad.
There are two ways to prevent others from switching us from Channel P to Channel N. One way is to switch topics as quickly and quietly as possible with some remark like “Pardon me, John, but while I think of it, I’ve been meaning to ask you …” A second way is to excuse yourself with a “Sorry, John, I’m late now…” or “I’ve a deadline to meet. Will you excuse me?”
Make a forceful promise to yourself. Refuse to let others prejudice your thinking. Stay tuned to Channel P.
1. Conversation generosity wins friends. 2. Conversation generosity helps you learn more about people.
how you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
1. Ask yourself, “What can I do to make myself more deserving of the next opportunity?” 2. Don’t waste time and energy being discouraged. Don’t berate yourself. Plan to win next time.
IN A CAPSULE, PUT THESE PRINCIPLES TO WORK Make yourself lighter to lift. Be likable. Practice being the kind of person people like. This wins their support and puts fuel in your success-building program. Take the initiative in building friendships. Introduce yourself to others at every opportunity. Make sure you get the other person’s name straight, and make certain he gets your name straight too. Drop a personal note to your new friends you want to get to know better. Accept human differences and limitations. Don’t expect anyone to be perfect, Remember, the other person has a right to be
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Think of it. Everything we have in this world, from satellites to skyscrapers to baby food, is just an idea acted upon.
1. Expect future obstacles and difficulties. Every venture presents risks, problems, and uncertainties. Let’s suppose you wanted to drive your car from Chicago to Los Angeles, but you insisted on waiting until you had absolute assurance that there would be no detours, no motor trouble, no bad weather, no drunken drivers, no risk of any kind. When would you start? Never! In planning your trip to Los Angeles it makes sense to map your route, check your car, in other ways to eliminate as much risk as possible before you start. But you can’t eliminate all risks. 2. Meet problems and obstacles as
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That idea for getting more business, for simplifying work procedures, is of value only when it is acted upon.
First, give your ideas value by acting on them. Regardless of how good the idea, unless you do something with it, you gain nothing.
Second, act on your ideas and gain mind tranquillity. Someone once said that the saddest word of tongue or pen are these: it might have been. Every day you hear someone saying something like “Had I gone into business seven years ago, I’d sure be sitting pretty now.” Or “I had a hunch it would work out like that. I wish I had done something about it.” A good idea if not acted upon produces terrible psychological pain. But a good idea acted upon brings enormous mental satisfaction. Got a good idea? Then do something about it,
When you want to think, start writing or doodling or diagramming. It’s an excellent way to move your spirit.
Get the “speak up” habit. Each time you speak up, you strengthen yourself. Come forward with your constructive ideas.
But there’s a way to break this habit. Tell yourself, “I’m in condition right now to begin, I can’t gain a thing by putting it off. I’ll use the ‘get ready’ time and energy to get going instead.”
1. Be a crusader. When you see something that you believe ought to be done, pick up the ball and run.
2. Be a volunteer. Each of us has been in situations in which we wanted to volunteer for some activity but didn’t. Why? Because of fear. Not fear that we couldn’t accomplish the task, but rather fear of what our associates would say. The fear of being laughed at, of being called an eager beaver, of being accused of bucking for a raise holds many people back.
