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one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 per cent is due to skill in human engineering – to personality and the ability to lead people.
the person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people – that person is headed for higher earning power.
The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.
After reading it thoroughly, you ought to spend a few hours reviewing it every month. Keep it on your desk in front of you every day. Glance through it often.
Offer your spouse, your child or some business associate a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating a certain principle.
I devoted a part of each Saturday evening to the illuminating process of self-examination and review and appraisal. After dinner
Keep a record showing how and when you have applied these principles.
ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticize themselves for anything, no matter how wrong it may be.
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.
Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And from that time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything.
“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”
sharp criticisms and rebukes almost invariably end in futility.
If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism – no matter how certain we are that it is justified.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
“God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days.” Why should you and I?
PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn of complain.
Sigmund Freud said that everything you and I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great.
Lincoln once began a letter saying: “Everybody likes a compliment.”
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
Some authorities declare that people may actually go insane in order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling of importance that has been denied them in the harsh world of reality. There are more patients suffering from mental diseases in the United States than from all other diseases combined.
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab,
“the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement.
As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”
“I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.”
When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It was “lack of appreciation.” And I’d bet that a similar study made of runaway husbands would come out the same way. We often take our spouses so much for granted that we never let them know we appreciate them.
people who would think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go for six days without food; but they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and sometimes sixty years without giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food.
Of course flattery seldom works with discerning people. It is shallow, selfish and insincere. It ought to fail and it usually does.
The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere.
Nothing pleases children more than this kind of parental interest and approval.
Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude on your daily trips. You will be surprised how they will set small flames of friendship that will be rose beacons on your next visit.
Hurting people not only does not change them, it is never called for.
Give honest and sincere appreciation.
So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”
“If there is any one secret of success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”
All this talk about your enormous success makes me feel small and unimportant.]
salespeople can show us how their services or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to feel that they are buying – not being sold.
Owen D. Young, a noted lawyer and one of America’s great business leaders, once said: “People who can put themselves in the place of other people, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for them.”
Remember: “First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”
Arouse in the other person an eager want.
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.
It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.
If we want to make friends, let’s put ourselves out to do things for other people – things that require time, energy, unselfishness and thoughtfulness.
“We are interested in others when they are interested in us.”
expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back.
and a kitten. As luck would have it, she sat down next to a gentleman who was more than a little distraught about the long wait for service. The next thing he knew, the baby just looked up at him with that great big smile that is so characteristic of babies. What did that gentleman do? Just what you and I would do, of course; he smiled back at the baby. Soon he struck up a conversation with the woman about her baby and his grandchildren, and soon the entire reception room joined in, and the boredom and tension were converted into a pleasant and enjoyable experience.” An insincere grin? No.
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The effect of a smile is powerful – even when it is unseen.
people rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.
Every body in the world is seeking happiness – and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.
