The book ‘How to win friends and influence people’ was written by Dale Carnegie and first published in 1936. It is one of the first best-selling self-book ever published. According to Wikipedia, it named on #19 on Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential books in 2011. He also wrote several other books which include How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), Lincoln the Unkown (1932) etc.
The book has been divided into 7 sections which addresses different aspects of self-improvement. Even every section of this book has been divided further into sub-sections. This blog will explain the first part ‘Do this and you’ll be welcome anywhere’ of section 2 ‘Ways to make people like you’ of book ‘How to win friends and family’. In this section, the author has described ways how to make friends and explained these ways by giving examples from the real world so that the readers can understand those concepts better.
The main idea of this section is that in order to make friends and relationship we have to show our interest in people. He has quoted many examples in this section but here I will explain some of them which I liked most and relate them with my own personal experiences.
The first example is about dog which is the only animal makes his living by giving you nothing but love. That is so true. My dog name is Jack. When I come home from university and as I press car horn he becomes so excited and start running with excitement until someone opens the gate. As I enter into the home and go to garage to park my car he also runs side by side with my car until I come out of the car. As I am (like many other people) so tensed and frustrated because of work load and other things but the way he shows his excitement really changed my mood instantly and I forget all my troubles for a while. Because he knows very well how to show interest towards me and this act grabs my attention. I have learned that when you show your genuine interest in other people without any hidden motive it grabs others attention quickly. Other person can quickly judge either you are showing real interest or just pretending it. An interest can be shown to keep eye contact during conversation with others, listen what he/she talks, if something he/she talks does not match your approach so do not show or say anything against it. Just appreciate his/her arguments.
The second example that I really liked in this section is about magicians on page 6 which explained how the magician approach is different from the others. He held one thing in his mind ‘I love my audience’,’I love my audience’. The message that I have learned from this is that do everything in life from the heart, put your best and then see the results. In other words, we have to treat the other person in the same way that we want others to treat us. Our intentions should be true with other people.
The other thing that I have learned from this section is that we have to show our effort and passion towards others. As it is human nature that everyone wants affection and attention. The best strategy is to always call a person name because everyone loves to hear his/her by original name rather than some nick names. At the time a person talks we have to show full attention towards him/her and stop doing any other activity. We have to show that we really want to know him/her and the things related to them. Like the author has mentioned in this book that he recalled birthday of persons by repeating date and then he noted down.
I want to know the practicality of lessons that I have learned from the section of this book. For that purpose I have done an activity in my real life by asking friends, relatives and colleagues some general questions of his/her life. It was an amazing activity and I really enjoyed a lot. I have learned through this activity every person in this world is beautiful in his/her own way. We should give respect and attention to everyone. Everyone has some unique thing/quality/ability that we do not know so we need to try to learn from every person with whom we met in life at any place and situation.