“Who was Dale Carnegie?” you may wonder. Well, he was a man that was
born 110 years ago. He died in 1955. He was a rich man, a very successful man.
He wrote a little book called
“How to Win Friends and Influence People”. It went on to sell over 30 million
copies. It still sells today and is probably one of the best books on how to
improve your social skills. Carnegie then continued to
write more books and to create courses on how to interact with people, on how
to make friends and on how to gain influence.
In this article I’ll explore
10 of my favourite tips from Dale Carnegie. And as the opening quote says,
these tips have been time-tested for the last few hundreds or thousands of
years. They are pretty solid.
1. Create your own emotions.
“If you want to be
enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.”
Emotions work backwards too.
You can use that to your advantage. If you are stuck in a negative emotion then
you can often shake it off. Change your body – how you move, sit and stand –
and act as you would like to feel. Enthusiasm and other positive emotions are
much more useful and pleasurable for everyone in an interaction. Because…
2. It’s not so much about the
logical stuff.
“When dealing with people,
remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of
emotion.”
This is so key. Logic is good
but in the end, in interactions and in life, we are emotional creatures. We
send and receive emotions from other people. That is one reason why body
language and voice tonality is often said be up to 93% of communication. Now,
those numbers were for some specific situations but I still believe that these two
ways of communication are very, very important.
The body language and the
voice tonality is a bit like the rest of the iceberg, the great mass below the
tip of the words we use. Those two things communicate how we are feeling and
give indication to what we are thinking. And that’s why it’s important to be
able to change how you feel. To be in a positive mood while interacting.
Because that will have a great impact on how you say something and how you use
your body. And those two things will have a big impact on your results and
relationships.
3. Three things you are better
off avoiding.
“Any fool can criticize,
condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be
understanding and forgiving.”
Now these things may not be
easy to avoid all together. Much of our interactions and perhaps even bonds are
created and maintained through those three negative C’s. There is a sort of
twisted pleasure in criticising, condemning and complaining. It might make you
feel more important and like a better person as you see yourself as a victim or
as you condemn other people’s behaviour.
But in the end these three C’s
are negative and limiting to your life. Bringing up negative stuff and
wallowing in it will lower your mood, motivation and general levels of
wellbeing. And this can trap you in a negative spiral of complaining,
complaining with other complainers and always finding faults in your reality.
You will also be broadcasting
and receiving negative emotions. And people in general want to feel good. So
this can really put an obstacle in the way for your interactions or
relationships.
4. What is most important?
“The royal road to a man’s
heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.”
Classic advice. Don’t talk too
much about yourself and your life. Listen to other people instead. However, if
they ramble on and on, if they don’t reciprocate and show and interest in your
life then you don’t have to stay.
Some things people may
treasure the most include ideas, children, a special hobby and the job. And…
5. Focus outward, not inward.
“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.”
A lot of people use the
second, far less effective way. It is appealing because it’s about instant
gratification and about ME, ME, ME! The first way – to become interested in
people – perhaps works better because it make you a pleasant exception and
because the law of reciprocity is strong in people. As you treat people, they
will treat you. Be interested in them and they will be interested in you.
I would like to add that one
hard thing about this can be to be genuinely interested in the other
guy/gal. Your genuine interest is projected though your body language and
tonality. So, just waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can talk
again isn’t really genuine interest. And that may shine through. And so your
interactions will suffer.
6. Take control of your
emotions.
“The person who seeks all
their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping.”
It basically consist of being
too reliant or dependent on external validation from other people. External
validation is something someone communicates to you that tells you that you are
person of value. That you, for example, are pretty, smart or successful.
This leaves much of your
emotions in the hands of other people. It becomes an emotional rollercoaster.
One day you feel great. The next day you feel like just staying in bed.
But if you fill that inner cup
of validation for yourself instead then you take over the wheel. Now you’re
driving, now you control how you feel. You can still appreciate compliments of
course, but you aren’t dependent on them.
This will make you more emotionally
stable and enables you to cultivate and build your emotional muscles in a more
controlled way. You can for instance help yourself to become more optimistic or
enthusiastic more of the time. This stability and growth can be big help in
your relationships.
7. No, they are not holding
you back.
“Instead of worrying about
what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they
will admire.”
Caring too much about what
people think will create and feed imaginary monsters within your mind. You may
for instance think that people will condemn you if you try something. Maybe
they will. But most of the time people are thinking about their own challenges
and ups and downs. They just don’t care that much about what you do.
This may feel disappointing.
It can also be liberating. It helps you remove inner obstacles that are you
holding yourself back.
As you, bit by bit or in one
big swoop, release those inner brakes you become more of yourself. You become
more confident, you have a better chance at success, and you will feel more
positive feelings and less negative ones. All these things can give a big boost
to your interactions and help you sharpen those social skills.
8. So, what’s in it for me?
“There is only one way… to get
anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.”
If you want someone to do
something then will they care about your motivation for getting this thing
done? Perhaps. Often they will not have that great of an interest in what you
want out of something.
They want to know what they will get out of it. So, for the
both of you to get what you want out of something tell that person what’s in it
for him/her. And try to be genuine and positive about it. A reason for them to
do it delivered in a lame, half-assed manner may not be so persuasive. And so
you both lose.
9. How to win an argument.
“The only way to get the best
of an argument is to avoid it.”
Getting two egos wrapped up in
an argument, having two sides defending their positions desperately, will not
improve relationships. You are more likely to feel negative feelings towards
each other long after the argument is over. And so you both wallow in negativity
and you both lose. When possible, just avoiding unnecessary arguments is a
win-win situation.
10. It’s about more than your
words.
“There are four ways, and only
four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and
classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and
how we say it.”
I often feel that there is a
bit too much emphasis on the third way of contact (what we say). Don’t forget
about the rest. Most people stereotype people at their first meeting. They might
not want to but it is a way for their – and perhaps your – mind to organize
impressions and people. So think about how you look. Think about how you make first impressions. Think about your body language. And how you are saying your sentences.
Think about how you feel
because that will be reflected out into the world. And the world will often
reflect back something similar.
