Winning Friends & Self Improvement

How to Win Friends and Influence People
( Guidelines from Dale Carnegie's " How to win friends and influence people" )

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People:

• Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
• Give honest and sincere appreciation.
• Arouse in the other person an eager want.
• Six ways to make people like you
• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
• Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.
• Win people to your way of thinking

Few Ways To Make Your Self Respectable

• The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
• Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
• If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Begin in a friendly way.
• Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
• Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
• Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
• Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
• Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
• Appeal to the nobler motives.
• Dramatize your ideas.
• Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader:

How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
A leader's job often includes changing your people's attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

• Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
• Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
• Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
• Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
• Let the other person save face.
• Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
• Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
• Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
• Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

Fundamental facts you should know about worry:

• Don't stew about the futures. Just live each day u ntil bedtime.
• Ask yourself, "What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can't solve my problem?
• Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst--only if necessary.
• Then calmly try to improve upon the worst--which you have already mentally agreed to accept.
• Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health. "Those who do not know how to fight worry die young."

Basic techniques in analyzing worrys:

Get the facts. Remember that Dean Hawkes of Columbia University said that "half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision."

• After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.
• Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision--and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.

When you, or any of your associates, are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:

1. What is the problem?
2. What is the cause of the problem?
3. What are all possible solutions?
4. What is the best solution?
5. How to break the worry habit before it breaks you
6. Crowd worry out of your mind by keeping busy. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies ever devised for curing "wibber gibbers."
7. Don't fuss about trifles. Don't permit little things--the mere termites of life--to ruin your happines.
8. Put a "stop-less" order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth--and refuse to give it anymore.
9. dont waste your time for unwanted past-"Let the past bury its dead. Don't saw sawdust".
10. Think what should be done,and do what you think is the best-"our life is what our thoughts make it"
11. Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.
12. Instead of worrying about ingratitude, let's expect it. Let's remember that Jesus healed ten lepers in one day--and only one thanked Him. Why should we expect more gratitude than Jesus got?
13. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude--but to give for the joy of giving.
14. Let's remember that gratitude is a "cultivated" trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, "We must be grateful to train them to be grateful".

Count your blessings--Not Your Troubles

Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves, for "envy is ignorance" and "imitation is suicide."

1. When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.
2. Let's forget our own unhappiness--by trying to create a little happiness for others. "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself."

How to keep away from worrying about criticism:

Unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealousy and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead dog.
Do the very best you can; and then put up your old umbrella and keep the rain of criticism from running down the back of your neck.
Let's keep a record of the fool things we have done and criticize ourselves. Since we can't hope to be perfect, let's do what E.H. Little did: let's ask for unbiased, helpful, constructive criticism.

Three ways to prevent fatigue and worry and keep your energy and spirits high

• Rest before you get tired.
• Learn to relax at your work.
• Learn to relax at home.

Apply these four good workings habits:

• Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
• Do things in the order of their importance.
• When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts to make a decision.
• Learn to organize, deputize, and supervise.
• To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.

Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage--not the insomnia.
( Courtesy: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/stop-worry.html )

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking:

( Guidelines from Dorothy Carnegie's book based on Dale Carnegie's "Public speaking and influencing men in business" )
Fundamentals of Effective Speaking
1. Acquiring the Basic Skills
Take heart from the experience of others
Keep your goal before you
Predetermine your mind to success
Seize every opportunity to practice
2. Developing Confidence
Get the facts about fear of speaking in public
Prepare in the proper way
Predetermine your mind to success
Act confident
3. Speaking Effectively the Quick and Easy Way
Speaking about something you have earned the right to talk about through experience or study
Be sure you are excited about your subject
Be eager to share your talk with your listeners
Speech, Speaker, and Audience
4. Earning the Right to Talk
Limit your subject
Develop reserve power
Fill your talk with illustrations and examples
Use concrete, familiar words that create pictures
5. Vitalizing the Talk
Choose subjects you are earnest about
Relive the Feelings you have about your topic
Act in earnest
6. Sharing the Talk with the Audience
Talk in terms of your listeners' interests
Give honest, sincere appreciation
Identify yourself with the audience
Make your audience a partner in your talk
Play yourself down
The Purpose of Prepared and Impromptu Talks
7. Making the Short Talk to Get Action
Give your example, an incident from your life
State your point, what you want the audience to do
Give the reason or benefit the audience may expect
8. Making the Talk to Inform
Restrict your subject to fit the time at your disposal
Arrange your ideas in sequence
Enumerate your points as you make them
Compare the strange with the familiar
Use visual aids
9. Making the Talk to Convince
Win confidence by deserving it
Get a Yes-response
Speakin with contagious enthusiasm
Show respect and affection for your audience
Begin in a friendly way
10. Making Impromptu Talks
Practice impromptu speaking
Be mentally ready to speak impromptu
Get into an example immediately
Speak with animation and force
Use the principle of the Here and the Now
Don't talk impromptu--Give an impromptu talk
The Art of Communicating
11. Delivering the Talk
Crash through your shell of self-consciousness
Don't try to imitate others--Be yourself
Converse with your audience
Put your heart into your speaking
Practice making your voice strong and flexible
The Challenge of Effective Speaking
12. Introducing Speakers, Presenting and Accepting Awards
Thoroughly prepare what you are going to say
Follow the T-I-S Formula
Be enthusiastic
Thoroughly prepare the talk of presentation
Express your sincere feelings in the talk of acceptance
13. Organizing the Longer Talk
Get attention immediately
Avoid getting unfavorable attention
Support your main ideas
Appeal for action
14. Applying What You Have Learned
Use specific detail in everyday conversation
Use effective speaking techniques in your job
Seek Opportunities to speak in public
You must persist
Keep the certainty of reward before you
( Courtesy: http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/easy-speaking.html )
Don't Grow Old - Grow Up!
( Guidelines from Dorothy Carnegie's book )
The first step toward maturity - Responsibility
Don't kick the Chair. Be willing to account for yourself; don't blame others.
Damn the Handicaps! - Full Speed Ahead. Don't make a handicap an excuse for failure.

Five Ways to Ditch Disaster:

• Accept the inevitable;
• give time a chance.
• Take action against trouble.
• Concentrate on helping others.
• Use all of life while you have it.
• Count your blessings.