Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of human relations
Read each chapter twice befoe going on the next one
As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can appy each suggestion
Mark important points and highlight it
Have a review, of what you read every month
Apply these rules at every oppurtunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems
Offer a dime/money to someone when you break these rules
Check up each week on the progress you are making. Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future
Part 1
If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive
(Don't criticize, condemn or complain)
Criticsm is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually
makes them strive to justify themselves. It is dangerous, because it wounds
a person's precious pride, hurts their sense of importance, and arouses resentment
Don't complain about the snow on your neighbour's roof, said Confucious,"
when your doorstep is unclean"
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures
of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with
prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. But it
takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men
Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to
figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and
intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.
"To know all is to forgive all"
The big secret of dealing with people (Give honest and sincere appreciation)
There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything
And that is making the other person want to do it. There is no other way
It is said that the deepest urge in human nature is "the desire
to be important"
Some of the things most people want include:
Health and the preservation of life.
Food
Sleep
Money and the things money will buy
Life in the hereafter
The well being of our children
A feeling of importance
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
When people lose their importance, they go in insanity, because they
find a feeling of importance there that they were unable to achieve in
the world of reality.
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually
go insane about it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving
people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
When people don't like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they
do like it, they say nothing.
In our generation people could have 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 works with discerning people. It is shallow, selfish
and insincere. It ought to fail and it usually does. True, some people
are so hungry, so thirsty, for appreciation that they will swallow anything,
just as a starving man will eat grass and fishworms.
Flattery is dangerous. But what's the difference between appreciation
and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One
comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish;
the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.
I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore that I
can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being,
let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall
not pass this way again
