You will probably find it difficult to apply these suggestions all the time. I know because I wrote the book, and yet frequently I found it difficult to apply everything I advocated. For example, when you are displeased, it is much easier to criticize and condemn than it is to try to understand the other persons viewpoint. It is frequently to find fault than to find praise. It is more natural to talk about what you want than to talk about what the other person wants. And so on. So, as you read this book, remember that you are not merely trying to acquire information. You are attempting to form new habits. Ah yes, you are attempting a new way of life. That will require time and persistence and daily application.
So refer to these pages often. Regard this as a working handbook on human relations; and whenever you are confronted with some specific problem such as handling a child, winning your spouse to your way of thinking, or satisfying an irritated customer hesitate about doing the natural thing, the impulsive thing. This is usually wrong. Instead, turn to these pages and review the paragraphs you have underscored. Then try these new ways and watch them achieve magic for you.
7. 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. Make a lively game out of mastering these rules.
8. The president of an important Wall Street bank once described, in a talk before one of my classes, a highly efficient system he used for self-improvement. This man had little formal schooling; yet he had become one of the most important financiers in America, and he confessed that he owed most of his success to the constant application of his homemade system. This is what he does. Ill put it in his own words as accurately as I can remember.
For years I have kept an engagement book showing all the appointments I had during the day. My family never made any plans for me on Saturday night, for the family knew that I devoted a part of each Saturday evening to the illuminating process of self-examination and review and appraisal. After dinner I went off by myself, opened my engagement book, and thought over all the interviews, discussions and meetings that had taken place during the week. I asked myself:
What mistakes did I make that time?
What did I do that was right and in what way could I have improved my performance?
What lessons can I learn from that experience?
I often found that this weekly review made me very unhappy. I was frequently astonished at my own blunders. Of course, as the years passed, these blunders became less frequent. Sometimes I was inclined to pat myself on the back a little after one of these sessions. This system of self-analysis, self-education, continued year after year, did more for me than any other one thing I have ever attempted.
It helped me improve my ability to make decisions and it aided me enormously in all my contacts with people. I cannot recommend it too highly.
Why not use a similar system to check up on your application of the principles discussed in this book? If you do, two things will result.
First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing and priceless.
Second, you will find that your ability to meet and deal with people will grow enormously.
9. You will find at the end of this book several blank pages on which you should record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening years from now!
In order to get the most out of this book:
a. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of human relations.
b. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.
c. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion.
d. Underscore each important idea.
e. Review this book each month.
f. Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems.
g. Make a lively game out of your learning by offering some friend a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating one of these principles.
h. 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.
i. Keep notes in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles.
Part one
Fundamental techniques in handling people
I
If you want to gather honey, dont kick over the beehive
On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City had ever known had come to its climax. After weeks of search, Two Gun Crowley the killer, the gunman who didnt smoke or drink was at bay, trapped in his sweethearts apartment on West End Avenue.
One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid siege to his top-floor hideaway. They chopped holes in the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the cop killer, with tear gas. Then they mounted their machine guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an hour one of New Yorks fine residential areas reverberated with the crack of pistol fire and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an overstaffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it had ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New York.
When Crowley was captured. Police Commissioner E. P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered in the history of New York. He will kill, said the Commissioner, at the drop of a feather.
But how did Two Gun Crowley regard himself? We know, because while the police were firing into his apartment, he wrote a letter addressed To whom it may concern. And, as he wrote, the Mood flowing from his wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In his letter Crowley said: Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one one that would do nobody any harm.
A short time before this, Crowley had been having a necking party with his girl friend on a country road out on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the car and said: Let me see your license.
Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the officers revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate body. And that was the killer who said: Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one one that would do nobody any harm.
Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he arrived at the death house in Sing Sing[1] did he say, This is what I get for killing people? No, he said: This is what I get for defending myself.
The point of the story is this: Two Gun Crowley didnt blame himself for anything.
Is that an unusual attitude among criminals? If you think so, listen to this:
I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.
Thats Al Capone speaking. Yes, Americas most notorious Public Enemy the most sinister gang leader who ever shot up Chicago. Capone didnt condemn himself. He actually regarded himself as a public benefactor an unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor.
And so did Dutch Schultz before he crumpled up under gangster bullets in Newark. Dutch Schultz, one of New Yorks most notorious rats, said in a newspaper interview that he was a public benefactor. And he believed it.
I have had some interesting correspondence with Lewis Lawes, who was warden of New Yorks infamous Sing Sing prison for many years, on this subject, and he declared that few of the criminals in Sing Sing regard themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you and I. So they rationalize, they explain. They can tell you why they had to crack a safe or be quick on the trigger finger. Most of them attempt by a form of reasoning, fallacious or logical, to justify their antisocial acts even to themselves, consequently stoutly maintaining that they should never have been imprisoned at all.
If Al Capone, Two Gun Crowley, Dutch Schultz, and the desperate men and women behind prison walls dont blame themselves for anything what about the people with whom you and I come in contact?
John Wanamaker, founder of the stores that bear his name, once confessed: I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence[2].
Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people dont 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 persons precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.
B. F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behavior will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behavior. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.
Hans Selye, another great psychologist, said, As much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation.
Hans Selye, another great psychologist, said, As much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation.
The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.
George B. Johnston of Enid, Oklahoma, is the safety coordinator for an engineering company. One of his responsibilities is to see that employees wear their hard hats whenever they are on the j ob in the field. He reported that whenever he came across workers who were not wearing hard hats, he would tell them with a lot of authority of the regulation and that they must comply. As a result he would get sullen acceptance, and often after he left, the workers would remove the hats.
He decided to try a different approach. The next time he found some of the workers not wearing their hard hat, he asked if the hats were uncomfortable or did not fit properly. Then he reminded the men in a pleasant tone of voice that the hat was designed to protect them from injury and suggested that it always be worn on the job. The result was increased compliance with the regulation with no resentment or emotional upset.