The best of Dale Carnegie: Lessons from his three great books

On July 15, 2010 By bookguide Topic: Greatbooks, Book summary

How to Win Friends and Influence People: Dale Carnegie's summary of his famous book

How To Handle People
1. Don't criticize, condemn or complain.
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation.
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

Six ways to make people like you
1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile.
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.

Win people to your way of thinking
1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
4. Begin in a friendly way.
5. Get the other person saying "yes, yes" immediately.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
8. Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. 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:
1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face.
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise."
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING
- Dale Carnegie's summary of his famous book #2.

What you should know about worry
1. If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osler did: Live in "day-tight compartments." Don't stew about the futures. Just live each day until bedtime.
2. The next time Trouble--with a Capital T--backs you up in a corner, try the magic formula of Willis H. Carrier:
   a. Ask yourself, "What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can't solve my problem?
   b. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst--if necessary.
   c. Then calmly try to improve upon the worst--which you have already mentally agreed to accept.

3. 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 worry
1. 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."
2. After carefully weighing all the facts, come to a decision.
3. Once a decision is carefully reached, act! Get busy carrying out your decision--and dismiss all anxiety about the outcome.
4. When you, or any of your associates, are tempted to worry about a problem, write out and answer the following questions:
a. What is the problem?
b. What is the cause of the problem?
c. What are all possible solutions?
d. What is the best solution?


How to break the worry habit before it breaks you
1. Crowd worry out of your mind by keeping busy. Plenty of action is one of the best therapies ever devised for curing "wibber gibbers."
2. Don't fuss about trifles. Don't permit little things--the mere termites of life--to ruin your happiness.
3. Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries. Ask yourself: "What are the odds against this thing's happening at all?"
4. Co-operate with the inevitable. If you know a circumstance is beyond your power to change or revise, say to yourself: "It is so; it cannot be otherwise."
5. Put a "stop-less" order on your worries. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth--and refuse to give it anymore.
6. Let the past bury its dead. Don't saw sawdust.

Seven ways to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness
1. Let's fill our minds with thoughts of peace, courage, health, and hope, for "our life is what our thoughts make it."
2. 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.
3.
A. 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?
B. Let's remember that the only way to find happiness is not to expect gratitude--but to give for the joy of giving.
C. Let's remember that gratitude is a "cultivated" trait; so if we want our children to be grateful, we must train them to be grateful.
4. Count your blessings--not your troubles!
5. Let's not imitate others. Let's find ourselves and be ourselves, for "envy is ignorance" and "imitation is suicide."
6. When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.
7. 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."

The perfect way to conquer worry
1. Prayer

How to keep from worrying about criticism
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Six ways to prevent fatigue and worry and keep your energy and spirits high
1. Rest before you get tired.
2. Learn to relax at your work.
3. Learn to relax at home.
4. Apply these four good workings habits:
a. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand.
b. Do things in the order of their importance.
c. When you face a problem, solve it then and there if you have the facts to make a decision.
d. Learn to organize, deputize, and supervise.
5. To prevent worry and fatigue, put enthusiasm into your work.
6. Remember, no one was ever killed by lack of sleep. It is worrying about insomnia that does the damage--not the insomnia.

THE QUICK AND EASY WAY TO EFFECTIVE SPEAKING

- Dorothy Carnegie's summary of her book, from 1962, which is based on Dale Carnegie's Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business, from 1931.

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
- Speaking 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

[From the Great Books Series. Also Read The Success Manual  - Encyclopedia of advice. ]


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