If you have not heard of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie you have to add to your circle of influence.

 

Seriously, I had never heard of this book until I started hanging around successful people and this book changed my life and apparently changed the lives of millions of people around the world as it was written in 1936 and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide.  In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential books.  

 

When I first heard the title I wasn’t sure about it – I thought I have friends and I don’t need to ‘influence’ people – I was thinking about this of course in the wrong context. So If you are like me – here’s the scoop – this is about attracting people to you, this is about creating better relationships with your kids, spouse, business associates, future clients, etc.  This is about truly learning how to serve others.  This book is GREAT!! I am going to give you the super success tip on how to read this book to get the most out of it.  When you talk to successful people, not only have they read this book multiple times but they have ‘become’ the book – they embody the principles.  

 

 

 

The book goes over multiple ‘principals’
to apply to your life…

Here’s the best way to have the most success and see transformation while reading this book.

Read one chapter a week and apply that principal to your day to day life.

Now, you don’t just have to read the chapter once – read it over and over again during that week and actively apply the principal to your life – and look at how it transforms each situation.

Write the principal everywhere you can as a reminder to you….make reminders on your phone, put sticky notes in your car around the house so you don’t forget.

 

 

Here is a story my friend shared with me:

My friend, Belinda, was reading this book as part of a leadership challenge and the very first principal in the book is ‘Don’t criticize, condemn or complain’  – she didn’t feel like she really did those things but took on the challenge of really listening to herself. 

She shared with me that she was spending the day with her teenage daughter and this principal absolutely transformed their relationship and experience together. As they were spending time together and chatting – Belinda felt herself wanting to ‘comment’ on things her daughter was telling her and realized they fell into the category of Criticizing or condemning so as she was about to make those comments it hit her – no I can’t do that so she stopped herself.  What happened was she and her daughter had a very joyful fun day and experienced none of the frustration or closed off-ness she usually felt at some point when they were together.

Belinda realized that she was unknowingly creating a wedge between she and her daughter because she was condemning or criticizing and she never saw that before and when she did those things unknowingly – it caused her daughter to shut down or not talk to her as openly.

 

 

Imagine if you take the time to do this with all the principals in the book how you might transform your world. Happy Reading.