Dale Carnegie’s Golden Rules

Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) was born in Missouri, USA and was educated at Warrensburg State Teachers College. As a salesman and aspiring actor; he traveled to New York and began teaching communications classes to adults at the YMCA.

He authored several best-sellers, including How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Over 50 million copies of Mr. Carnegie’s books have been printed and published in 38 languages.

Mr. Carnegie was a prominent lecturer of his day and a sought-after counselor to world leaders. He wrote newspaper columns and had his own daily radio show. Dale Carnegie founded what is today a worldwide network of over 2,800 trainers with offices in more than 75 countries.

The following are the Golden Rules on How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living set out by Dale Carnegie :

I. Become a Friendlier Person

1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

4. Become genuinely interested in other people.

5. Smile.

6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

9. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Win People to Your Way of Thinking

10. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

11. Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say, “You’re wrong.”

12. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

13. Begin in a friendly way.

14. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.

15. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

16. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.

17. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.

18. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

19. Appeal to the nobler motives.

20. Dramatize your ideas.

21. Throw down a challenge.

Be a Leader

22. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.

23. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.

24. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.

25. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.

26. Let the other person save face.

27. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”

28. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.

29. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.

30. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.

II. Basic Techniques in Analyzing Worry

1. Get all the facts.

2. Weigh all the facts — then come to a decision.

3. Once a decision is reached, act!

4. Write out and answer the following questions:

• What is the problem?
• What are the causes of the problem?
• What are the possible solutions?
• What is the best possible solution?

Fundamental Principles for Overcoming Worry

1. Live in “day tight compartments.”

2. How to face trouble:

• Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen?”
• Prepare to accept the worst.
• Try to improve on the worst.

3. Remind yourself of the exorbitant price you can pay for worry in terms of your health.

Break the Worry Habit Before It Breaks You

1. Keep busy.

2. Don’t fuss about trifles.

3. Use the law of averages to outlaw your worries.

4. Cooperate with the inevitable.

5. Decide just how much anxiety a thing may be worth and refuse to give it more.

6. Don’t worry about the past.

Cultivate a Mental Attitude that will Bring You Peace and Happiness

1. Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.

2. Never try to get even with your enemies.

3. Expect ingratitude.

4. Count your blessings — not your troubles.

5. Do not imitate others.

6. Try to profit from your losses.

7. Create happiness for others.

The Perfect Way to Conquer Worry

• Pray.

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. Protect your health and appearance by relaxing at home.

4. Apply these four good working 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 necessary to make a decision.
• Learn to organize, deputize and supervise.

5. Put enthusiasm into your work.

6. Don’t worry about insomnia.

Don’t Worry about Criticism

1. Remember that unjust criticism is often a disguised compliment.

2. Do the very best you can.

3. Analyze your own mistakes and criticize yourself.

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The Master and Disciple

A lioness was jumping from one hillock to another. While doing so, she gave birth to a cub. The cub fell down into a flock of sheep that was passing by. He got mixed up with the sheep and started to live and behave like them. He had no idea that he was a lion. He had never roared like a lion; sheep don’t roar; He had never been alone like a lion; sheep are never alone. They are always in a crowd, which is cozy, safe. They are afraid of being alone.

Then, the cub started growing up. It was a strange phenomenon. Mentally, he identified with the sheep but biology did not follow suit. Nature takes its own course! He became a beautiful young lion, but because things happened so slowly the sheep also got accustomed to the lion as he got used to them. The sheep thought he was a little crazy – did not behave, kept on growing, pretending to be a lion! He couldn’t be a lion. They had seen him from birth; they had brought him up, given him their milk. And though he was non-vegetarian by nature, this lion had lived like a vegetarian because sheep are vegetarian. He ate grass with great joy. So they accepted the fact that he was bigger and looked like a lion. A very wise sheep said, “It is just a freak of nature. It happens once in a while. “

The lion himself also accepted this. The very idea that he was lion was improbable! He was surrounded by all those sheep, and sheep psychoanalysts said: “You are just a freak of nature. Don’t worry. We are here to take care of you.”

One day, an old lion passed by and saw this young lion among the sheep. He couldn’t believe his eyes! He had never seen or heard of such a thing, that a lion was in the middle of a flock of sheep and no sheep was remotely afraid. And the lion was walking exactly like the sheep, grazing on grass. The old lion forgot he was going to catch a sheep for breakfast. He felt so strange that he tried to catch the young lion. But he was old and slow; the young lion escaped. Though he believed he was a sheep, the presence of danger eliminated all such identification. He ran like a lion, and the old lion had great difficulty in catching up. But finally the old lion got hold of him and our young sheep-lion wept and said, “Forgive me, I’m a poor sheep!”

The old lion said, “you idiot! Come with me to the pond.” The pond was without ripples, like a mirror. The old lion said, “Look at my face and look at yours. Look at my body and look at yours.” In a second, there came a great roar! All the hills echoed it. The sheep disappeared! He was a totally different being – he recognized himself. His identification with the sheep was not a reality, just a mental concept. Now he saw the reality. The old lion said, “Now I need not say anything. You have understood. “

The young lion felt a strange energy, which was dormant till then. He could feel tremendous power, though all this while he had been a weak, humble sheep. All the humility, all the weakness, all of it simply evaporated.

This parable is about the master and the disciple. The master’s function is only to bring the disciple to see who he is and that what he goes on believing is not true.

Your mind is not created by nature, your brain is. Remember the difference. Your brain is the mechanism that belongs to the body, but your mind is created by the society in which you live – by the religion, by the ideology your parents followed, by your educational system, by all kinds of things. That’s why there is a Christian mind and a Hindu mind, a capitalist mind and a communist mind. Brains are natural but minds are created. It depends on which flock of sheep you belong to.

The reality is that you are not mind, you are something beyond mind. Hence it is absolutely necessary that the mind stops being and you continue, so that for the first time you can know that you are not mind because you are still there. Mind is gone, you are still there – and with greater joy, greater glory, greater light, greater consciousness, greater being. Mind was pretending, and you had fallen into the trap.

What you have to understand is the process of identification – how one can get identified with something which he is not.

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Celebration of Life

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.”

We, who in the eyes of society have achieved some degree of success, are left with an uneasy feeling: now what? Do we pursue more success and riches? Do we try for more security, more excitement, and more distraction? Do we find solace in religion, in our families, in the arts, in power, in charitable actions, in fantasy, in sex, in inner growth? Just what direction do we move in, and is it really worth moving in any direction at all?

Life is not always an easy affair but it certainly is a mysterious affair. It is a kind of school to which we all have come to learn certain lessons.

There are wars, famines, diseases and calamities – both, man-made and natural. And death is only the beginning of our problems. Existence is the biggest question – the answer to which we seek day in and day out. Over 3, 00,000 people die every day, well over 2 million a week. In the city of Mumbai alone there are over 5 million homeless people sleeping on the streets, in slums, in makeshift huts or out in the open. Many of the situations we live in or go through are the same again and again – but, the way we respond and the combinations of situations that arise for each one of us, moulds us in a certain way that is individual and uniquely ours.

Scientists know that the more deeply they fathom the mysteries of their chosen field, the more brand-new mysterious things popup. The mystics say much the same thing. They have explored the mysteries of their inner beings with a rare totality. Some have reached great plateaus of contentment and bliss. And yet they report that the mystery has no end. In fact, life just seems to get more and more magical. Each moment is an unexpected happening, another chance to explore another new mystery.

If this is true and life really is an endless exploration, it implies several things. One is that there is no end in itself that will provide us with perfect happiness and contentment and an ending to the learning process. This makes impossible to look into the future for some development that will change everything – if only I could win the lottery, or find time love, or fathom the secrets of the universe, then everything will be all right. It does not seem to work that way. This is, however, not to say that we should not seek love, fulfillment, happiness or whatever matters to us. It is more to suggest that within the search itself we will discover what we are seeking.

Or perhaps it is the way in which we seek the very fabric of our lives that is important. Maybe it is not the end that is important at all, but the means by which we move towards that end. All the mysteries talk about the present moment, right now, right here – that is where it is all happening. Sounding like a nice idea but one that is hard to live. Crammed like sardines in a local DTC bus, suffocating from lack of air, who wants to be here and now? Let me be anywhere else in the moment. Having said that, the fact remains that while we are on the crammed DTC or “Blue Line” bus, we are on the bus. It is that point that we are left with a rather momentous decision: do we do the seemingly obvious thing and suffer through the ride until we reach our destination. Or do we celebrate?

Celebrate what? When this situation is so terrible? Well that too is something. We can celebrate the terribleness of the moment. The absolute bottom line is: it’s all that’s happening right now, so why not make the most of it!

Life has its ups and downs, its good days and its bad days. It manifests like two sides of one coin, constantly flipping. But it appears that both are necessary in order for us to learn all the lessons that we are meant to learn. So why not celebrate bad along with the good? We have all had days when all of our plans have gone so wrong, all our hopes shattered, and we are on the point of despair. And then when it seems like nothing more can go wrong, something else does. And to our great surprise, instead of committing suicide right there on the spot, we start laughing, a full, deep and thoroughly enjoyable belly laugh. We laugh for no particular reason except at the whole ridiculous nature of our lives at that moment. And in that moment our whole focus has changed. We are celebrating. Everything that was wrong remains wrong, and yet we are no longer so involved, so it does not seem so serious and devastating. The very fact of being alive seems to bring us enough pleasure.

This is what celebrating means. And it does seem that we have the choice in each and every moment of our lives to celebrate or not to celebrate. We can celebrate joy and we can celebrate anger. We can celebrate love and we can celebrate heartache. We are still experiencing whatever it is that we are experiencing – that has not changed. What has changed is the place from which we are viewing things. If life really is a school, may be this is a very significant lesson we are in the middle of learning.

Celebration is a subtle shift in orientation. If we see that when something has gone wrong, we are not being punished by life but rather it is just the way it is sometimes, then we celebrate. And when we are in a mode of celebration we are more open to what is truly occurring in that moment and to what is to come.

Begin by really celebrating joyful occasions to their fullest. Then let yourself celebrate ordinary things: a sunset, the wind in the trees, the sound of laughter, a good joke; then let your mood carry over into everyday life. Washing the car, stuck in a traffic jam, turn everyday activity, even frustrations and aggravations, into celebration. Finally, let yourself experience the so-called bad things that happen to you. Do not run from them; don’t feel overly sorry for yourself; try celebration. Of course you will often forget and find yourself a hard time. When you finally notice yourself doing it, celebrate that too. If you cry, if you feel pain deeply and totally, if you are overwhelmed by occurrences, if you are angry and hateful – celebrate it. It just means you are alive and participating in life’s lessons. It can’t make things worse, but it does have the capacity to make things better.

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Response-Ability

Over the last few decades, mankind has been abdicating responsibility to specialists in every field. Politician, advertiser, designer, and psychoanalyst—everyone has a system to pontificate about: a set of clothes all should look good in, or a series of theories into which the personal rumbling of our unconscious must fit to match.

Even book-knowledge is just about useless when it tries to take the place of a direct experience—which is why I have been constantly inviting you (my students) to experiment for yourself. Otherwise, filled with noise from TV and radio and the clutter due to books and magazines, who will hear the birds singing in the early morning?

Of course, the specialists will argue that the world has become so complex and so packed with rapidly changing information, that no one can know what is really going on without their help.

For example, look at the way we have put all our faith in the power of science. Science appears to know so much more than us that we’ve thrown away our trust in our own common sense in favour of its theories. Whereas, in fact, science is simply a tool for a particular kind of understanding of our universe. By dissecting every fact and breaking it into its smallest possible components the scientists make us believe that they can help us understand the essence of anything. But although, science may have no problem splitting the atom or producing a more sophisticated coffee maker, when it comes to our personal fulfillment, it’s up to us.

Having said that, we refer to the advice of yet another type of expert; the mystic. As the religions may argue, disagree and fight it out on the streets of Delhi or Detroit, but if we examine the message of almost any mystic, regardless of religious affiliation , we perceive a common thread . In all their various forms of expression, the mystics do appear to agree that life is a voyage of discovery, a mystery to be lived through, rather than a problem to be solved.

They teach by examples: know thyself, seek and you shall find the kingdom of God is within. They throw the onus of responsibility back on the individual. They seek to empower us rather than strip us of our natural God given powers.

Just what does it mean to take responsibility? Simply put, it is acknowledging that at any given moment, in fact in every moment of our lives, what we choose is of our own creation. We and only we are in charge of ourselves. [Of course, there are plenty of arguments against this viz. heredity, environment, reasons of race, color and creed, IQ, karma, etc. and there are lots of excuses why we cannot take responsibility for our actions.]

Outside influence do affect us, it is true. But, it is equally true that it is we who control how we respond to these influences. We have all known days when everything went our way as well as the day when nothing went right. Is it just coincidence, or is it actually something we are pointing out? Or, is there some energy or vibration that we are emanating? Each of our responses to events around the world around us is uniquely individual. It is our response—we own it. And, the quality of our responses affects the life around us.

It may be hard to realize that the quality of our response depends largely on our conditioning. What one person may find offensive may be a delight to someone else. There is no definite definition of what is unpleasant, although many of us will agree on many things: war for instance, at least officially, is considered bad. But, there are plenty of folk in cultures other than ours—who lap it up: it alerts the adrenalin for one thing. An aristocratic English lady, for example, may be offended if a man fails to offer her his seat when she enters the room, but a radical New Yorker may be offended if he does.

In the same way as we are divided within our culture, we are divided within ourselves.
Experiment at times when you are dogged by indecision or by contradictory feelings by owning who you are at every junction where your mind swings into reverse, and by taking responsibility for the direction you are going at that moment.

The enthusiastic well-intentioned jogger, who sets the alarm for 5:30 am, is not the same person as the lousy sleeper who reaches out and turns it off without even waking up. Yet, both exist within each other with equal force. Owning these two sides of oneself and taking responsibilities for their existence, is all that needs to happen. By taking the responsibility for the different characters we find in ourselves, we can strike an agreement which is mutually satisfactory. It is because we are judgmental about these other characters that we don’t fit with our image of ourselves that we don’t like them, and it’s because we don’t like them, we ignore them.

Try having a moment-to-moment dialogue with yourself and create an understanding that takes into account all the players within you that often have conflicting ideas. If the jogger in you is totally fed up of owning himself and the sleepy guy gets overruled by the jogger and wants to sleep a little longer on a holiday—give him the liberty to do so— you are a free human being. Taking full responsibility for the consequences of your actions is as vital as taking responsibility for the actions themselves.

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