WWAWD How to Win Friends and Influence People

[Dougie's Hapa Daughter]

I was listening to the audiobook (it listen pretty good) and it is funny how Pat goes against so many of the points and principles in the book:

To highlight the BZZZZTTs:

Part 1: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
2. Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation
3. Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want

Part 2: Six Ways to Make People Like You

1. Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people
2. Principle 2: Smile
3. Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
4. Principle 4: Be a good listener
5. Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
6. Principle 6: Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely

Part 3: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
2. Principle 2: Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
3. Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
4. Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way
5. Principle 5: Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately
6. Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking
7. Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
8. Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
9. Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires
10. Principle 10: Appeal to the nobler motives
11. Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas
12. Principle 12: Throw down a challenge

Part 4: Be a Leader—How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Rousing Resentment

1. Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2. Principle 2: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
3. Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
4. Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
5. Principle 5: Let the other person save face
6. Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
7. Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
8. Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9. Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest

 

[Safka's Enticer]

How about calling them a child and threatening prison?

 

[Mick_Mickerson]

Vurry good book. Read it recently and was surprised how timeless it is

 

[CruisinColin]

Having just read the chapters here, I'm confident in the fact that I'm not socially inept enough to need a self-help book. I treat da Philly crew pretty fawkin good.

 

[Dog Eater]

I was listening to the audiobook (it listen pretty good) and it is funny how Pat goes against so many of the points and principles in the book:

To highlight the BZZZZTTs:

Part 1: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Principle 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
2. Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation
3. Principle 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want

Part 2: Six Ways to Make People Like You

1. Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people
2. Principle 2: Smile
3. Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
4. Principle 4: Be a good listener
5. Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
6. Principle 6: Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely

Part 3: How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. Principle 1: The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
2. Principle 2: Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
3. Principle 3: If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically
4. Principle 4: Begin in a friendly way
5. Principle 5: Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately
6. Principle 6: Let the other person do a great deal of the talking
7. Principle 7: Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
8. Principle 8: Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view
9. Principle 9: Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires
10. Principle 10: Appeal to the nobler motives
11. Principle 11: Dramatize your ideas
12. Principle 12: Throw down a challenge

Part 4: Be a Leader—How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Rousing Resentment

1. Principle 1: Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2. Principle 2: Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly
3. Principle 3: Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person
4. Principle 4: Ask questions instead of giving direct orders
5. Principle 5: Let the other person save face
6. Principle 6: Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
7. Principle 7: Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
8. Principle 8: Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9. Principle 9: Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest

I’ve never read the book but isn’t this just managing people 101?

 

[bantadant]

Having just read the chapters here, I'm confident in the fact that I'm not socially inept enough to need a self-help book. I treat da Philly crew pretty fawkin good.

Same. Fuck needing a book to tell you how to make friends

 

[Mick_Mickerson]

I’ve never read the book but isn’t this just managing people 101?

Yes, but it became 101 in large part due to that book.

Kind of hard to properly judge it in the context of 2023.

 

[Dougie's Hapa Daughter]

I’ve never read the book but isn’t this just managing people 101?

If you distill the book to just the points it seems trivial, but beyond being groundbreaking, it gives great evidence, examples, and exploration of each and every point. Like, you know you shouldn't scold, criticize, or condemn, but you probably don't feel that to an absolute degree (if the situation was strong enough, you'd still do it). But the book teaches these lessons and gives strong evidence so as to never do it (if you've read the book, the Lincoln-Meade response was particularly illuminating for me).

There's also bits that are really eye-opening that embody the pig and the streetshitter and pretty much everyone in the PatPack:

People sometimes became invalids in order to win sympathy and attention, and get a feeling of importance. For example, take Mrs. McKinley. She got a feeling of importance by forcing her husband, the President of the United States, to neglect important affairs of state while he reclined on the bed beside her for hours at a time, his arm about her, soothing her to sleep. She fed her gnawing desire for attention by insisting that he remain with her while she was having her teeth fixed, and once created a stormy scene when he had to leave her alone with the dentist while he kept an appointment with John Hay, his secretary of state.

The writer Mary Roberts Rinehart once told me of a bright, vigorous young woman who became an invalid in order to get a feeling of importance. “One day,” said Mrs. Rinehart, “this woman had been obliged to face something, her age perhaps. The lonely years were stretching ahead and there was little left for her to anticipate.

“She took to her bed; and for ten years her old mother traveled to the third floor and back, carrying trays, nursing her. Then one day the old mother, weary with service, lay down and died. For some weeks, the 19 invalid languished; then she got up, put on her clothing, and resumed living again.”

Some authorities declare that people may actually go insane in order to find, in the dreamland of insanity, the feeling of importance that has been denied them in the harsh world of reality. There are more patients suffering from mental diseases in the United States than from all other diseases combined.

What is the cause of insanity?

Nobody can answer such a sweeping question, but we know that certain diseases, such as syphilis, break down and destroy the brain cells and result in insanity. In fact, about one-half of all mental diseases can be attributed to such physical causes as brain lesions, alcohol, toxins and injuries. But the other half—and this is the appalling part of the story—the other half of the people who go insane apparently have nothing organically wrong with their brain cells. In post-mortem examinations, when their brain tissues are studied under the highest-powered microscopes, these tissues are found to be apparently just as healthy as yours and mine.

Why do these people go insane?

I put that question to the head physician of one of our most important psychiatric hospitals. This doctor, who has received the highest honors and the most coveted awards for his knowledge of this subject, told me frankly that he didn’t know why people went insane. Nobody knows for sure But he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality. Then he told me this story:

"I have a patient right now whose marriage proved to be a tragedy. She wanted love, sexual gratification, children and social prestige, but life blasted all her hopes. Her husband didn’t love her. He refused even to eat with her and forced her to serve his meals in his room upstairs. She had no children, no social standing. She went insane; and, in her imagination, she divorced her husband and resumed her maiden name. She now believes she has married into English aristocracy, and she insists on being called Lady Smith.

“And as for children, she imagines now that she has had a new child every night. Each time I call on her she says, ‘Doctor, I had a baby last night.’”

Life once wrecked all her dream ships on the sharp rocks of reality; but in the sunny, fantasy isles of insanity, all her barkentines race into port with canvas billowing and winds singing through the masts.

“Tragic? Oh, I don’t know. Her physician said to me, ‘If I could stretch out my hand and restore her sanity, I wouldn’t do it. She’s much happier as she is.’”

If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.

 

[1073waaf]

 

[guest]

If you distill the book to just the points it seems trivial, but beyond being groundbreaking, it gives great evidence, examples, and exploration of each and every point. Like, you know you shouldn't scold, criticize, or condemn, but you probably don't feel that to an absolute degree (if the situation was strong enough, you'd still do it). But the book teaches these lessons and gives strong evidence so as to never do it (if you've read the book, the Lincoln-Meade response was particularly illuminating for me).

There's also bits that are really eye-opening that embody the pig and the streetshitter and pretty much everyone in the PatPack:

I could see someone like Elon Musk being the equivalent of the doctor in the passage you quoted.

"Tragic? Oh, I don’t know. Elon Musk said to me, ‘If I could stretch out my hand and restore the pig's sanity by nuking Twitter, I wouldn’t do it. He is much happier as he is.’”

 

[Dougie's Hapa Daughter]

I could see someone like Elon Musk being the equivalent of the doctor in the passage you quoted.

"Tragic? Oh, I don’t know. Elon Musk said to me, ‘If I could stretch out my hand and restore the pig's sanity by nuking Twitter, I wouldn’t do it. He is much happier as he is.’”

Haha, yeah. The book even discusses famous and powerful people doing wacky shit in the preceding section:

History sparkles with amusing examples of famous people struggling for a feeling of importance. Even George Washington wanted to be called “His Mightiness, the President of the United States”; and Columbus pleaded for the title “Admiral of the Ocean and Viceroy of India.” Catherine the Great refused to open letters that were not addressed to “Her Imperial Majesty”; and Mrs. Lincoln, in the White House, turned upon Mrs. Grant like a tigress and shouted, “How dare you be seated in my presence until I invite you!”

Our millionaires helped finance Admiral Byrd’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1928 with the understanding that ranges of icy mountains would be named after them; and Victor Hugo aspired to have nothing less than the city of Paris renamed in his honor. Even Shakespeare, mightiest of the mighty, tried to add luster to his name by procuring a coat of arms for his family.

 

[TheRevAlJolson]

It should seriously be required reading. I'm reading it again and it's just good advice to follow. I recognize a lot of what is on that book as fundamental to how I've come so far with no college degree