How to win friends

I just read how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.

i could have just read the notes on wikipedia, the book is really just those points plus 7 extra hours of anecdotes from people in the 20s and 30s and quotes from Lincoln, Taft, and Teddy Roosevelt, but the time spent in the material allowed me to think about it longer, and it doesn’t mean that I know it better, but it allowed me to think about it and form my own opinion of everything it had to say much more than if i had just memorized the points and moved on.
one thing about the book is that my initial reaction was “sadness”, in that a reoccurring truth that is presented in the book is that people are selfish and self-absorbed and need to feel important , and you can succeed by getting them to talk about themselves, letting them feel important, etc. All of these things are mostly true, and the book does have other points that are true that can’t be taken negatively (for instance, smile more. Smiling helps), but I interpreted this truth as humans are selfish, emotional creatures that are, despite our wiring to be social and take care of one another for the sake of the success of our species, and that the best way to win friends and influence people is to play into that nasty aspect of human nature.

I’m just laying it out there, so this is probably not very clear. That’s ok. Miles Davis said, “if you understood everthing I said, you’d be me.” Or at least I think he did, the only record I could find of him saying that was on websites that list quotes from famous people, so for all I know Michael Scott or Wayne Gretsky said it.

Explaining it like I’m five. People are selfish. Now I’m sad because the author matter-of-factly states this. I hoped it wasn’t the case, but now I see that this was always the case, and now the veil is off, rather than ignoring it, I’m even more sad.

I think that the book, first published in the 1930s, revised and re-released in the 80s, paints people with broad strokes. “My land lord is prickly. All my neighbors complained about [insert problem], but he did nothing. I tried being nice and asked him about his grandson, and then he helped me out.” I think that humans are more complex than that. It takes sussing out each situation and each individual to know how to proceed, and that is a skill that not all people have, or at least a skill in great abundance.

With all that said, I do not regret reading the book. First, there are other valuable points in the book, such as looking at things from the other person’s perspective. Mr. Carnegie even goes so far as to state that if you only learn one thing from this book, the most important and valuable is to look at things from both the other person’s and your own perspective. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
Second, it is important to read books and think about things that you typically do not think about, especially if it challenges you, because if we stay in our little boxes we’ll never expand our views. “A man who can read but doesn’t has no advantage over the man who can’t read.”

Finally, one thing that interested me was that quite a few of the anecdotes started by pointing out that these rich and famous people, Schwab, Rockefeller, and the like, all rose up from nothing. “…so-and-so, who started off in life working for a brick factory at the age of toddler, making half a penny per week, and rose to being the third richest man in the world…”
Does this sort of rags-to-riches story happen in today’s world? The ultra-elite of today were born rich, weren’t they? Donald Trump allegedly had an allowance of something like 200,000 a year when he was 3. Poor people have a distinct disadvantage in that they’re born poor. There are psychological effects that can’t just be overridden by pulling up your bootstraps. I’m sure being poor in 1870 was not without it’s challenges, but how many CEOs of today grew up on the west side of Chicago?

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This text is written in the “unedited” style, aka word vomit.

8 Jan

It has begun.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ol’ days before you’ve actually left them”

Sometimes events in life pass and you can’t experience it. You watch it from the sidelines as it goes by, others, you have no idea until later. For the good stuff, you might feel a pang of regret or sadness, but for the sour events you might just wipe your brow with a sigh of relief and think, “good thing that didn’t happen to me!”

I’ve been going through a bit of a sad period, leaving my beloved America behind (cue images fading into one another, of bald eagles, of flags flapping in the wind, of unnecessarily large pick-up trucks, all while the national anthem stirs within you something bordering on Nationalism)…

Since sarcasm is hard to read in text, I’ll clearly state for the record that the above paragraph was sarcastic.

On a more genuine note, I felt deeply connected to my significant other, and separating myself geographically, for what’s to be an unknown amount of an expectedly long time, I find myself looking back and kicking myself for taking things for granted. For not spending every possible moment of every possible day of every possible time period together. For getting upset. For being in an off mood.

That’s a common sentiment I sometimes hear when people talk about their loved one’s who have since died; phrases that all seem to express regret that they didn’t do or say a particular thing, or maybe something more general like being a moody teenager.

Looking back, it’s all too easy to inadvertently put on “rose-colored regret glasses”. The reality is that I’m still who I am, which is who I was then, too. I need personal space, in both physical and temporal senses. Even if I had a time machine and could go back in time knowing what I now know, I think I might act different but that wouldn’t change my needs, it wouldn’t affect my need to sometimes be alone.

Anyway that’s what I’ve been feeling the past week. Shoot, my girlfriend isn’t dead and we’re still together; there are many more memories to be made ahead…but I still find myself looking back and regretting how I acted, what I said or didn’t say.

But here’s where I’m lucky: while the known, finite amount of time apart is not quite the same as a dearly departed – I won’t make the comparison that they’re the exact same – it still hurts, and it still isn’t easy. But it still gives me a chance to have this look-back through the rose-colored glass. It still gives me the chance to have these regrets. Realizations can be had, plans can be set. It’s a rare opportunity to realize you didn’t carpe diem and to get another chance.