Book Summary: How To Win Friends and Influence People

1. Don't criticize, condemn or complain. Instead of condemning people, lets try to understand them, a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism: and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.



2. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Be "hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime-repeat them years after you had forgotten them."



3. Arouse in the other person an eager want. "Self expression is the dominant necessity of human nature. When we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think it is our, let them stir the idea themselves, they will the regard it as their own and they will like it, and maybe eat a couple helpings of it."



4. Become genuinely interested in other people. If you want others to like you, if you want to develop real friendships, if you want to help others, at the same time as you help yourself, keep this principle in mind.



5. Smile. Your smile is a messenger of your goodwill. Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it. To someone who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl or turn their faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds.



6. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. The information we are imparting or the request we are making, takes on a special importance when we approach the situation with the name of the individual.



7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.



8. Talk in terms of the other person's interest. Talking in terms of the other person's interest pays off for both parties.



9. Make the other person feel important - and do in sincerely. Talk to people about themselves and they will listen for hours



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



11. Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say "you're wrong." Don't argue, instead use diplomacy.



12. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Remember the old proverb, "by fighting you never get enough, but by yielding, you get more than you expected."



13. Begin in a friendly way. Remember what Lincoln said: A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."



14. Get the other person saying "yes,yes" immediately.



15. Let the other person do a great deal of 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. An increased tendency to think always in terms of the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as your own.-if you get only that one thing from this book, it may easily proved to be one of the stepping-stones of your career.



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



19. Appeal to their nobler motives. Make people feel that you consider them honest, upright and fair.



20. Dramatize your ideas.



21. Throw down a challenge. Every successful person wants a chance of self expression, the chance to prove one's worth.



22. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.



23. Call attention to peoples 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. Experience's of most people show that you are more likely to change attitudes this way.