How To Win Friends And Influence People Part 15

You must have a good time meeting people if you expect them to have a good time meeting you.

I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to cla.s.s and talk about the results. How did it work?

Let's see. . . Here is a letter from William B. Steinhardt, a New York stockbroker. His case isn't isolated. In fact, it is typical of hundreds of cases.

"1 have been married for over eighteen years," wrote Mr. Steinhardt, "and in all that time I seldom smiled at my wife or spoke two dozen words to her from the time I got up until I was ready to leave for business. I was one of the worst grouches who ever walked down Broadway.

"When you asked me to make a talk about my experience with smiles, I thought I would try it for a week. So the next morning, while combing my hair, I looked at my glum mug in the mirror and said to myself, 'Bill, you are going to wipe the scowl off that sour puss of yours today. You are going to smile. And you are going to begin right now.' As I sat down to breakfast, I greeted my wife with a 'Good morning, my dear,' and smiled as I said it.

"You warned me that she might be surprised. Well, you underestimated her reaction. She was bewildered.

She was shocked. I told her that in the future she could expect this as a regular occurrence, and I kept it up every morning.

"This changed att.i.tude of mine brought more happiness into our home in the two months since I started than there was during the last year.

"As I leave for my office, I greet the elevator operator in the apartment house with a 'Good morning' and a smile, I greet the doorman with a smile. I smile at the cas.h.i.+er in the subway booth when I ask for change. As I stand on the floor of the Stock Exchange, I smile at people who until recently never saw me smile.

"I soon found that everybody was smiling back at me, I treat those who come to me with complaints or grievances in a cheerful manner, I smile as I listen to them and I find that adjustments are accomplished much easier.

I find that smiles are bringing me dollars, many dollars every day.

"I share my office with another broker. One of his clerks is a likable young chap, and I was so elated about the results I was getting that I told him recently about my new philosophy of human relations. He then confessed that when I first came to share my office with his firm he thought me a terrible grouch - and only recently changed his mind. He said I was really human when I smiled.

"I have also eliminated criticism from my system. I give appreciation and praise now instead of condemnation.

I have stopped talking about what I want. I am now trying to see the other person's viewpoint. And these things have literally revolutionized my life. I am a totally different man, a happier man, a richer man, richer in friends.h.i.+ps and happiness - the only things that matter much after all."

You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Two things.

First, force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself to whistle or hum a tune or sing. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.

Here is the way the psychologist and philosopher William James put it:

"Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

"Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. . . ."

Every body in the world is seeking happiness - and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn't depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.

It is what you think about it. For example, two people may be in the same place, doing the same thing; both may have about an equal amount of money and prestige - and yet one may be miserable and the other happy.

Why? Because of a different mental att.i.tude. I have seen just as many happy faces among the poor peasants toiling with their primitive tools in the devastating heat of the tropics as I have seen in air-conditioned offices in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.

"There is nothing either good or bad," said Shakespeare, "but thinking makes it so."

Abe Lincoln once remarked that "most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." He was right. I saw a vivid ill.u.s.tration of that truth as I was walking up the stairs of the Long Island Railroad station in New York. Directly in front of me thirty or forty crippled boys on canes and crutches were struggling up the stairs. One boy had to be carried up. I was astonished at their laughter and gaiety. I spoke about it to one of.the men in charge of the boys. "Oh, yes," he said, "when a boy realizes that he is going to be a cripple for life, he is shocked at first; but after he gets over the shock, he usually resigns himself to his fate and then becomes as happy as normal boys."

I felt like taking my hat off to those boys. They taught me a lesson I hope I shall never forget.

Working all by oneself in a closed-off room in an office not only is lonely, but it denies one the opportunity of making friends with other employees in the company.

Senora Maria Gonzalez of Guadalajara, Mexico, had such a job. She envied the shared comrades.h.i.+p of other people in the company as she heard their chatter and laughter. As she pa.s.sed them in the hall during the first weeks of her employment, she shyly looked the other way.

After a few weeks, she said to herself, "Maria, you can't expect those women to come to you. You have to go out and meet them. " The next time she walked to the water cooler, she put on her brightest smile and said, "Hi, how are you today" to each of the people she met.

The effect was immediate. Smiles and h.e.l.los were returned, the hallway seemed brighter, the job friendlier.

Acquaintances.h.i.+ps developed and some ripened into friends.h.i.+ps. Her job and her life became more pleasant and interesting.

Peruse this bit of sage advice from the essayist and publisher Elbert Hubbard - but remember, perusing it won't do you any good unless you apply it:

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the suns.h.i.+ne; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies.

Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual.

. . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental att.i.tude - the att.i.tude of courage, frankness, and good cheer.

To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are G.o.ds in the chrysalis.

The ancient Chinese were a wise lot - wise in the ways of the world; and they had a proverb that you and I ought to cut out and paste inside our hats. It goes like this: "A man without a smiling face must not open a shop."

Your smile is a messenger of your good will. 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. Especially when that someone is under pressure from his bosses, his customers, his teachers or parents or children, a smile can help him realize that all is not hopeless - that there is joy in the world.

Some years ago, a department store in New York City, in recognition of the pressures its sales clerks were under during the Christmas rush, presented the readers of its advertis.e.m.e.nts with the following homely philosophy:

THE VALUE OF A SMILE AT CHRISTMAS

It costs nothing, but creates much.

It enriches those who receive, without impoveris.h.i.+ng those who give.

It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever, None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.