Book Review: “How To Win Friends & Influence People”
As of a couple months ago, I actually spent a portion of my free time reading the book, How To Win Friends & Influence People, written by Dale Carnegie. Although in my life I have never had too much trouble making friends, I saw someone recommend this book and thought it could contain useful information to further improve my social skills. Especially considering that I have been in the house for the past year as a result of the quarantine, I literally feel like I’m starting to become a socially inept recluse lol.
To give a brief summary, this book is broken down by by giving one tip per chapter that works to help people become stronger communicators, more attentive listeners, and also better understand the positions of other people. Along with each piece of advice, Carnegie gives real life scenarios, so the reader can fully grasp the proper situations in which they can utilize his teachings. He even uses examples from his past where he may not have acted in the best manner and explains how would now correct his behavior, after reflecting on it from a hindsight perspective. While he explains that this book is one to be read multiple times to continue to perfect these skills, some of the main takeaways are to:
express genuine interest in what others have to say, meaning that people like others who want to engage in conversation about topics they are passionate about
make people feel like they matter
even if people are in the wrong, they never want to feel like they are, so allow them to own up to what they’ve done and show them gratitude for doing so
even when people do things that are not right, only they can truly understand why they behave in the manner that they do, so it is not worth purposely making them feel bad for what they have done
you can convince anyone to act in a certain way if the other person feels excited and happy to do so, especially if they believe that it is their idea
While this is just a basic break down of what this book worked to emphasize, I honestly liked a lot of the advice that talked about working out problems by trying to understand what the other person may be going through and not criticizing them for wrongful things they have done. As someone who does not like to have problems with those around me, there are definitely a lot of approaches I will use from Carnegie in order to maintain peace and harmony within my relationships. Especially in the past where I have had an issue with a family member that I was close with, I wish I could have read this book sooner because I would have known how to resolve the issue initially, instead of having an awkward drift that lasted several months. I think we both could have handled things differently and this book really allowed me to reflect on this situation to be better version of myself now & in the future.
Overall, I really think this book was a beneficial read and gave advice that is useful to everyone. Although I have already started to incorporate a lot of the suggested tactics into my everyday life, I still definitely have a lot of room to grow and will continue to reread this book to advance my progress. At face value, this was a super simple book to read, but it is extremely information dense the more it is analyzed. 100% recommend!!!