How To Win Friends And Influence People Part 2

"For years I have kept an engagement book showing all the appointments I had during the day. My family never made any plans for me on Sat.u.r.day night, for the family knew that I devoted a part of each Sat.u.r.day evening to the illuminating process of self-examination and review and appraisal. After dinner I went off by myself, opened my engagement book, and thought over all the interviews, discussions and meetings that had taken place during the week. I asked myself:

'What mistakes did I make that time?'

'What did I do that was right-and in what way could I have improved my performance?'

'What lessons can I learn from that experience?'

"I often found that this weekly review made me very unhappy. I was frequently astonished at my own blunders.

Of course, as the years pa.s.sed, these blunders became less frequent. Sometimes I was inclined to pat myself on the back a little after one of these sessions.

This system of self-a.n.a.lysis, self-education, continued year after year, did more for me than any other one thing I have ever attempted.

"It helped me improve my ability to make decisions - and it aided me enormously in all my contacts with people. I cannot recommend it too highly."

Why not use a similar system to check up on your application of the principles discussed in this book? If you do, two things will result.

First, you will find yourself engaged in an educational process that is both intriguing and priceless.

Second, you will find that your ability to meet and deal with people will grow enormously.

9. You will find at the end of this book several blank pages on which you should record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening years from now!

In order to get the most out of this book:

a. Develop a deep, driving desire to master the principles of human relations,

b. Read each chapter twice before going on to the next one.

c. As you read, stop frequently to ask yourself how you can apply each suggestion.

d. Underscore each important idea.

e. Review this book each month.

f . Apply these principles at every opportunity. Use this volume as a working handbook to help you solve your daily problems.

g. Make a lively game out of your learning by offering some friend a dime or a dollar every time he or she catches you violating one of these principles.

h. Check up each week on the progress you are mak-ing.

Ask yourself what mistakes you have made, what improvement, what lessons you have learned for the future.

i. Keep notes in the back of this book showing how and when you have applied these principles.

PART ONE

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1

"IF YOU WANT TO GATHER HONEY, DON'T KICK OVER THE BEEHIVE"

On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City had ever known had come to its climax. After weeks of search, "Two Gun" Crowley - the killer, the gunman who didn't smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped in his sweetheart's apartment on West End Avenue.

One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid siege to his top-floor hideway. They chopped holes in the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the "cop killer," with teargas. Then they mounted their machine guns on surrounding buildings, and for more than an hour one of New York's fine residential areas reverberated with the crack of pistol fire and the rut-tat-tat rut-tat-tat of of machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an over- stuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New York.

When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner E. P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered in the history of New York. "He will kill," said the Commissioner, "at the drop of a feather."

But how did "Two Gun" Crowley regard himself? We know, because while the police were firing into his apartment, he wrote a letter addressed "To whom it may concern, " And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In this letter Crowley said: "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do n.o.body any harm."

A short time before this, Crowley had been having a necking party with his girl friend on a country road out on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the car and said: "Let me see your license."

Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying officer fell, Crowley leaped out of the car, grabbed the officer's revolver, and fired another bullet into the prostrate body. And that was the killer who said: "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do n.o.body any harm.'

Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, "This is what I get for killing people"? No, he said: "This is what I get for defending myself."

The point of the story is this: "Two Gun" Crowley didn't blame himself for anything.

Is that an unusual att.i.tude among criminals? If you think so, listen to this:

"I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man."