The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness

Put a big, broad, honest-to-God smile on your face; throw back your shoulders; take a good, deep breath; and sing a snatch of song. If you can't sing, whistle. If you can't whistle, hum.

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

You will quickly discover that it is physically impossible to remain depressed while you are acting out the symptoms of being happy!

I found it in the book 'How to stop worrying and start living - Dale Carnegie.

Just for Today

Just for Today

1) I will be happy (Act cheerfully)
2) I will try to adjust (myself to my family, my business, and my luck as they come and not try to adjust everything to my own desires.)
3) I will take care of my body ( do exercise and doesn't neglect it)
4) I will try to strengthen my mind (learn something useful, read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.)
5) I will exercise my soul in three ways ( Do somebody a good and not get found out.Do at least two things I don't want to do)
6) I will be agreeable.( Dress and look well, talk low, act courteously, praise, don't criticise, regulate nor improve anyone.)
7) I will try to live through this day only ( Do important and prioritized tasks)
8) I will have a programme. (write down what I expect to do every hour)
9) I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax.
10) I will be unafraid (to be happy and enjoy beautiful, to love)

Just for Today written by the late Sibyl F. Partridge. I found it in the book 'How to stop worrying and start living - Dale Carnegie

How To Win Friends & Influence People: A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION

How To Win Friends & Influence People is a book authored by Dale Carnegie. This blog provides the book summary and encourage to read it.

Chapter 5: A SIMPLE WAY TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION

Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, “I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.” That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally, we are glad to see them.

A baby’s smile has the same effect

An insincere grin? No. That doesn't fool anybody. We know it is mechanical and we resent it. I am talking about a real smile, a heartwarming smile, a smile that comes from within, the kind of smile that will bring a good price in the marketplace.

People who smile, tend to manage teach and sell more effectively, and to raise happier children. There’s far more information in a smile than a frown. That’s why encouragement is a much more effective teaching device than punishment.

Robert Cryer, manager of a computer department for a Cincinnati, Ohio, company, told how he had successfully found the right applicant for a hard-to-fill position, “I was desperately trying to recruit a Ph.D. in computer science for my department. I finally located a young man with ideal qualifications who was about to be graduated from Purdue University. After several phone conversations I learned that he had several offers from other companies, many of them larger and better known than mine. I was delighted when he accepted my offer. After he started on the job, I asked him why he had chosen us over the others. He paused for a moment and then he said, ‘I think it was because managers in the other companies spoke on the phone in a cold, business-like manner, which made me feel like just another business transaction. Your voice sounded as if you were glad to hear from me…that you really wanted me to be part of your organization.’ You can be assured, I am still answering my phone with a smile.”

people rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it

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 class and talk about the results. How did it work?

I have been married for over eighteen years,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. As I sat down to breakfast, I greeted my wife with a ‘Good morning, my dear,’ and smiled as I said it. 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 cashier 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 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 friendships 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.

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.

Everybody 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 attitude. 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, but thinking makes it so.

“most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

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.

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.

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 hellos were returned, the hallway seemed brighter, the job friendlier

Whenever you go out-of-doors, carry the crown of the head high, 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. 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 attitude—the attitude 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. 

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”

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.

PRINCIPLE 2: Smile.

Developing an appetite for hard ideas - Scott H Young

Original link:  http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2011/08/09/learning-smart-hard-ideas/

Highlights:
After reading Feynman’s memoirs, a different idea struck me. While his intelligence is obvious, what impressed me most was his persistence in learning hard ideas. He would reread physics papers meticulously for hours, and all of their sources, until he understood an idea from the bottom up

Perhaps genius isn’t best defined by raw intellectual ability. Instead, maybe it’s the appetite for hard ideas that makes someone smart.

Intelligence as Endurance

Students who believed smarts were malleable wanted to take on harder challenges, and became smarter than students with more talent but less motivation.

In my own experience working with students, I’ve seen how appetite for hard ideas translates to success. When faced with a concept that they don’t understand, most students simply accept the correct definition and memorize the solution. Top learners don’t do this—they struggle obsessively to figure it out.

Hunger for Hard Ideas

A hunger for hard ideas is a specific subset of curiosity. It’s seeking explanations for things because they are hard to understand. Because, when those ideas are understood, the satisfaction of knowing something difficult to learn is even greater.

People who believe in superstitions lack this hunger. They are curious for explanations, but they prefer naïve explanations that are easily understood. They prefer incorrect explanations, than accepting hard ideas exist.

Developing Your Appetite

If you believe certain domains of knowledge are too difficult for you to understand, then you’ll avoid hard ideas.

People with the right attitude believe no idea is too difficult to understand. The only reason you don’t know everything is that you haven’t spent the time to learn it all yet. Effort is the only barrier, not ability in 99% of all cases.

Feynman was a perfect example of this. He may be renown for physics, but less people know he was also an amateur musician, artist, linguist, engineer and lock picker. There isn’t enough time in one life to become perfect at everything, but that’s a constraint of lifespan, not talent.

Seeking Hard Ideas – Why Aren’t More People Autodidacts?

A question that has bothered me is, why aren’t more people self-educated? With the internet’s immense resources, almost anything can be learned online for free, or for a fraction of the cost of tuition.

Some possible answers are that learning is difficult without instruction, the content is boring, there aren’t good systems for proving knowledge obtained outside of an institution. To a certain extent these are all correct.

However, a bigger culprit is that people simply don’t like hard ideas. The reason millions of people pay billions of dollars to attend university, but only a tiny fraction watches brilliant MIT, Harvard or Stanford lectures online is because most people won’t learn for fun. Without the prospect of a diploma, most people would rather watch television.

Those people, armed with the near-infinite resources of our age and a hunger to learn for the sake of learning, will outrun the prodigies and gifted who shy away from the challenge.

Twenty Ways to Stay Productive When Working at Home - Scott H Young

Highlights

1) Build a Work Ethic
2) Don’t Overestimate Your Productivity
3) Don’t Count the Low-Value Tasks
4) Cut Out Distractions
5) Start Early
6) Know Thy Energy
7) Learn to Say No
8) Set Daily Goals
9) Use Parkinsons Law - a task will expand to the time you give it. Crunch your workload by giving yourself only a few minutes to finish tasks where completion is more important than perfection.
10) Learn to Churn - This means that once you run out of ideas, you tell yourself that your goal is volume not quality. Tell yourself that you will redo it later if it is too horrible.
11) Create a Professional Space
12) Set Work Hours
13) What’s Your MIT? Always know what your Most Important Task is. Even if the rest of the day is unproductive, your day was still valuable if you get that task done.
14) Have a Social Life
15) Vary Your Tasks - I like to split up different tasks throughout the day so I can use different mental “muscles.” This keeps me fresh and productive without the need for long breaks.
16) Boredom before Quitting - resist the temptation to go online or do something else. Even if you could postpone your work hours, stick it through another ten or fifteen minutes.
17) Get Outside Perspectives
18) Give Yourself Overtime
19) The Extra 15 - When you get stuck or feel a strong urge to quit, just commit to do an extra fifteen minutes of work. Usually this is enough to carry you out of the slump and move forward. If it isn’t then you probably need a break.
20) Utilize Your Flexibility

Double Your Reading Rate/How to Read 70+ Books in a Year - Scott H Young

Double Your Reading Rate
Original author/link: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/03/10/double-your-reading-rate/

Highlights:
I believe there are six major keys to improving your reading skill. Like all skills, success only comes through practice, so just reading this article won’t be enough. But if you are interested in how you might be able to make dramatic improvements in both speed and comprehension, I’ve found these six points to be the best start.


1) Remember, Reading is Not Linear
2) Stop Subvocalizing
3) Practice Reading
  Practice reading doesn’t mean reading. Practice reading involves reading faster than you can actually read. Chances are you won’t comprehend much of what you are reading because your brain is so used to going at a slower rate and subvocalizing. The point is simply to see the text faster than you can read so you can untie the habit of sounding the words as you comprehend them.
4) Use a Pointer
5) Eliminate Distractions
6) Find Your Motivation

How to Read 70+ Books in a Year

Original link: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/08/06/how-to-read-70-books-in-a-year/

Highlights:

Step One: Learn to Speed Read
Step Two: Always Have a Book
Step Three: One Book at a Time
Step Four: Fill Gap Time With Reading
Step Five: Cut the Television and Web-Surfing
Step Six: Keep a To-Read List

Getting Started
Set a one month reading goal. Try to read 10-30 pages a day just for the next month. Nothing too challenging, but enough to help you install the habits of regular reading.

How to Get More Done in Less Time

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2013/04/09/how-to-get-more-done-in-less-time-and-improve-your-thinking/

Highlights: 

Reacting or acting?
You can start the day by checking your email inbox and reacting to what you find. Alternatively, you can start your day by listing what’s most important and getting started on that – then opening your email.
You can react every time your phone alerts you to a text message. Alternatively, you can finish what needs finishing and then read any messages you’ve received.
You can react every time you see a social networking notification. Alternatively, you can wait until you’ve stopped for a coffee etc, then use that time to check your notifications.


Regaining your time and your focus
One of the reasons small business owners find it such a challenge to get important things done, is that the distractions they react to, cause them to lose focus. This is especially the case, when they need to do something creative, like writing a blog post or writing some marketing material, etc.

Here’s the thing: It’s extremely hard to focus on something that requires your creativity, when you allow yourself to be distracted and your focus to be scattered.

For example, if you want to write a newsletter article first thing tomorrow morning, but you decide to read your emails first, instead of focusing on your article, you will find your focus scattered between the article and all the questions and demands from your inbox. By writing the article and then dealing with your emails, you can focus 100% on the article. You end up with a better article and then get to invest all your focus, on dealing with your emails


Getting through the day or from the day?
Most small business owners are happy to just get through the day. However, the most successful business owners take a different approach. They get from the day. They start their day with a list of important objectives and then determine to master their time and their focus, so the important things are always taken care of, with their full attention, in reasonable time.

How To Win Friends & Influence People : DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME ANYWHERE

How To Win Friends & Influence People is a book authored by Dale Carnegie. This blog provides the book summary and encourage to read it.

Chapter 4: DO THIS AND YOU’LL BE WELCOME ANYWHERE.”

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves—morning, noon and after dinner.

The New York Telephone Company made a detailed study of telephone conversations to find out which word is the most frequently used. You have guessed it: it is the personal pronoun “I.” “I.” “I.” It was used 3,900 times in 500 telephone conversations. “I.” “I.” “I.” “I.” When you see a group photograph that you are in, whose picture do you look for first?

“It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.”

You have to be interested in people if you want to be a successful writer of stories.

Howard Thurston was the acknowledged dean of magicians. he had two things that the others didn’t have. First, he had the ability to put his personality across the footlights. He was a master showman. He knew human nature. Everything he did, every gesture, every intonation of his voice, every lifting of an eyebrow had been carefully rehearsed in advance, and his actions were timed to split seconds. But, in addition to that, Thurston had a genuine interest in people. He told me that many magicians would look at the audience and say to themselves, “Well, there is a bunch of suckers out there, a bunch of hicks; I’ll fool them all right.” But Thurston’s method was totally different. He told me that every time he went on stage he said to himself, “I am grateful because these people come to see me. They make it possible for me to make my living in a very agreeable way. I’m going to give them the very best I possibly can.”

When we heard Uncle George, he was seventy-two and enjoying every minute of his life. By having a sustained interest in other people, he created a new life for himself at a time when most people consider their productive years over.

Roosevelt called at the White House one day when the President and Mrs. Taft were away. His honest liking for humble people was shown by the fact that he greeted all the old White House servants by name, even the scullery maids.

To be genuinely interested in other people is a most important quality for a sales-person to possess—for any person, for that matter.

I have discovered from personal experience that one can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.

All of us, be we workers in a factory, clerks in an office or even a king upon his throne—all of us like people who admire us.

If we want to make friends, let’s put ourselves out to do things for other people—things that require time, energy, unselfishness and thoughtfulness.

When the Duke of Windsor was Prince of Wales, he was scheduled to tour South America, and before he started out on that tour he spent months studying Spanish so that he could make public talks in the language of the country; and the South Americans loved him for it.

For years I made it a point to find out the birthdays of my friends. When the natal day arrived, there was my letter or telegram. What a hit it made! I was frequently the only person on earth who remembered.

If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm. When somebody calls you on the telephone use the same psychology. Say “Hello” in tones that bespeak how pleased YOU are to have the person call. Many companies train their telephone operators to greet all callers in a tone of voice that radiates interest and enthusiasm. The caller feels the company is concerned about them. Let’s remember that when we answer the telephone tomorrow.

Showing a genuine interest in others not only wins friends for you, but may develop in its customers a loyalty to your company.

I had made more headway in two hours by becoming genuinely interested in him and his problems than I could have made in ten years trying to get him interested in me and my product.

A show of interest, as with every other principle of human relations, must be sincere. It must pay off not only for the person showing the interest, but for the person receiving the attention.

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:

PRINCIPLE 1:  Become genuinely interested in other people.

How To Win Friends & Influence People :HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM.

How To Win Friends & Influence People is a book authored by Dale Carnegie. This blog provides the book summary and encourage to read it.

Chapter 3: HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM. HE WHO CANNOT WALKS A LONELY WAY.

I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or a grasshopper in front of the fish and said, “ Wouldn't you like to have that?”

Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?


Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.


Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

“Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire, and the best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, whether in business, in the home, in the school, in politics, is: First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

Andrew Carnegie, the poverty-stricken Scotch lad who started to work at two cents an hour and finally gave away $365 million, learned early in life that the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants. He attended school only four years; yet he learned how to handle people

Tomorrow you may want to persuade somebody to do something. Before you speak, pause and ask yourself: “How can I make this person want to do it?”. That question will stop us from rushing into a situation heedlessly, with futile chatter about our desires.

“If there is any one secret of success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

The rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little competition.

“People who can put themselves in the place of other people who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for them.”

If out of reading this book you get just one thing—an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people’s point of view, and see things from their angle—if you get that one thing out of this book, it may easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your career.

Looking at the other person’s point of view and arousing in him an eager want for something is not to be construed as manipulating that person so that he will do something that is only for your benefit and his detriment. Each party should gain from the negotiation.


PRINCIPLE 3:   Arouse in the other person an eager want.

How To Win Friends & Influence People : THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH PEOPLE

How To Win Friends & Influence People is a book authored by Dale Carnegie. This blog provides the book summary and encourage to read it.

Chapter 2: THE BIG SECRET OF DEALING WITH PEOPLE.

There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

You can make your employees give you cooperation—until your back is turned—by threatening to fire them. You can make a child do what you want it to do by a whip or a threat. But these crude methods have sharply undesirable repercussions.

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.

Everything you and I do springs from two motives: the sex urge and the desire to be great.

The deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important".

Everybody likes a compliment.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led an uneducated, poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study some law books he found in the bottom of a barrel of household plunder that he had bought for fifty cents. You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name was Lincoln.

This desire made Rockefeller amass millions that he never spent! And this same desire made the richest family in your town build a house far too large for its requirements.

This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles, drive the latest cars, and talk about your brilliant children. It is this desire that lures many boys and girls into joining gangs and engaging in criminal activities.

If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character.


One of the first people in American business to be paid a salary of over a million dollars a year was Charles Schwab, who had been picked by Andrew Carnegie to become the first president of the newly formed United States Steel Company in 1921, when he was only thirty-eight years old.

Why did Andrew Carnegie pay more than three thousand dollars a day, to Charles Schwab? Why? Because Schwab was a genius? No. Because he knew more about the manufacture of steel than other people? Nonsense. Charles Schwab told me himself that he had many men working for him who knew more about the manufacture of steel than he did.

Schwab says that he was paid this salary largely because of his ability to deal with people. I asked him how he did it. Here is his secret set down in his own words

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement."

“There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”
That is what Schwab did.

But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did bad and that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”

Carnegie wanted to praise his assistants even on his tombstone. He wrote an epitaph for himself which read: “Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.”

When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It was “lack of appreciation”. And I’d bet that a similar study made of runaway husbands would come out the same way. We often take our spouses so much for granted that we never let them know we appreciate them.

The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.

Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.

Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.One of the most neglected virtues of our daily existence is appreciation, Somehow, we neglect to praise our son or daughter when he or she brings home a good report card, and we fail to encourage our children when they first succeed in baking a cake or building a birdhouse.

Nothing pleases children more than this kind of parental interest and approval.

The next time you enjoy filet mignon at the club, send word to the chef that it was excellently prepared, and when a tired salesperson shows you unusual courtesy, please mention it

Hurting people not only does not change them, it is never called for.

Emerson said: “Every man I meet is my superior in some way, In that, I learn of him.”

Let’s try to figure out the other person’s good points. Then forget flattery. Give honest, 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 have forgotten them.


PRINCIPLE 2: Give honest and sincere appreciation.