Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

This is a book review of Dale Carnegie’s all time international classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is a fairly large review with the occasional “diversion” from the topic because I feel it is appropriate for this classic book.

The original version of this book was written in 1937 with just 5,000 copies in print. It didn’t take long for the word to spread about the value contained within the book for further copies to be produced. The book has spread like wildfire since then with over 16 million copies in print. Business owners, salespersons, and generally people who are interested in better relating to their fellow human being, have constantly referred to How to Win Friends and Influence People over the years as one of the best books you can read on the subject.

In every subject, there are usually one or two books that people categorize as a necessary read if you are to succeed in that subject. In the wealth world there is Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Wallace Wattles’ The Science of Getting Rich. In the advertising world there is Claude Hopkins’ Scientific Advertising. In the self-help world there is Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics or The New Psycho-Cybernetics. While in the human relationships and communication skills world, the number one book to read is How to Win Friends and Influence People. There are people who will of course disagree with this, but there are a substantial number of authority experts in the respective industry that refer to these books as the best ones you can read.

All of these books date back many decades and were the pioneers in their industry. Books which discuss the psychology of being financially successfully to this day use the exact same principles mentioned in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich which was firstly published in 1937. The same goes for other self-help classics like As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. I strongly encourage you to read these books as they are the original source of much self-help information taught today. The same is true for How to Win Friends and Influence People. Just about any communication skills book today will mention a principle that originated from this book whether it be to show interest in the other person or to not criticize. It is the authority book in human relations.

If you’re not really familiar with self-help classics, you may be wondering how the heck can books written back in the early to mid 1900s be useful today? Surely humanity has made many more great discoveries that are far superior than this “old school” material?

I use to think the exact same thing prior to reading such books. However, there is something to do with learning about a subject from the core, the nectar, the heart of its original pioneers that makes the information so powerful. I have literally heard hundreds of people praise How to Win Friends and Influence People. Originally, I thought it was because the book was most people’s introduction to communication skills. I thought, “Sure, the book is great because it’s your first experience in learning the amazing effect of good communication.”

What I later found, which is what many people have experienced, is that by reading the book one time every year you experience a powerful new realization. Life-changing realizations are also frequently experienced by many people when reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. The awareness and experience you have at the present time isn’t enough to completely grasp the principles in these classic books.

After reading the 2007 edition of this book, I’ve come to realize that the book’s four parts which deal with techniques to handle people, ways to make people like you, winning people to your way of thinking, and being a successful leader, are the fundamental skills of all human relations. I constantly teach these principles without realizing it because they are so fundamental to relationships. The very important point I’d like to distinguish here is that fundamentals are not necessarily basic skills. Fundamentals in any area form a solid framework for further skill development.

An athlete cannot become good in his or her sport by not having correct fundamentals. Sport coaches will tell you that an athlete who doesn’t have the right fundamentals is tough to coach because every skill builds off the foundation laid by fundamental skills. Professional athletes constantly fine tune their fundamental skills because they know the profound affect such skills have on their professional abilities. Advanced techniques are only useful when the person knows the fundamentals. Also, having good fundamentals produces an exponential effect that puts you ahead of 95% of people, while advanced techniques in any area produces a slight improvement that gives you an edge of the 5% who also have sound fundamentals.

Tiger Woods can work on perfecting his 2 iron stinger where he hits the ball with a very low trajectory, while the average golfer is better off focusing on fundamentals like a better grip, stance, and pre-shot routines. However, Tiger still needs to monitor and work on these fundamentals as well. The skills taught in How to Win Friends and Influence People constantly need to be revisited and worked on regardless of how good you think you are at communicating.

At the start of each chapter, Dale discusses the chapter’s principle. He then provides an example of how someone, mostly students from his speaking course, have applied the principle in their business or family life. The stories themselves can be a revelation at times as you become aware of how and in what situations the principles can be applied.

The majority of the book discusses concepts instead of word-for-word techniques. One principle is making the other person feel important. Dale doesn’t tell you to say exactly this and that. He provides the “what,” which is the concept, with a little bit of the “how.”

The table of contents is below:

The principles of each part are nicely summarized at its end so you can easily review and memorize them. Overall, each principle may seem simple at times, but don’t let simple deceive you into its power. These are powerful principles that are still changing the lives of those who’ve read the book five or more times. If you don’t already have a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, you need to go grab your copy now from Amazon by clicking here.

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I'm creator of a highly praised program called "Communication Secrets of Making People Like You". You can read about it here and order it here.