Basu Ghosh: How I Apply Dale Carnegie's teaching in my life

I had known about the book “How Win Friends and Influence People” for a long time. It had been mostly hearsay, mostly in a negative context. Meaning, I heard it mostly in the context of people talking about someone having such poor people skills that they need to read Dale Carnegie. I stumbled on to it as I was exploring books to download from audible.com. I can’t remember any other book having such an impact on me. Ever since I listened to the book for the very first time, I have listened to it 3 or 4 more times, sometimes part of it sometimes all of it. I some times listened while I was alone; sometimes I have shared the listening with friends and family while driving long distance (using the FM transmitter tools available from third party vendors). Each time I have listened to it, I got something out of it that I missed the previous times. I have a lot to share about how the wisdom learned from this book has improved my life. I want to take my time in sharing this with you because I will continue to add postings on an on-going basis. This is just the first of many postings. We all have natural tendencies. Dale Carnegie spells out nine different principles. Some of them are easy for me to adopt because they are part of my natural tendencies, but some others are either counter intuitive or counter to my nature and I have a hard time in making them an integral part of my being. Let me give a couple of examples: Don’t get into an argument: This is one principle that I have to work at – it does not come to me naturally. Dale Carnegie (DC) says (I’m paraphrasing here), The best way to win an argument is not to get into one, because you can never win an argument, no matter how irrefutable your position or logic may be. Ever since I could talk, my family members (mother, brothers and sisters – I’m the youngest) tell me I have always gotten into debates and arguments. I can’t remember doing that when I was really young, but I distinctly remember getting into arguments with friends, family or colleagues; almost always trying to prove my point, and more importantly trying to get the other person to come around to subscribe to my point of view. Granted, as I have matured I do this less and less, but it wasn't until I read DC that I realized the futility of the effort. I have tried to recollect one instance in my entire life where I had debated someone into subscribing into my point of view, and I cannot. It is my opinion that people get into such verbal discourse for one of two reasons – 1) to get the other person to come around to subscribe to their point of view, 2) to show the other person how superior and smart they are. I cannot say what lies in the deep nooks and crannies of my psyche. But normally I get into an argument because I’m positive that I know the TRUTH and I want the other person to also have the benefit of knowing the truth. Or in other words, I want the other person to subscribe to my point of view. After listening to DC and after I was not able to recall a single instance where I debated someone into submitting to my way of thinking, I told myself, "What a waste of energy. I won’t get into such a futile effort ever again". Last weekend I was having dinner at a friend’s house. He had a cousin visiting from India – a very successful businessman in India. We were discussing the current economic environment in India and I commented how badly Nehru, first prime minister of India, had messed up the Indian economy with all the socialistic national programs and centralized government controlled economy. My friend’s cousin had a completely different view of Nehru’s socialistic program and thought they had been great for India. This is a subject that I have a very strong opinion about. Centralized and planned economies have been fully discredited through the collapse of the socialistic countries. I had plenty of ammunition about the subject to start a dining table debate because it is very common in the world I come from. However, with the recently acquired wisdom, I just nodded my head and moved on a less controversial topic. I saved myself some emotional argument, and saved my friend (host) and his family from having to sit through my discourse in which most of the people around the table would not have participated. In the past, walking away from such a situation would have made me feel that I did not do the right thing by not educating this (obviously ignorant - I'm just kidding) man to the finer points of the superiority of a capitalistic system over planned economies. Armed with the wisdom of DC I felt I saved myself, and everyone, from a ton of grief. Does that mean that I will never debate anyone under similar circumstances? The answer is no. I’ll debate people in the future. But I’ll do so knowing fully well that it would not change the mind of the other person, but mostly for verbal jousting amongst friends – because I still enjoy the intellectual stimulus of such a discourse.