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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.
Remember, there is no other way.
Of course, you can make someone want to
give you his watch by sticking
a
revolver
in
his
ribs.
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.
What do you want?
Sigmund
Freud
said
that
everything
you
and
I
do
springs
from
two
motives: the sex urge and the desire to
be great.
John Dewey, one of America's
most profound philosophers, phrased it a
bit differently. Dr. Dewey said that
the deepest urge in human nature is
desire
to
be
important.
Remember
that
phrase:
desire
to
be
important.
It
is significant.
You
are going
to hear
a lot about
it
in
this
book.
What
do you want? Not many things, but the few that you
do wish, you
crave with an insistence
that will not be denied. Some of the things most
people want include:
1.
Health and the preservation of life. 2. Food. 3.
Sleep. 4. Money and the
things money
will buy. 5. Life in the hereafter. 6. Sexual
gratification. 7.
The
well-
being
of
our
children.
8.
A
feeling
of
importance.
Almost
all
these wants are usually
gratified-all except one. But there is one longing
-
almost
as
deep,
almost
as
imperious,
as
the
desire
for
food
or
sleep
-
which is seldom gratified. It is what
Freud calls
is what Dewey calls the
Lincoln
once
began
a
letter
saying:
likes
a
compliment.
William
James
said:
deepest
principle
in
human
nature
is
the
craving to
be appreciated.
the
be
appreciated.
Here is a gnawing and
unfaltering human hunger, and the rare individual
who honestly satisfies this heart
hunger will hold people in the palm of
his or her hand and
The
desire for a feeling of importance is one of the
chief distinguishing
differences
between mankind and the animals. To illustrate:
When I was a
farm
boy
out
in
Missouri,
my
father
bred
fine
Duroc-Jersey
hogs
and .
pedigreed
white
-
faced
cattle.
We
used
to
exhibit
our
hogs
and
white-faced cattle at the country fairs
and livestock shows throughout the
Middle West. We won first prizes by the
score. My father pinned his blue
ribbons on a sheet of white muslin, and
when friends or visitors came to
the
house, he would get out the long sheet of muslin.
He would hold one
end and I would hold
the other while he exhibited the blue ribbons.
The
hogs
didn't
care
about
the
ribbons
they
had
won.
But
Father
did.
These prizes gave him a
feeling of importance.
If our ancestors
hadn't had this flaming urge for a feeling of
importance,
civilization would have
been impossible. Without it, we should have been
just about like animals.
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.
It
was
this
desire
for
a
feeling
of
importance
that
inspired
Dickens
to
write
his
immortal
novels.
This
desire
inspired
Sir
Christoper
Wren
to
design
his
symphonies
in
stone.
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. The
average young criminal, according to
E.
P. Mulrooney, onetime police commissioner of New
York, is filled with
ego,
and
his
first
request
after
arrest
is
for
those
lurid
newspapers
that
make
him
out
a
hero.
The
disagreeable
prospect
of
serving
time
seems
remote
so
long
as
he
can
gloat
over
his
likeness
sharing
space
with
pictures of sports
figures, movie and TV stars and politicians.
If you tell me how you get your feeling
of importance, I'll tell you what
you
are. That determines your character. That is the
most significant thing
about
you.
For
example,
John
D.
Rockefeller
got
his
feeling
of
importance by giving money to erect a
modern hospital in Peking, China,
to
care
for
millions of poor
people
whom
he
had
never
seen
and
never
would
see. Dillinger, on the other hand, got his feeling
of importance by
being
a
bandit,
a
bank
robber
and
killer.
When
the
FBI
agents
were
hunting him, he dashed into a farmhouse
up in Minnesota and said,
Dillinger!
One.
Yes, the one significant difference
between Dillinger and Rockefeller is
how they got their feeling of
importance.
History sparkles with
amusing examples of famous people struggling for
a
feeling
of
importance.
Even
George
Washington
wanted
to
be
called
Mightiness,
the
President
of
the
United
States
and
Columbus
pleaded
for
the
title
of
the
Ocean
and
Viceroy
of
India.
Catherine
the
Great
refused
to
open
letters
that
were
not
addressed
to
Imperial
Majesty
and
Mrs.
Lincoln,
in
the
White
House,
turned
upon Mrs. Grant like
a tigress and shouted,
my presence
until I invite you!
Our
millionaires
helped
finance
Admiral
Byrd's
expedition
to
the
Antarctic
in
1928
with
the
understanding
that
ranges
of
icy
mountains
would be named after them; and Victor
Hugo aspired to have nothing less
than
the city of Paris renamed in his honor. Even
Shakespeare, mightiest
of the mighty,
tried to add luster to his name by procuring a
coat of arms
for his family.
People
sometimes
became
invalids
in
order
to
win
sympathy
and
attention,
and
get
a
feeling
of
importance.
For
example,
take
Mrs.
McKinley.
She
got
a
feeling
of
importance
by
forcing
her
husband,
the
President of the United States, to
neglect important affairs of state while
he reclined on the bed beside her for
hours at a time, his arm about her,
soothing
her
to
sleep.
She
fed
her
gnawing
desire
for
attention
by
insisting
that
he
remain
with
her
while
she
was
having
her
teeth
fixed,
and once created a
stormy scene when he had to leave her alone with
the
dentist
while
he
kept
an
appointment
with
John
Hay,
his
secretary
of
state.
The
writer
Mary
Roberts
Rinehart
once
told
me
of
a
bright,
vigorous
young
woman
who
became
an
invalid
in
order
to
get
a
feeling
of
importance.
to
face
something,
her
age
perhaps.
The
lonely
years
were
stretching
ahead and there was little left for her
to anticipate.
floor and
back, carrying trays, nursing her. Then one day
the old mother,
weary
with
service,
lay
down
and
died.
For
some
weeks,
the
invalid
languished;
then
she
got
up,
put
on
her
clothing,
and
resumed
living
again.
Some authorities
declare that people may actually go insane in
order to
find, in the dreamland of
insanity, the feeling of importance that has been
denied
them
in
the
harsh
world
of
reality.
There
are
more
patients
suffering
from
mental
diseases
in
the
United
States
than
from
all
other
diseases combined.
What is
the cause of insanity?
Nobody can
answer such a sweeping question, but we know that
certain
diseases,
such
as
syphilis,
break
down
and
destroy
the
brain
cells
and
result
in
insanity.
In
fact,
about
one-
half
of
all
mental
diseases
can
be
attributed
to
such
physical
causes
as
brain
lesions,
alcohol,
toxins
and
injuries. But the other half - and this
is the appalling part of the story - the
other
half
of
the
people
who
go
insane
apparently
have
nothing
organically
wrong
with
their
brain
cells.
In
post-mortem
examinations,
when
their
brain
tissues
are
studied
under
the
highest-powered
microscopes,
these tissues
are
found to be
apparently
just as healthy
as
yours and mine.
Why do these
people go insane?
I
put
that
question
to
the
head
physician
of
one
of
our
most
important
psychiatric
hospitals.
This
doctor,
who
has
received
the
highest
honors
and the most coveted awards for his
knowledge of this subject, told me
frankly that he didn't know why people
went insane. Nobody knows for
sure But
he did say that many people who
go insane find in insanity a feeling of
importance that they were unable to
achieve in the world of reality. Then
he told me this story:
wanted
love,
sexual
gratification,
children
and
social
prestige,
but
life
blasted
all her hopes. Her husband didn't love her. He
refused even to eat
with her and forced
her to serve his meals in his room upstairs. She
had
no children, no social standing.
She went insane; and, in her imagination,
she
divorced
her
husband
and
resumed
her
maiden
name.
She
now
believes she has married
into English aristocracy, and she insists on being
called Lady Smith.
as
for
children,
she
imagines
now
that
she
has
had
a
new
child
every night. Each time I call on her
she says: 'Doctor, I had a baby last
night.'
Life once wrecked
all her dream ships on the sharp rocks of reality;
but in
the sunny, fantasy isles of
insanity, all her barkentines race into port with
canvas billowing and winds singing
through the masts.
out my
hand and restore her sanity, I wouldn't do it.
She's much happier
as she
is.
If
some
people
are
so
hungry
for
a
feeling
of
importance
that
they
actually go insane to get it, imagine
what miracle you and I can achieve
by
giving people honest appreciation this side of
insanity.
One of the first people in
American business to be paid a salary of over a
million
dollars
a
year
(when
there
was
no
income
tax
and
a
person
earning fifty dollars
a week was considered well off) was Charles
Schwab,
He had been picked by Andrew
Carnegie to become the first president of
the newly
formed
United
States
Steel
Company
in
1921,
when
Schwab
was only thirty-eight years old.
(Schwab later left U.S. Steel to take over
the then-troubled Bethlehem Steel
Company, and he rebuilt it into one of
the most profitable companies in
America.)
Why
did
Andrew
Carnegie
pay
a
million
dollars
a
year,
or
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