by Brian Tracy
The most important and the most highly paid form of intelligence in America is social intelligence, the ability to get along well with other people. Fully 85 percent of your success in life is going to be determined by your social skills, by your ability to interact positively and effectively with others and to get them to cooperate with you in helping you to achieve your goals.
Learning how to develop and maintain superior human relationships can do more for your career and for your personal life than perhaps anything else you can accomplish.
The bad news is that the inability to get along with others is the primary reason for failure, frustration and unhappiness in life and work. According to one study, more than 95 percent of men and women let go from their jobs over a ten-year period were fired because of poor social skills rather than lack of competence or technical ability.
According to psychologist Sydney Jourard, most of your joy in life comes from your happy relationships with other people, and most of your problems in life come from unhappy relationships with them. Most of your problems in life are people problems.
Fortunately, you can become extremely skilled at getting along with others, and in this chapter, you will learn how. You’ll learn a variety of proven methods to immediately improve your relationships with virtually anyone, under almost any circumstances.
HEALTHY PERSONALITY DEFINED
All of us either think we have, or feel we have, or want to have a “healthy personality.” There are many definitions of “healthy personality,” and here are three of the most helpful.
First, your personality is healthy to the degree to which you deliberately look for the good in each person and each situation. Your personality is unhealthy to the degree to which you look for the bad in people and circumstances. Do you look for and find good in others, or do you criticize and complain about them? That’s the first measure.
Second, your personality is healthy to the degree to which you can freely forgive people who have hurt you in some way. Most unhappiness and psychosomatic illness is caused by the inability to forgive, the insistence on holding grudges long after an incident has passed. The very act of forgiving has a liberating influence on your personality. Truly healthy people do not hate, nor do they go around preoccupied with anger and resentment over what happened in the past. They keep their minds clear of old problems. They let them go. That’s the second measure.
Third, your personality is healthy to the degree to which you can get along easily with many different kinds of people. Anybody can get along with a few people. You can always get along with people who are very much like you, positive or negative. But the truly healthy person has an easy ability to get along with a great variety of people with different temperaments, different personalities, different attitudes, different values and different opinions. That’s the real measure, the real test.
There is a direct relationship between your own level of self-esteem and the health of your personality. The more you like and respect yourself, the more you like and respect others. The more you consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person, the more you consider others to be valuable and worthwhile as well. The more you accept yourself just as you are, the more you accept others just as they are.
As your self-esteem improves, you become better and better at getting along with more different kinds of people, for longer periods of time. Your life becomes happier and more fulfilling. Men and women with high levels of self-esteem can get along with almost anyone, anywhere and in almost any situation.
Men and women with low self-esteem can only get along with a few people, and then not for very long. Their low self-regard manifests itself in anger, impatience, criticism, badmouthing and arguments with the people around them. They don’t like themselves so they don’t really like others. As a result, people don’t like them very much either.
THE LAW OF INDIRECT EFFORT
The Law of Indirect Effort states that you get almost everything in your relationships with others more easily by approaching them indirectly rather than directly.
For example, if you want to impress people, the direct way of going about it is to try to convince them of your admirable qualities and accomplishments. But trying to impress another person by talking about yourself usually makes you feel a little foolish, and sometimes even embarrassed.
The indirect way of impressing another person, however, is simply to be impressed by the other person. The more you are impressed by the other person, by who he or she is, or what he or she has accomplished, the more likely it is that the other person will be impressed by you.
If you want to get someone interested in you, the direct way is to tell him or her all about yourself. But the indirect way works better. It is simply to become interested in him or her. The more interested you become in another person, the more likely it is that the other person will become interested in you.
If you want to be happy, the direct way is to do whatever you can think of that will make you happy. However, the most enjoyable and lasting form of happiness comes from making someone else happy. By the Law of Indirect Effort, whenever you do or say anything that makes someone else happy, you feel happy yourself. You boost your own spirits, your own self-esteem.
How do you get another person to respect you? The best way is to respect him or her. When you express respect or admiration for another person, he or she feels respect and admiration for you. In human relations, we call this the Principle of Reciprocity. When ever you do something nice for someone else, the other person will want to reciprocate by doing something nice for you. Most of our romances and friendships are based on this principle.
How do you get a person to believe in you, given the Law of Indirect Effort? The answer is to believe in him or her. Whenever you show that you believe or have confidence in another person, he or she will tend to believe in and have confidence in you. You get what you give. What you send out, you get back.
The most important applications of this Law of Indirect Effort have to do with developing a healthy personality in yourself. You are structured in such a way that everything you do to another person has a reciprocal effect on yourself. Everything you do to raise the self-esteem of another person raises your own self-esteem at the same time, and in the same measure. Since self-esteem is the hallmark of the healthy personality, you can actually improve the health of your own personality by taking every opportunity to improve the health of the personalities of others. What you sow in the lives of others, you reap in your own life.
Everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load. This is most true in the area of self-esteem and self-confidence. Everyone grows up with a feeling of inferiority, and throughout most of our lives we need to be praised and recognized by others. No matter how successful or how elevated people may become, they still need their self-images reinforced. They still need people to say things to boost their self-esteem and make them feel more valuable and worthwhile.
There is a line that says, “I like you because of the way I feel about myself when I am with you.” This line contains the key to excellent human relations. The most successful and happy men and women are those who make other people feel good about themselves when they are with them. When you go through life raising the self-esteem of others, opportunities will open up before you, and people will help you in ways you cannot now imagine.
Practice the Law of Indirect Effort. Take every opportunity to say and do things that make people feel more valuable. Each time you express a kindness toward another person, your own self-esteem improves. Your own personality becomes more positive and healthy. You impress into your own mind whatever you express toward someone else.
MAKE OTHERS FEEL IMPORTANT
The key to raising the self-esteem of others, using the Law of Indirect Effort, is simply to make others feel important. Everything you do or say that makes another feel more important boosts his or her self-esteem and increases your self-esteem in equal measure at the same time.
Wh
en you go throughout your day looking for ways to make others feel important you will be popular and welcome everywhere. You will be healthier and happier and get more real satisfaction from life than others do. You will have lower levels of stress and higher levels of energy. Above all, you will genuinely like and respect yourself more and experience greater peace of mind.
BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM IN OTHERS
The starting point of raising the self-esteem of others is to stop tearing it down. Immediately stop doing or saying anything that lowers another’s self-esteem. At the very least, be neutral. Keep silent. Say nothing.
Destructive criticism of any kind lowers self-esteem faster than any other behavior. More relationships and personalities are damaged or ruined by destructive criticism than by all other negative influences put together.
Destructive criticism attacks the core of human personality, triggering feelings of guilt, inferiority and undeservingness. When a person is criticized, even with so-called “constructive criticism,” he or she immediately feels angry and defensive and wants to defend and strike back. By the Law of Reciprocity, whenever you do or say something that hurts others, especially when it attacks their self-esteem, you make them want, or even need, to strike back, to get even.
We are conditioned from infancy to be very sensitive to any expression of disapproval or criticism from anyone, for any reason. When we’re criticized, our reflexes take over. Our self-esteem plummets. Our feelings or attitudes toward the person criticizing us immediately turn negative.
Perhaps the best decision you can ever make is to stop criticizing other people. Eliminate destructive criticism of any kind from your vocabulary and from your conversations. Become a positive person by only saying things that build people up rather than tearing them down.
Most people you meet are doing the very best they can with what they have to work with. Very few people make mistakes deliberately or do things poorly as a matter of choice. In fact, the brain is designed in such a way that it is almost impossible for a person to deliberately do something wrong if he or she knows how to do it right. A mistake of any kind makes a person feel incompetent. Self-esteem goes down. Self-image suffers. He or she doesn’t like or respect him- or herself as much. No one does this to him- or herself on purpose.
Most criticism of others comes from judging and blaming, from setting yourself up as superior to them in some way. Judging others, however, triggers the Law of Sowing and Reaping. It causes others to judge you more critically. It brings down the same negative consequences on your own head. Criticizing others causes others to criticize you.
Almost all negative emotions begin with judging and blaming others. The reason you avoid criticizing is therefore a purely selfish one. Being positive and supportive of others, or at least neutral, enables you to remain positive and cheerful yourself. Refusing to criticize allows you to remain detached rather than becoming emotionally involved.
It’s easy to get into the habit of criticizing and fault-finding. Many people’s entire conversation revolves around badmouthing and criticism. However, you must break this habit if you are really determined to develop the kind of personality you need to get to the top.
You must stop running people down or speaking negatively about them for any reason. No matter what a person has done, or how wrong you think it is, keep your opinions to yourself. Make a game of finding reasons not to criticize or condemn. Make up excuses for the other person, wish him or her well, and when appropriate, forgive him and let him off the hook.
Another behavior that undermines self-esteem in both the speaker and the listener is the habit of complaining. Many people slip into complaining, playing the game of “Ain’t it awful.” They say things like, “Ain’t it awful what so and so did?” or “Ain’t it awful that prices are so high?” or “Ain’t it awful that business is so bad?” Then they try to “one-up” each other by thinking of things that are even worse.
Henry Ford said it well: “Never complain, never explain.” The habit of finding things to complain about attracts other complainers into your life and your social circle. By the Law of Concentration, which states that whatever you dwell upon grows in your reality, the more you complain, the more you find to complain about, and the more people you find to complain with.
Real men and women never complain. If they have a problem and there is something they can do about it, they get busy and take action. If there is nothing they can do about it, they simply say, “What cannot be cured must be endured.” They then get busy doing what they can, but they never, never complain.
The truth is that no one is really interested in your complaints anyway. People have problems of their own, and many of their problems are a lot worse than yours. Probably 80 percent of the people you talk to about your complaints don’t care, and the other 20 percent are kind of glad you’ve got them. Ambrose Bierce defined “happiness” as “that emotion experienced upon seeing the misfortune of a friend.” It’s all too true.
Resolve to halt all criticizing, condemning and complaining. As the song says, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t speak at all, is my advice.” If you simply eliminate negativity of all kinds from your conversation, that alone will have a powerful, positive impact on your relationships. You will feel better about yourself, and so will everyone else.
SEVEN KEYS TO IMPROVING RELATIONSHIPS
There are seven positive, constructive, and psychologically sound proactive behaviors you can practice to improve the way you get along with other people. Each of these appeals to the deep subconscious needs of others, to their needs to feel important, valued and respected. These subconscious needs were formed in early childhood and if you can satisfy them you will be amazed at how much more people will like you and, by the Law of Indirect Effort, how much more you will like yourself.
BE AGREEABLE
The first behavior is simply to be agreeable. People like to be around agreeable men and women, individuals with whom they can freely and easily discuss a great variety of subjects. When you nod, smile and agree with a person who is talking, he or she feels more valuable and respected, feels that what he or she has to say is important and therefore he or she is also important.
Agreeable behavior raises the self-esteem of others. Disagreement lowers it. Whenever you disagree or argue with people, you are challenging their knowledge and intelligence. You are telling them that they are wrong, that their judgment and experience are not worth very much. Therefore, by extension, they are not worth very much either.
It is a fact of human nature that we hate to be wrong and never so much as when it is obvious that we are. Being wrong on an issue makes us feel that we ourselves are somehow wrong. Our self-esteem takes a beating. We feel diminished and inadequate, and we see ourselves as deficient or incompetent.
When you tell a person that he or she is wrong, his or her immediate response will be to become defensive, to dig in and be even more adamant. Our self-esteem is usually very fragile, and when we are told that we are wrong, we react quickly to guard and protect it at all costs.
Be agreeable. Be the kind of person who agrees easily with other people. Remember the words, “Agree with thine adversary quickly.” If you become an agreeable and easy person to get along with, you create far less resistance in other people to helping you or to getting along with you. Even if the other person is obviously wrong, based on your knowledge of the facts, you have to ask yourself, “How important is this?” If it’s not important, rather than disagreeing, let it pass.
STOP ARGUING
When I was growing up, I became a great arguer. I would argue with anybody about anything at the drop of a hat. Often, I would take the time to become well informed on a subject just so that I would know more than the person I was arguing with. With my superior information, I would almost always win. Whatever he or she said, I could top it.
However, I soon found myself spending a lot of time alone. People began to deliberately avoid me. People didn’t want t
o spend time with me at work, nor did they want to socialize with me after work. I was winning all the arguments, but I was losing all the friends.
It is said that “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” I was convincing people, overwhelming them with my superior knowledge of facts, but I was losing in a much more important sense of the word. I had forgotten to ask myself, “What’s important here?”
And the answer to the question was that what was important to me was that I get along with other people. The relationships were what was important, not being right or winning the arguments. You should use this same measure yourself. Always ask yourself, “Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?” And choose happiness!
The best policy, when someone says something that you feel is incorrect, is to just let it go. But if for some reason the matter is so important that you cannot let it pass, you can still remain agreeable by using what is called “third-party disagreement.”
With this method, you put the words of your argument into the mouth of an imaginary or nonpresent third person. You say, “That’s a very interesting point, Bill, but if someone were to ask this question, how would you answer it?” Then, put your question into the mouth of someone else.
You could ask, “What do you think our customers would say if they knew we were doing this?” Or you could ask, “How do you think our bankers would respond to our taking this kind of action?” In each case, you can continue to be easy-going and agreeable while raising the questions that are in your own mind. Just put the words in someone else’s mouth.
The advantage of this method is, that if the person has a good answer, you can go along without having been disagreeable. If the other person cannot answer the question, he or she can change his or her mind without losing face because the person who is “asking the question” is not present and his or her ego is not involved.