Overview
Over the next few lessons, I’ll share some of my personal favorite Big Ideas and actionable insights from a classic best-seller in the Self-Improvement genre: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
Let’s get started with a quick overview of the book…
Dale Carnegie wrote How To Win Friends & Influence People back in the late 1930’s — way before we had Gallup polls, case studies, or any hard data about Emotional Intelligence and how much of an impact it can have on almost every area of our lives.
The book was born as a result of a need Carnegie saw for a book that didn’t exist — a book of best practices about human relations.
Interestingly, Carnegie said that he initially intended for the ideas in How To Win Friends and Influence People to be taught not as a book, but as a lecture…
After a while, however, the lecture got longer and longer. And the teachings in it were tried and tested on his students over and over, until they eventually went from a list of principles on a card, to among one of the most influential books in the world—transforming millions of lives across the globe.
In the book, Carnegie shares a time-tested list of principles and tactics that teach us how to inspire, instruct, and communicate with people in an attractive and elegant way.
Many people get the book purely in hopes of seeing the title’s promise come true—to learn “how to win friends & influence people.”
And it certainly delivers on the title. But you know what else it does? It helps us help others. In this way, Carnegie’s classic is not only a “Self-Help” book, but also a “Help-Others” book.
Now, let’s get into the first big idea…