Challenge your inner leader

“Success is getting what you want…Happiness is wanting what you get.”

Dale Carnegie

One of the books that open my appetite for reading was How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie. I was about 19 years old and somehow this book ended up in my lap. I remember that it was that moment when I realize that you have so much to learn from the people around you just by paying attention. Of course, my mom always told me so but...she is MOM :).

Dale Carnegie is what you call the first trainer, since he wanted to give people an opportunity to self develop after they finished school. So he started classes for adult learning. But since he had no manuals he wrote several. The manuals became later amazing books open to everyone to discover them. With an easy narrative and friendly style are easy to read and are what you call about common sense but not common practice. The book that introduced DC to me was written in 1936, but it is still very much up to date, with examples that can be very well applied in our day to day life. 

So when I got the chance to attend (due to a lucky post on Social Media) at one of the open courses about Developing Personal Leadership inspired by Dale Carnegie I grabbed it with both hands.

In 3 days I learn a tone of things about my self, force to face my inner fears, push some limits, and created a plan in order to get what I want in life. There are so many things I can tell you about it, but in order to give you a full extent of knowledge you have to take the class for yourself because every one of us has another learning experience based on its own background. 

The things I got in that class room are still making me improve my self every day years after that class has ended. They also pushed me in a black area of rediscover and accept the things I can't change, while trying to get over it in order to embrace my beautiful desirable future. 2 golden books with DC's rules got in my hands, one went to my mom, and the other one went to Madlene - somehow with this way they were part of my experience. 

Let me finish this article by sharing with you the principles that stuck with me from How to win Friends and Influence People:

Become a Friendlier Person

1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.

2. Give honest, sincere appreciation.

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want.

4. Become genuinely interested in other people.

5. Smile.

6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest

   and most important sound in any language.

7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.

9. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.