Part 8 (1/2)

Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of grat.i.tude on your daily trips. You will be surprised how they will set small flames of friends.h.i.+p that will be rose beacons on your next visit.

Pamela Dunham of New Fairfield, Connecticut, had among her responsibilities on her job the supervision of a janitor who was doing a very poor job. The other employees would jeer at him and litter the hallways to show him what a bad job he was doing. It was so bad, productive time was being lost in the shop.

Without success, Pam tried various ways to motivate this person. She noticed that occasionally he did a particularly good piece of work. She made a point to praise him for it in front of the other people. Each day the job he did all around got better, and pretty soon he started doing all his work efficiently. Now he does an excellent job and other people give him appreciation and recognition.

Honest appreciation got results where criticism and ridicule failed.

Hurting people not only does not change them, it is never called for. There is an old saying that I have cut out and pasted on my mirror where I cannot help but see it every day:

I shall pa.s.s this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pa.s.s this way again.

Emerson said: ”Every man I meet is my superior in some way, In that, I learn of him.”

If that was true of Emerson, isn't it likely to be a thousand times more true of you and me? Let's cease thinking of our accomplishments, our wants. Let's try to figure out the other person's good points. Then forget flattery.

Give honest, sincere appreciation. Be ”hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise,” and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime - repeat them years after you have forgotten them.

PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation.

3.

”HE WHO CAN DO THIS HAS THE WHOLE WORLD WITH HIM.

HE WHO CANNOT WALKS A LONELY WAY”

I often went fis.h.i.+ng up in Maine during the summer.

Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fis.h.i.+ng, I didn't think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or a gra.s.shopper in front of the fish and said: ”Wouldn't you like to have that?”

Why not use the same common sense when fis.h.i.+ng for people?

That is what Lloyd George, Great Britain's Prime Minister during World War I, did. When someone asked him how he managed to stay in power after the other wartime leaders - Wilson, Orlando and Clemenceau - had been forgotten, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish .

Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd.

Of course, you are interested in what you want.

You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.

So the only way cm earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don't want your children to smoke, don't preach at them, and don't talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.