How to win friends and influence people, improve your professional life with easy rules.

A couple of weeks has passed since my last post, but still I am trying to keep a reasonable trend when writing my posts so I do not forget that this blog exists.

Now lets go to the meat of today's update, as I mentioned previously in one of my posts; I just recently finish my Master studies and now it is time to look further on how I want to develop my professional career.

While in my search of further professional and interpersonal development, this book's recommendation made its appearance after some search around the internet.

"How to win friends and influence people" originally written by Dale Carnegie brings you an extended comprehension of how social beings like our selfs tend to react in our routines, and; from this initial point it starts to show a series of rules focusing on different social aspects in which improvement can be done. A small summary of the books points is as follows, of course they are the titles of each chapter but in the end there is a recap of the main idea behind each title:

• Fundamental techniques in handling people
  1. "If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive."
  2. The big secret of dealing people.
  3. "He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot, walks a lonely way."
• Six ways to make people like you
  1. Do this and you'll be welcomed anywhere.
  2. A simple way to make a good impression.
  3. If you don't do this. You are headed for trouble.
  4. An easy way to become a good conversationalist.
  5. How to interest people.
  6. How to make people like you instantly.
• Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
  1. You can't win an argument.
  2. A sure way of making enemies and how to avoid it.
  3. If you're wrong admit it.
  4. The high road to a Man's reason.
  5. The secret of Socrates.
  6. The safety valve in handling complaints.
  7. How to get co-operation.
  8. A formula that will work wonders for you.
  9. What everybody wants.
  10. A appeal that everybody likes.
  11. The movies do it. Radio does it. Why don't you do it?
  12. When nothing else works, try this.
• Nine ways to change people without giving offence or arousing resentment
  1. If you must find fault, this is the way to begin.
  2. How to criticize and not be hated for it.
  3. Talk about your own mistakes first.
  4. No one likes to take orders.
  5. Let the other man save his face.
  6. How to spur men on to success.
  7. Give the dog a good name.
  8. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
  9. Making people glad to do what you want.
• Letters that produced miraculous results
• Seven rules for making you home life happier
  1. How to dig your marital grave in the quickest possible way
  2. Love and let live
  3. Do this and you'll be looking up the time-tables to Reno
  4. A quick way to make everybody happy.
  5. They mean so much to a woman.
  6. If you want to be Happy, don't neglect this one.
  7. Don't be a "Marriage illiterate"

As in most technical/engineer degrees like in my case, it is quite possible that we focus to much in the technical aspect and we tend to treat less the social skills like team communication and comprehension. In most scenarios as the book tries to emphasize, 15 percent of one's financial success is due to one's knowledge while about 85 percent comes from its skills in human engineering-to personality and ability to lead people.

This is were this book shines and makes its greatest contribution, definitely a good read that definitely helps one to get a broader view and opens the mind to social improvement. As the author of the book reafirms through the chapters of the book, most of the techniques are possible to be meaningless memorised without any sense. In order for these techniques to be effecive, it requires the interested person using them to adjust itself to a new way of life. The guidelines for this new way of life, are also described along the chapters of the book.

If someone is willing to give it a chance of reading it and looking for professional improvement, I definetely recommend it. At least in my case, I did learn a ton of helpful tips.