MORE FACTORS OF A PLEASING PERSONALITY
How do you do, everyone. Thanks for joining me again. Last time we met I discussed fifteen of the twenty-five major factors of a pleasing personality. Tonight I will discuss the remaining ten, and will tell you fifteen things you cannot do if you hope to have a pleasing personality.
Number sixteen is good, clean sportsmanship. Nobody likes a poor loser. If presidential candidate Al Smith had been a good loser, and hadn’t gone around like a big, angered guy when he was defeated in 1928, he probably would have gotten another chance at it, and might have become president of the United States. Be a good loser. Nobody likes a bad loser. You never in the world saw a man profit by showing indignation or resentment over having been a loser. Aren’t we all losers at one time or another in life? Doesn’t it pay all of us to learn to be good losers? The good loser has a chance to come back again; the bad loser seldom has that chance.
Number seventeen in the factors making up a pleasing personality is common courtesy, just common, plain, everyday, garden variety, old-fashioned courtesy, both in speech and in one’s mental attitude. Perhaps never an hour goes by in a whole day that you don’t have a chance to be courteous or discourteous. Don’t let a chance go by. Always express courtesy.
We have now factor number eighteen which enters into the maintenance of a pleasing personality, and this is appropriateness of personal adornment. Adornment should suit the nature of one’s work and social activities. And I might say to the gentlemen of the audience that zoot suits are out. I might say to the ladies of the audience that certain types of hats are out. Appropriateness of adornment—that’s a wonderful thing, to adorn yourself appropriately to your calling, or to the work in which you are engaged for the moment.
There are times when, if you came to call on me, you’d find me in overalls, maybe a sports shirt; maybe I might not even have on any kind of a shirt. I’d be out in my garden, getting a sunbath and some good physical exercise and enjoying myself, all at the same time. But if I came onto the stage lecturing in that kind of garb, I suspect that I would go down as an eccentric person, if not worse. So there is no one rule as to what appropriateness consists of. That depends upon each occasion and the work or circumstance in which you’re engaged.
The nineteenth factor of a pleasing personality is that of good showmanship, based on the ability to say and do the right thing at the right time to attract favorable attention to oneself. There are a lot of ways of attracting attention to yourself. For instance, I could go down here on Main Street and stand on my head in the middle of the street and hold up traffic, maybe get myself a traffic violation ticket, and attract quite a lot of notoriety. But it wouldn’t be favorable, would it?
I can think of a lot of ways that I could attract attention. I could do it with eccentricities of adornment, as I have seen some speakers do. I could do it by letting my hair grow long, down around my shoulders, pretending that it was being pushed out by brains. But I doubt that would be of any value to me. It wouldn’t, it would be showmanship, but not good showmanship. Good showmanship consists of a technique that you work out for yourself, to keep yourself before the particular audience that you wish to be sold to, whatever that happens to be. It could be your neighbors or your business associates, your clients or your patients, or whomsoever it may be.
The twentieth factor that enters into a pleasing personality is the habit of going the extra mile. I don’t mean just doing that once or twice, but I mean adopting this outstanding principle as one of your habits, and making it your business never to let a day go by that you don’t apply this habit in one way or another. It could be nothing more than calling somebody on the telephone that you know and haven’t seen or talked to for some time, and expressing your good wishes for him, and the hope that he’s happy and well. That wouldn’t hurt you, wouldn’t cost you very much, to make one or two such telephone calls every day.
If I were a doctor, I’m pretty sure that every so often I’d call up all of my past patients and wish them well. It might cut into the pocketbook a little for the time being, but eventually it would pay off. Let the patient know that your interest in him has not ceased just because he got well. You might even congratulate him for having selected the right doctor, so he could get well so quickly.
Factor number twenty-one in a pleasing personality is that of temperance, temperance in eating and drinking, and in work and play, and in thinking. Temperance. It’s not going to hurt you to take a cocktail, if you want one, if you don’t take too many, and if you don’t take them at the wrong time. It’s not going to hurt you to smoke a few cigars, if you don’t smoke too many. It’s not going to hurt you to eat a nice meal if you don’t eat too much. You can do just as much damage overeating food as you can overdrinking alcoholic beverages or oversmoking. Temperance in all things, a balanced life, is essential to a pleasing personality. One of the reasons, ladies and gentlemen, that I have such an overabundance of enthusiasm and endurance and physical health at all times at my age is that I have myself balanced through temperance of living. Not too much, not too little of anything, but enough of everything. What would be enough for me wouldn’t be enough for you, perhaps. Each individual must study his own life, and find out what temperance for him would really be.
Factor number twenty-two is that of patience under all circumstances, patience and understanding of people. Patience is a willingness to recognize that because the other fellow’s not living the way you would have him live, that there may be a very good reason for it. Patience with the fellow who doesn’t seem to know as much about life as you know. Patience with the motorist on the highway who doesn’t seem to drive as well as you can drive—and I have never seen a man yet who thought that any other motorist could drive as well as he could. Patience and understanding are two of the outstanding virtues of people who have a pleasing personality. Not condemning other people because you do not agree with them. In the rearing of children, and in dealing with elderly people, you’ve got to be patient. You’ve got to be understanding. It doesn’t take very much willpower to be patient under all circumstances, with all people.
Young people starting out, or anybody starting out in a new job, must have a lot of patience, because you don’t start at the top. If you did, it would be very bad for you, because there would be only one way that you could move. You start at the bottom, and if you are patient and go the extra mile and do the right thing, eventually you’ll be up at the top.
The twenty-third factor entering into a pleasing personality is that of gracefulness in posture and carriage of the body. I hate to see people lounging around, looking sloppy and acting sloppy in their posture. It’s a nice thing to be graceful in your movements in walking and in your posture in sitting or standing. It doesn’t need to be the studied posture of an actor, but nevertheless, it can at least be graceful.
The twenty-fourth factor of a pleasing personality is that of humility of the heart, based upon a keen sense of modesty. Humility of the heart, isn’t that a wonderful thing? I think perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, the reason that I didn’t get recognition, that fame didn’t come to me in the early days of my life, is that I wouldn’t have been able to stand it then like I do now. I had to acquire humility of the heart. To have been recognized by 65 million people throughout two thirds of the civilized world thirty years ago perhaps would have turned my personality into one that wouldn’t be very pleasing. I’ve been thankful that such recognition and fame as have come to me came at a time only after I had gained humility of the heart. I couldn’t be spoiled nowadays with money, nor with acclaim, nor with applause, nor with anything else that I can think of, because I do have humility of the heart.
The twenty-fifth factor is that of personal magnetism, an inborn trait and the only one of the traits of personality which cannot be cultivated. But it can be controlled and directed to beneficial usages. When I speak of personal magnetism, let’s understand each other: I’m speaking primarily of the emotion of sex, that great, creative, constructive emotion which is responsible for the growth and advancement of the world.
Speaking of personalities, of people, I wonder if you would ever stop to think that homes and stores and offices and places of businesses and streets and towns and cities all have personalities, separate and distinct from one another. You go down Fifth Avenue in New York City, and you’ll get one feeling from the personality of Fifth Avenue, which is a feeling of opulence. Even though you may not have much money in your pocket, you’ll not feel poor. You’ll mix and mingle with the people who are patronizing those great shops there on Fifth Avenue, and you’ll feel for the time being that, while you may not be rich, you are at least not poor. You walk five blocks over toward the Hudson River, into what is known as Hell’s Kitchen, where people live and think and exist in misery and in poverty, and I don’t care who you are, the chances are that if you stay over there ten minutes you’ll feel like you want to scream, because of the negative vibrations that are being released over there.
You must remember that your brain is both a broadcasting station and a receiving station, and your mental attitude, whatever it may be, is constantly being broadcast to other people. If you don’t learn to keep your mental attitude positive, other people will pick it up and hand it right back to you as their mental attitude in a negative form. Isn’t that an amazing and important thing to recognize?
Once I had a man come to enroll in my school of salesmanship in Chicago. He said, “Mr. Hill, I came a thousand miles to let you sell me. You start right in and give me a good selling, because I want to go into the sales business.” And then he kept talking. He had asked me to talk, but then he did the talking. He talked for almost an hour. Meantime, I was talking back to him, but I was talking mentally, not orally. When he got through talking, he got up and we shook hands, and he said, “This course is the very thing that I want, and I thank you for your marvelous sales talk, and you get out your enrollment blank, and I’ll enroll.” I hadn’t opened my mouth. But I had been conveying thoughts to him, very definitely. Learn the art of projecting your thoughts to wherever you wish them to go, and see to it that those thoughts are always constructive and beneficial to other people. When you come into contact with those other people, you’ll find that their thoughts and acts directed back toward you will be friendly.
There has never been a master salesman who didn’t send his mind ahead of him when he went out to make a sale. He went there ahead of him and conditioned the mind of his prospective buyer long before he came into contact with that prospective buyer. All master salesmen do that. Those who do not do it are not master salesmen. They’re order takers, perhaps, but not master salesmen.
Here are some examples of a pleasing personality: I’ve already spoken to you about Charles M. Schwab. Mr. Schwab had very little schooling, but he had a very magnetic personality, and he had the ability to turn on his personal charm when he was talking to other people. As a result of that, Mr. Carnegie oftentimes paid him more than ten times as much for that personality as he paid him for the mere use of his skill and his brains.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had a marvelous personality, a million-dollar personality on the radio alone. It was so great that it gave him four terms in the White House, a circumstance without precedent in our nation. I would say that ninety percent of the reason why he was elected for the fourth term was due to that appealing personality that he had. If you’ll go back and grade him as you remember him by each of these twenty-five factors, you’ll find that he scores practically one hundred percent on every one of them, including the control of his tone of voice.
Kate Smith’s mental attitude brings her more income than the president of the United States receives. Kate’s not a singer in the true sense of the word, as are some of the great opera stars. She’s a songster, and a star of radio and television. I’d say she’s a sweet songster—I started to say a sweet, little songster, but I couldn’t quite describe her in just that way. She is a large woman. She has a sweet personality, she has a sweet tone of voice in which she speaks, and no matter whether you like the song she’s singing or not, you like the one who is doing the singing, and that’s the important thing in life.
Whenever you open your mouth to say something, if the person to whom you’re saying it doesn’t like what you’re saying, at least try to say it in such a way that he will like the person who’s saying it. A man by the name of Pappy O’Daniel, a flower salesman, took his family and some musical instruments and barnstormed the state of Texas, sang on the radio and made himself governor of that great state, and later United States senator. The biggest thing that he had to commend him to the people for election to those two high offices that he held was his charming personality, and his ability to turn on that charm, and to keep it on whenever he was speaking, regardless of whether his audience liked what he said.
Will Rogers joked his way into a fortune, not to mention the hearts of the American people, because of that marvelous personality of his.
Now let us consider some of the things that you shall not do if you want to have a pleasing personality. We’ll get both sides of the picture. In other words, these are the don’ts, and there are fifteen of them. First is the habit of breaking in when others are speaking. That’s absolutely on the don’t list. If you want to have a pleasing personality, if you want people to like you, when they’re speaking wait until they slow down before jumping in and taking away the conversation. I suspect there’s not a person in my audience, either the radio audience or in this studio, who couldn’t point to half a dozen people who make themselves very obnoxious by dominating all conversations and never allowing the other fellow to do any talking. If you want to be popular, learn the art of being a good listener, and incidentally, always when you’re listening, you’re learning something. When you’re talking, you’re never learning anything, because you’re only saying and hearing that which you already know.
Number two, selfishness expressed by words or deeds is on the don’t list. You may have a selfish feeling inside of you. If you do, try to conquer it as fast as you can. Certainly, don’t give any outward expression to it.
Third on the don’t list, no sarcasm should be used, either expressed by words or by deeds. There is also a way of expressing sarcasm not by words or by deeds, but by the expression on your face. It may give you a good deal of personal satisfaction to blow off steam and express sarcasm in connection with things you don’t like, but it’s not going to make you popular.
Number four, exaggeration of speech, that’s on the don’t list. It’s far better to understate a truth than it is to overstate it. Be on the conservative side. If you go one iota beyond what people believe to be a reasonable statement, they’ll discount your whole statement.
Number five is egotism expressed in actual or implied self-praise. That’s out, that’s on the don’t list. Any kind of self-praise, whether it’s by direct words or by actions, is taboo.
Number six on the don’t list is indifference toward others and their interests. If you really and truly want to be popular, you must find out what other people are interested in and start them to talking to you about those things while you become a good listener. And brother, sister, you can violate about every one of these other rules and get by nicely if you can become a good listener and interest yourself in what other people have to say.
I’ll never forget, as long as I live, the first visit I made to the White House, when Theodore Roosevelt was president. I was just a youngster, but he took me into his office, gave me a nice big chair, a padded chair by the side of the presidential seat, turned around and faced me, slapped me on the shoulder, and he sat there and talked to me just like I was as important as the president of the United States. For the time being, I forgot that I wasn’t. I never did forget that. I learned, subsequently, by studying the really great men that I had the privilege of working with, that they all had that great capacity of making you feel at home. They were never indifferent. They were good listeners.
The next factor, number seven, envy expressed or implied by action, is out. It’s a don’t. If you’re going to be envious of other people, if you’re going to be envious of the people in your town or your neighborhood who’ve attained a degree of success perhaps somewhat beyond yours, you’re not going to be liked by those people, you’re not going to be liked by your neighbors, you’re not going to be liked by anybody, because nobody likes an envious person. Envy should be converted into gratitude. Whenever you see another person that has something that you would like to have but don’t, express gratitude in your heart that the other fellow does have it, and hope that you can catch up with him and be able to get that for yourself later on. But envy, no.
The eighth factor is that of expressing flattery where it is not justified. If you want to be misunderstood, if you want to be discounted, start flattering somebody beyond the point at which he knows he’s entitled to your flattery, and you’ll certainly excite his suspicion very quickly. In my public career, I have come into contact with all kinds of people. Most of my students have been most generous in expressing their recognition of what I have given to the world. Most of them have been very considerate, and very, very few of them have gone beyond the point of stopping their expression of flattery or recognition at about the point where I’m entitled to it. Any time that you start to over-flatter a person, you excite his suspicions, and he tightens up on you. He thinks you’re after something, and generally speaking, that suspicion is not without a foundation.
One of my contemporary motivational authors wrote a book, and the major point in the book is that you get ahead in life by flattering people. I’d say that was one of the oldest tricks in the world, and one of the most dangerous. Giving credit to people where it does not belong, or over expressing it to them, is on the don’t list.
Number nine is slovenliness in speech. You don’t have to be perfect in your grammar, but you at least ought to know how to use language with reasonable accuracy. That is especially true if you’re going to engage in any kind of public life, where you regularly come into contact with people.
Number ten is the habit of monopolizing conversations, not letting the other fellow get a word in crosswise. You may be a great conversationalist; you may have a lot of things to say that are interesting. But if you don’t know when to stop, and if you don’t give the other fellow a chance to come up once in a while with a few expressions of his own, you’ll never learn anything about the other fellow; you’ll never learn what his reactions to you are. A good salesman never fails to take note of the effect that his words are having upon the person doing the listening. A poor salesman memorizes his talk and he reels it off like a canned program, never stopping to see what affect it’s having on the audience.
If you want to have a pleasing personality, be sure that the person to whom you are speaking is listening, and listening with interest. You want to be a lecturer, for instance? You never in the world could be a successful lecturer unless you kept your finger on the pulse of your entire audience. You would know at every instance when your talk was going over, and you would know the very second that it was not, and you would change your trend of that talk if it were not going over and registering properly.
I have had lectures when I had to change the trend of my talk three or four times. I was lecturing to a group of nurses down in Atlanta, Georgia, once on the law of cosmic habit force. I’d been going about ten minutes when I saw that I wasn’t even hitting near the mark, let alone hitting the bull’s-eye, with my talk. I just stopped dead right there and I said, “Ladies, I wish to ask you a question. I want to know what’s wrong with you or me. I know it’s with one or the other of us, because you’re not a darn bit interested in what I’m saying.” That broke the ice, and then we changed the trend of the talk over to how to succeed in a difficult profession, and brother, sister, did I get attention then. I really got it.
Number eleven, this is on the don’t list, is trying to convey an impression of superiority. You may be superior to other people, and the chances are that all of you are superior to somebody that you know. But it’s not good breeding, it’s not good manners, it’s not good business, it’s not good fellowship to try to convey to anybody the fact that you’re superior to him. No matter how humble the man may be, he doesn’t want that rubbed into him by somebody whom he knows to be superior.
Number twelve, insincerity in general, is on the don’t list. Number thirteen, the habit of directing conversation to cheap gossip, is on the list. I don’t know whether you ever heard of anybody who did that, or who does that, or not. But I am sure that if you did, none of them are among your friends today. They are the ones who are talking about us, directing conversation to cheap gossip. You can waste most of your life talking about things that are not of any benefit to you nor to anyone else.
I think perhaps one of the greatest compliments ever paid me by one of my fellow men was paid by Dr. William P. Jacobs, president of Presbyterian College in South Carolina, with whom I was associated for a time while I was on the staff of that college. After he had known me about six months, he said, “Dr. Hill, do you know what I like best about you?” I said, “No, Dr. Jacobs, I don’t, but I’d like to know.” He said, “You don’t engage in small talk.” Well, I said, “I thank you. I thought maybe sometimes I did.” He said, “If you do, I have never heard you.”
I don’t mean that you should always engage in abstractions or in deep conversations, but you should stay off of the gossipy side.
Fourteen, the habit of fault finding with the individual and the world at large is a don’t. You can go down into Skid Row in any city, and you can find out what’s the matter with the president, what’s wrong with his administration, what’s wrong with the United States government, and what’s wrong with God. Anything you want to know, they have it down there in Skid Row. But who wants to be in Skid Row? I don’t even want to pass through there, let alone engage in conversation with them. They are people who have soured on life. They find fault with everything and everybody, and believe nobody likes them. That’s perhaps why they’re in Skid Row. They didn’t look for the positive side of life.
And next and last, number fifteen, is the habit of challenging people with whom you do not agree. You don’t have to challenge people because you don’t agree with them. Quietly listen to the things that they think and believe and say, unless it’s directly your responsibility to challenge them. Then, when you do it, do it softly.
I thank you for your attention tonight and last time, and hope I have given you some insights into how to have a pleasing personality. I gave you a lot of do’s and don’ts to consider. Please reflect on them, and grade yourself honestly against them. You may be surprised at how you stack up.
Please join me next time for the first of two broadcasts focusing on the supreme law of the universe, cosmic habit force.