A Pleasing Personality
Now I want to introduce you to the most wonderful person in the world. That’s the person sitting in your seat right now. When you commence to break down that person point by point—in accordance with the twenty-five factors that go into making a pleasing personality—you’ll find out just exactly where you’re wonderful and why.
I’m going to ask you to grade yourself as I set out these twenty-five factors. Give yourself the rating that you think you’re entitled to, and it can be anything from 0 to 100 percent. When there’s a doubt, don’t overrate, don’t give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Give the questionnaire the benefit of the doubt and rate yourself down rather than up.
When you get through, add up the total, and divide it by 25. That’ll give you your average rating on a pleasing personality, and if you rate all the way through a general rating of 50 percent, you’re doing very fine. Some of you will rate much higher than that, I hope.
1. Positive Mental Attitude
The first trait of a pleasing personality always is a positive mental attitude because nobody wants to be around a person who’s negative. No matter what other traits you may have, if you don’t have a positive mental attitude, at least when you’re in the presence of people, you’re not going to be considered to have a pleasing personality. Rate yourself on that anywhere from 0 to 100. If you can rate 100 on that, you will be up in the class with Franklin D. Roosevelt. That’s pretty high.
2. Flexibility
The next one is flexibility. By flexibility, I mean the ability to unbend, to adjust yourself to the varying circumstances of life without going down under them. A lot of people in this world are so staid in their habits and their mental attitude that they cannot adjust to anything that’s unpleasant or anything that they don’t agree with.
Do you know why Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of the most, if not the most, popular presidents we’ve had in our generation? Because he could be all things to all people. I’ve been in his office when senators and congressmen have come in ready to cut his throat, and they’ve gone out singing his praises, just because of the mental attitude with which he received them.
In other words, he adjusted himself to their mental attitude, and he didn’t get mad at the same time they did. Incidentally, that’s a mighty good way of adjusting—to learn to be flexible enough not to get mad when the other fellow’s mad. If you want to get mad, do it on your own account, when the other fellow’s in a good humor and you’ll have a much better chance of not getting hurt.
I’ve seen presidents of the United States come and go; I’ve been associated with several of them. I know what this factor of flexibility can mean in the highest office in the world. Herbert Hoover probably was one of the best all-around business executives we’ve ever had in the White House, yet he couldn’t sell himself to the people a second time, because he was inflexible. He could not bend. He was too static, too fixed.
Calvin Coolidge was the same way, and Woodrow Wilson to some extent was the same way. He was too austere, too static, too fixed, too correct. In other words, he wouldn’t allow anybody to slap him on the shoulder, call him “Woody” or take any personal liberties with him. Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed you to do all those things and more too if you wanted do. If you slapped him on the back, he would slap you right back. In other words, he was flexible. He could adjust himself.
And listen, boys and girls, there are so many things in this life that you have to adjust yourself to temporarily if you’re going to have peace of mind and good health, so you might just well start in now learning to do it. If you’re not flexible, you can become flexible.
3. A Pleasing Tone of Voice
Number three is a pleasing tone of voice. Here is an important thing to experiment with. A lot of people have harsh, nasal tones, and they put something into their tone of voice that irritates other people. You take any monotonous speaker, for instance: he does not have personal magnetism, does not know how to give pitch and tone to his voice. He’ll never get his audience, not in a million years. If you’re going to teach, if you’re going to lecture, if you’re going into public speaking or even good conversation, you’ve got to learn to get a pleasant, pleasing tone into your tone of voice. You can do it with a little bit of practice. Oftentimes by simply lowering your voice and not talking too loudly, you can make it pleasing to the ear—or you can step it way up, and you’ll make everybody want to hit you with a brick. Between those two extremes, there’s a happy medium you want to strike in your conversations, in your teaching, and in your public speaking.
I don’t think that anybody can teach another person how to make his tone of voice pleasing. I think you have to do that yourself. You have to do it by experimenting. First of all, you have to feel pleasing. How could you use a pleasant tone of voice when you felt angry, or when you didn’t like the person that you were talking to? You can, but it’s not too effective unless you really feel inside the way you’re expressing yourself.
Do you have any idea why I can take any audience and within three to five minutes, take that audience over and hold it as long as I choose without walking down the stage or pulling my hair or gesturing or anything of that sort? Do you know how it’s done?
First of all, what’s inside of my heart? I pour it out in a natural tone of voice. In other words, I speak just exactly as I would speak if I were in ordinary conversation with you, and where enthusiasm is to be turned on, I turn it on.
There’s another trick that I think you ought to learn. I can get an audience to applaud anytime I want. You know how I do it?
By asking you a question. Would you like me to tell you how many times have you heard that since we started? Would you like me to tell you? Of course, I get applause. All these things are carefully studied techniques that you have to acquire if you’re going to make yourself pleasing. I don’t know of anything that will pay off better than to be pleasing in the eyes of other people. It’s just one of those things that you can’t get along without.
4. Tolerance
Tolerance—what does that mean? A lot of people don’t understand the full meaning of tolerance. It means an open mind on all subjects toward all people at all times. In other words, your mind is not closed against anybody or anything. You’re always willing to hear an additional word.
You’ll be surprised at how few people there are in this world with open minds. Some of them are so closed that you could not open them with a crowbar; you couldn’t get a new idea in there if you tried. Did you ever see one of those people who was pleasing? You never did, and you never will.
You’ve got to have an open mind, because the very minute people find that you have prejudices that involve them and their understanding of religion, politics, economics, or anything else, they’re going to back away from you.
Do you have any idea why I can have followers of all religions in my classes and get along well with all of them—Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, all races, all the creeds? Because I love them all. To me, they’re all of one brand. They’re my fellow beings, my brothers and sisters. That’s why I get along with them. I never think of anybody in terms of what he believes politically or religiously or economically. I think of him in terms of what he’s trying to do to better himself and to better somebody else. Those are the terms in which I think of people, and that’s why I get along so well with them.
I didn’t use to do that. I used to have some outstanding prejudices; I had a closed mind about a lot of things. You didn’t have to ask me what was it was: I’d go out of my way to tell you, which of course made me very popular. I don’t volunteer much information anymore, except to my own students, and they have paid me, so I’m under obligation to do it, but so far as outsiders are concerned, I do no more volunteering of information.
An open mind! What a marvelous thing it is to be in possession of yourself so you can keep your mind open. If you don’t, you’re not going to learn very much. If you have a closed mind, you’ll miss out on a lot of information that you need but can’t get without an open mind.
Having your mind closed does something to you inside. If you have the last word and you don’t want any more information, you’ve ceased to grow. The very moment you close your mind on any subject—you say, “That’s the last word; I want no more information on it”—you’ve ceased to grow.
A keen sense of humor—I don’t mean that you have to tell lots of jokes. I mean that you have to have a certain disposition. If you don’t, you have to cultivate it so that you can adjust yourself to all of the unpleasant things that come along in life without taking them too seriously.
I once saw a motto in the office of Dr. Frank Crane. It impressed me very much, especially finding it in the office of a preacher. It said, “Don’t take yourself too damn seriously.” He explained to me what the word “damn” means. He said it meant just exactly what it said. If you take yourself too seriously, you go damning yourself. That’s obvious, isn’t it? It wasn’t a profane word after all. I liked it; I still like it. I think it’s a good motto for anybody not to take himself too seriously.
After all the recognition that I’ve had in the world from outstanding people, if I had really taken myself seriously, you couldn’t have lived with me at all. I would have been egotistical and vain, and it would have stood out all over me. I’d never have had the confidence of people. Nobody likes a vain or an egotistical person.
Another thing. If you have a keen sense of humor, you’ll never have any stomach ulcers. Stomach ulcers only come from one cause; if you get them, they’re only cured in one way, and that’s to develop a keen sense of humor and work at it all the time.
I read the some of the cartoons in some of the papers because I get a laugh out of them every once in a while. We have a cartoon out on the coast called “Emily and Mabel.” They’re two elderly spinsters who are constantly gunning for a man and always missing. Their episodes are so much like life that I’ve really got to laugh. If I don’t get a good ha-ha, I always tell my wife that I’ve been cheated out of a nickel from my paper.
Incidentally, one of the finest tonics that you can take (in addition to vitamins and food supplements, which most of you need) is to have a good laugh at least several times a day. If you don’t have anything to laugh at, cook up something. Look at yourself in the glass, for instance. You will always get a laugh out of that. You’d be surprised at how it changes the chemistry of your mind while you’re doing it. If you’ve got troubles, they’ll melt away, and they won’t seem nearly as big when you’re laughing as when you’re crying.
I don’t know that my sense of humor is keen, but it’s alert. I can get some fun out of almost any circumstances in life. I used to get a lot of punishment out of some circumstances that I now get fun out of because I have oiled up my sense of humor and made it a little bit more alert than it used to be.
6. Frankness
Next is frankness of manner and speech, with discriminating control of the tongue, based at all times upon the habit of thinking before you speak.
Most people don’t do that. They speak first and think, or rather regret, afterwards. Before you utter any expression to anybody, figure out whether it’s going to benefit or damage the person that’s listening, and whether it’s going to benefit you or damage you. If you do a little weighing and a little thinking before you open your mouth, you will never say half of the things that you wish you hadn’t said.
There are people who set their mouths going and go off and leave them going. They forget what they said, because they weren’t there. They’re almost always in difficulty.
Frankness of manner of speech doesn’t mean that you have to tell everybody exactly what you think of them, because if you do, you will have no friends. Nor does frankness mean being evasive or engaging in double-talk. Nobody likes a double-talker. Nobody likes a person who’s always evasive and has never expressed an opinion about anything.
7. A Pleasing Facial Expression
Number seven is a pleasing facial expression. I don’t know if you study your facial expression in the mirror. It’s a marvelous thing to see how much more pleasing you can make your facial expression when you try. It’s a marvelous thing to learn to smile when you’re talking to people. You’d be surprised at how much more effective what you are saying is when you are smiling than when you’re frowning or looking serious. It makes a tremendous difference to the person that’s listening.
I hate to talk to a person who’s got a serious expression on, as if the whole world is on his shoulders. It makes me fidgety. I just wish that he’d get through with whatever he’s say and go on, but if he limbers up, as Franklin D. Roosevelt used to, and gives you a million-dollar smile, even the most trivial thing that he says sounds like music, like wisdom, because of what it does to you psychologically.
Don’t grin at people when you don’t mean it, because monkeys can grin. Learn to smile because you feel it. Where does a smile take place first? On your lips, on your face? In your heart, where you feel it—that’s where it takes place. You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t have to be handsome. Put on a smile; it’ll decorate you and embellish you no matter who you are. It makes your facial expression look more beautiful.
8. A Keen Sense of Justice
The next quality is a keen sense of justice toward all people. In other words, being just to another person even when it’s to your disadvantage to do so. It endears you to other people when they know that your being just to them is costing you something. There’s no particular virtue in being just to the other fellow when you’re benefiting by it.
Many people are fair and just and honest only when they know it’s going to come back to them in one way or another. Do you know how quickly they’d be dishonest if it was profitable for them to do it? I wouldn’t give you the percentage; I’d hate to tell you what I think it is. It’s much too high.
9. Sincerity of Purpose
The next one is sincerity of purpose. Nobody likes a person who is obviously insincere in what he says and does, trying to be something that he’s not, or saying something that doesn’t represent his inner thoughts. It’s not as bad as lying out loud, but it’s the first cousin to it—a lack of sincerity of purpose.
10. Versatility
Then there is versatility: a wide range of knowledge of people and world events outside of one’s immediate personal interest.
A person who doesn’t know anything except about one subject will become a bore the moment he gets out of that field. You don’t have to use your imagination very much to think of somebody you know who’s got his nose so closely to the grindstone on one thing that he knows nothing outside of that. He’ll not be interesting as a conversationalist or in any other way unless he knows a wide enough range of things to be able to talk to you about what interests you.
You know the best way in the world to make yourself liked by other people? Talk to them about the things that interest them. Incidentally, if you talk to the other fellow about things that interest him, when you get around to talking about things that interest you, he’ll be much more of a receptive listener.
11. Tactfulness
Then there’s tactfulness in speech and manner. You don’t have to reflect your mental attitude in your words. If you do that, you’ll be an open book, and everybody can read you, sometimes when you wish they hadn’t.
You can always be tactful. When you’re on the road and the other fellow skins your fenders, you know how tactful they are when they jump out and run around to see how much damage is done. Maybe there’s ten cents’ worth where the paint’s been knocked off, but they do $100 worth of damage cussing one another out.
One of these days, I’m going to have the experience of seeing two fellows collide on the highway and jump out and apologize, each one claiming it was his fault and wanting to pay the bill. I don’t know who’s going to do it, but I’m going to see that one of these days.
You’ll be surprised how much you can do with people if you’re just tactful with them. Oftentimes, instead of telling people to do things, it might be helpful if you asked them if they would mind doing something. Even though you’re in authority to give them an instruction, it’s still better to ask.
One of the most outstanding employers I ever knew never gave any of his employees direct instructions. Andrew Carnegie always asked his associates and his employees if they would mind doing something for him, or he would ask, would it be convenient, or would it be suitable? He never ordered them to do anything; he asked them always. No wonder he got along so well with people; no wonder he was so successful.
12. Promptness of Decision
Next is promptness of decision. Nobody can be well-liked or have a very pleasing personality who always puts off making a decision when he has the necessary facts before him. I don’t mean that people should go off half-cocked or render snap judgments. But when you have all of the facts and the time has arrived for a decision, get into the habit of making that decision. If you make one that’s wrong, you can always reverse it, and don’t be too big—or rather, too little—to reverse yourself when you find out that you should. It is a great advantage in being fair with yourself and with the other fellow to reverse yourself if you have made the wrong decision.
13. Faith in Infinite Intelligence
I don’t need to make much comment on number thirteen: faith in infinite intelligence. You know what your faith is, and if you are faithfully following your religion, whatever it is, you should rate very high on this one.
You’d be surprised how many people give lip service to faith and infinite intelligence but don’t do very much about it. They don’t indulge in any outstanding acts backing up their alleged belief in infinite intelligence. I don’t know how the Creator feels about it, but I believe that one act is worth a million tons of good intentions or beliefs.
14. Appropriateness of Words
Number fourteen: appropriateness of words, free from slang, wisecracks, and profanity. I never saw an age when people have indulged in so many wisecracks, slang statements, and doubletalk. It may seem smart to the fellow who’s doing it, but not to the fellow who’s listening. He may laugh, but he’s not going to be impressed with anyone who engages too much in wisecracks.
Our English language is not the easiest thing in the world to master, but it is a beautiful language, and it has a wide range of word meanings. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to control the English language so that you can convey to the other fellow precisely what you have in your mind (or what you want him to think you have in mind).
15. Controlled Enthusiasm
Then there’s controlled enthusiasm. You may say, “Why control enthusiasm? Why not turn it loose and let it run wild?” Because you’ll get into trouble if you do. Your enthusiasm ought to be handled very much like your electricity. It’s a very wonderful thing—washes dishes, washes your clothes, runs the toaster, maybe cooks your food on the stove—but you handle it with care. You turn it on when you want it and turn it off when you don’t.
Your enthusiasm should be handled with just as much care. You turn it on when you want to turn it on, and you can just as quickly turn it off. If you’re not able to turn it off as quickly as you turn it on, somebody will come along and get you enthused over something that you ought not to be enthused over. Did you ever hear of that happening? And boy, what a sucker you will be.
Do you know what enthusiasm is? It’s a mild, and sometimes not too mild, form of hypnotism. You can hypnotize yourself with enthusiasm and you can hypnotize the other fellow as well, but don’t do it too much. You can be so enthusiastic with the other fellow that he’ll be out pulling down his mental shades. I have had salesmen come around who were so enthusiastic that I wouldn’t let them in my place a second time, because I didn’t want to go to the trouble of defending myself against them.
I have heard some speakers like that; I’ve heard some preachers like that too. I wouldn’t want to follow them. You know the type I’m talking about. The fellow just turns his enthusiasm battery loose and goes off and leaves it; all you can do is run away from it or try and turn it off.
A man who does that is not going to be popular, but the man who can turn on the right amount of enthusiasm at the right time and turn it off at the right time is the man who’s going to be considered to have a pleasing personality.
Incidentally, if you’re not able to exude enthusiasm when you want to, you’re not going to be considered a pleasing personality, because there are times when you definitely need it. Teaching, lecturing, speaking, or almost anything that you’re doing in the area of human relationships requires a certain amount of enthusiasm at times.
Enthusiasm, like all these other qualities, is something you can cultivate. There’s only one quality that your attitude can’t cultivate. Andrew Carnegie said he could give you every one of the other qualities except this one. It’s personal magnetism. If you have just so much of that, even that can be subject to control and transmutation too, but it’s something that one person can’t give to another.
16. Sportsmanship
The next quality is good, clean sportsmanship. You’re not going to win all the time in life. Nobody can do that. There are going to be times when you lose. When you do, lose gracefully and graciously. Say, “Well, I lost, but maybe it’s best I did, because I’m going to start looking immediately for that seed of an equivalent benefit. Next time I’m going to let somebody else lose. I’m going to wise myself up.” Then don’t take it too seriously, no matter what it is.
During the Depression, four of my friends committed suicide. Two of them jumped off a tall building. One shot himself in the head, and another took poison. I lost twice as much as they did. I didn’t jump off a building; I didn’t shoot myself; I didn’t poison myself. I said, “It’s a blessing, because losing this amount of money now, I’ll have to start and earn some more.” That was my mental attitude. I said to myself, “If I lose every penny that I have, the last suit I have, even my big BVDs, I can always get a barrel from somebody and start all over again. Wherever I get a bunch of people together to listen, I’ll be able to start making money.”
How you going to down a person with that attitude? No matter how many times you defeat him, he comes right up again. He’s like a cork. You can put him down, but he can bounce up the moment you take your hand off him, and if you don’t take your hand off, he will make you take it off.
Oh, what a marvelous thing that is—just common, ordinary, garden-variety courtesy! Especially toward people that are on a lower plane socially, economically, or financially than yourself. It’s wonderful to be courteous to a person to whom you don’t have to be courteous. It does something for the other fellow, and it does something for you.
I always hate to see anybody lording it over another person. Nothing gets me upset more quickly than to go into a restaurant and see some newly rich somebody come in, order the waiters around, and abuse them. Even if sometimes they deserve it, still, I have never learned to be like that. I’ve always thought that anybody who would abuse another person in public, with or without a cause, has something wrong with his machinery.
When I was living at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, a waiter spilled some hot soup right on the back of my neck, and it burned me. The headwaiter ran over. In a little while, the manager of the hotel was out there, and he wanted to get a doctor. I said, “It’s not that serious. After all, the waiter just spilled a little soup.”
“We’ll have your suit cleaned.”
“No,” I said, “just don’t get upset. I’m the one to get upset, and I’m not getting upset about it.”
When that waiter was off duty, he came up to my room and said, “I want to tell you how much I appreciated what you said. You could have had me fired, since I was just as good as fired. If you hadn’t talked the way you did, I’d have been out, and I couldn’t afford to be fired.”
I don’t know how much good it did the waiter, but it did me lot of good. After all, that was a man that I could have humiliated.
As far as I know, I have never, in my whole life, intentionally humiliated anybody for anything whatsoever (although I may have done it unintentionally). I feel good in being able to say that. I feel good to have that attitude toward people. And it comes back to me, because people have that attitude toward me too. They don’t want to humiliate me. Why? Because you get back from people what you send out. You’re a human magnet, and you’re attracting to you the sum and substance of what goes on in your heart and soul.
18. Appropriateness of Personal Adornment
Appropriateness of personal adornment is important to anybody in public life. I don’t mean you have to dress yourself up like Mrs. Astor’s horse or a clown. You don’t have to wear loud clothes, but anybody who’s dealing with the public should select personal adornment suited to his personality.
I have never been too fussy about that. I’ve never used formal clothes except on very few occasions. Some time ago I was delivering a talk for a Chicago sales executives’ club, and I was put on notice that I had to be in a tuxedo. I didn’t even own a tuxedo; I hadn’t owned one for twenty years. I went down and bought a tuxedo just for that occasion.
When I went on the stage, I told the story of one of the local bankers who was talking to me down in the cocktail room just before we sat down to dinner. He said, “Mr. Hill, are you nervous anytime when you go to speak?”
“Well, not anytime except tonight.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because of this damn monkey suit that I have to wear.”
I told my audience about that, and they really got a kick out of it.
It’s perfectly appropriate to wear formal clothes when necessary, but use good taste. Ordinarily, if later on, you were asked to describe what the best-dressed person wore, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You’d say, “All I know was he looked nice,” or “she looked nice.”
Showmanship—you’ve got to be a showman if you’re going to sell yourself in any walk of life. Know when to dramatize words, when to dramatize circumstances.
Take the history of the most outstanding man in the world. If you just gave the bare facts about him and didn’t dramatize the story as you went along, you’d fall down flat. You’ve got to dramatize the things that you’re talking about to the people that you’re doing business with. You’ve got to learn the art of showmanship as you go along. That’s something you can learn.
20. Going the Extra Mile
I don’t need to mention that you should have the habit of going the extra mile; you’ve had a whole lesson on that.
21. Temperance
Temperance means not too much, not too little of anything. You can do yourself just as much damage with eating as you can with drinking liquor. The rule that I go by in all these things is that I don’t allow anything to take charge of me. When I was smoking, when I got to the point where the cigars were smoking me, I quit. I can take a cocktail; I can take two; I guess I could take three. I don’t remember ever having taken more than that socially, but if I ever found them taking me, or if I ever found my being not able to resist them, I would part company with them in a hurry.
I want to be in possession of Napoleon Hill all the time. Not too much, not too little. Temperance is a marvelous thing. Don’t you know that there’s nothing so very bad in life if you don’t overdo it?
There’s a wide range of thought there. Right or wrong are relative terms. When you come right down to it, whether it’s right or wrong just depends on who’s telling it. If it affects you adversely, it’s wrong. If it affects you beneficially, it’s right. That’s the way most people look at it.
22. Patience
Then comes patience under all circumstances. You have to have patience in this world we’re living in. It’s a world of competition. You’re constantly being called upon to use your patience; by using patience, you learn to wait for things when the time is more favorable. If you don’t have patience and you try to force the hand of other people, you’ll get a no or a turndown when you don’t want it.
You require patience in order to make time for your relationships with people, and you have to have a lot of patience. You have to be able to control yourself at all times.
Most people don’t have much patience. Take the majority of people: you can make them mad in two seconds. All you’ve got to do is say or do the wrong thing.
I don’t need to get angry because somebody says or does the wrong thing. I could if I want to, but it’s my choice; I can choose not to get mad. I can be patient and wait my time to strike back at the other fellow, if I want to strike back at all. If a man did me wrong, the only way I would strike back would be by doing him a favor and showing him how little he could be.
23. Gracefulness
Number twenty-three is gracefulness of posture and carriage of the body. When I speak, I can stand straight without leaning on anything.
24. Humility
Twenty-four is humility of the heart, based upon a keen sense of modesty. I don’t know of anything as wonderful as to have true humility of the heart.
Sometimes I do have to criticize the people I’m working with—some, not all, of them—but I always say inside, “But for the grace of God, I’d be the man that I’m over there criticizing, and maybe I’ve done things ten times as bad as the thing I’m criticizing him for.” In other words, I try to maintain that sense of humility in my heart, regardless of what happens to me that’s unpleasant.
The more successful I become, the more I observe this feeling of humility of the heart. I recognize that whatever success I have is due entirely to the friendly, marvelous love, affection, and cooperation of other people, because without that I could never have spread myself over the world the way I have. I could never have benefited the people that I have, I could never have grown the way I have grown, had it not been for the love, affection, and marvelous, friendly cooperation of other people. And I couldn’t have gotten that cooperation if I hadn’t adjusted myself to others in a state of friendliness.
25. Personal Magnetism
Last but not least is personal magnetism. That, of course, has reference to sex emotion, to an inborn trait of the owner, one of the personality traits which cannot be cultivated, although it can be controlled and directed to beneficial usage. As a matter of fact, the most outstanding leaders, salesmen, speakers, clergymen, lawyers, lecturers, teachers—the most outstanding individuals in every field of endeavor—are people who have learned to transmute sex emotion: they can convert that great creative energy into doing the thing that they want to do most of the time.
And that word transmuting—it’s something to conjure with, something to look up in the dictionary; make sure you understand what it means.
You’ve got a lot of thinking to do about these twenty-five qualities, and you’re going to make discoveries about yourself. When you really come down to answering these questions and giving yourself a rating, you’re going to find out that you have certain weaknesses that you didn’t know you had, and you have certain strengths and good qualities that you perhaps had undervalued.
Let’s find out about ourselves to see just where we stand. What it is that makes us tick? Why do people like us, why do people dislike us? I could take any one of you and sit down with you. By asking you—I’ll say not over twenty questions—I could lay my finger right on what’s keeping you from being popular if you are unpopular.
You can do the same thing. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to learn to analyze people, starting with yourself, find out what it is that makes people popular, what makes them tick. When you do that, you have one of the greatest assets that you could possibly imagine.
Now you’ve got some work to do on this lesson, and I want you to have joy in doing it, I want you to have pleasure in doing it, and I want you to learn a lot about yourself.