FIXED FACTOR FOR SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS

All of us want two things in life : Success and Happiness. Although, your idea of success may be different from others, there is one FIXED FACTOR which all of us must learn to handle if we must be successful or happy. The FIXED FACTOR is the same whether you are a lawyer, doctor, businessperson, student, housewife, parent , or whatever you are. This factor is OTHER PEOPLE.
Psychologists have proven that if you learn how to deal with other people, you will have secured the master key to success and personal happiness.

Look around you. Are the most successful people you know have the best brains or the most skills, abilities and knowledge? Are the people who are the happiest so much smarter than the other people you know ? Just do a quick reflection and you will discover that the people who are most successful and enjoy life the most, are those who “have a way” with other people.

If you are desirous of dealing with people effectively, you must be conscious of the following truisms about human nature:

1. All human beings are ego-hungry
2. We are all more interested in ourselves than in anything else in the world
3. Every person you meet wants to feel important.
4. Every human being craves for the approval of other human being, so that he can approve of himself.

Therefore, to be able to “have your way” with people, you must operate at three frequencies. Firstly, you must convince yourself sufficiently that other people are important and that every person wants to be treated as such. Men and women who have the most influence with other people are men and women who believe other people are important.

Secondly, notice other people. Subconsciously, we know that we pay attention only to what is of importance to us. In fact, day to day , we do not notice more than one hundredth of what is around us; we selectively notice what is important at any moment. Therefore you are paying someone a big compliment when you “notice” him or her. You are suggesting to him that you recognize his importance and this could make a world of difference in his motivation to work, his cooperation, his loyalty, self-esteem and his responsiveness. Some of the issues relating to low productivity, nastiness in children and complaints among married couples are traceable to non- recognition of the other person’s importance.

Thirdly, don’t lord it over people. Be careful that you do not deploy your own personal need for importance to undermine others or make them feel small. Consciously or unconsciously, we want to make good impressions on others in interpersonal contacts. If someone tells of some great feat he performed, we at once think of something we did that was even greater. Often, we are so anxious to impress the other person that we make him or her feel small to make us appear bigger. Certainly, you want to make a good impression on the other fellow. However , the most effective way for impressing the other person is to let him know that you are impressed by him. Let him know that he impresses you and he will judge you as one of the smartest, most personable individual he ever met.