How to Win Friends and Influence People – If You Wish to Understand People, This Is the Book for You

What it’s about

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a self-help book written by Dale Carnegie, published in 1936. The book is all about understanding people with the aim being that by understanding better you will be better able to interact and communicate with people.

So basically this is a book that tries to teach you how to build stronger relationships with people from all walks of life.

Why you should read it

Over 30 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential books. And for good reason, this book by Dale Carnegie is plain and simply one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Reading this book will literally change the way you interact with people, and most definitely for the better, more than just that it will change the way you see people and will change the way you see even yourself.

What Dale Carnegie does superbly is help you understand what people’s true motivations are, and not just that, what your own motivations are. And how to deal with those at times conflicting motivations. So this is not a book about learning to manipulate people, it is a book about learning how to relate to people and build connections with people. Strong connections at that.

My personal favourite it is how Carnegie highlights that every person in this world wants to feel important, and the vast majority of what we do is designed to make us feel important. At first glance this may seem like the exact type of thing that we as humans hate to acknowledge, but the way he teaches this reality makes you want to acknowledge it because it makes so much sense and makes everything make so much sense.

I could go on and on about this book, but I will not, all I will say is if you are looking for a self-improvement book of the sort that will help you build stronger relationships with people, stronger connections with people, if you are looking for a book that will help you understand people, understand yourself, then if there is a better book out there than this one I’d be surprised. Literally a brilliant read.

Which means from me needless to say this book gets a big thumbs up.

Note: I would recommend if you do read this book, that you read one chapter at a time, that means do not read it all in one go, read one chapter, allow yourself a day or 2 to let that chapter sink in, then read the next, give yourself a day or two to allow the lesson to sink in, and on and on until the end. That’s what I did and it really makes a difference, really does allow you to take in the information he is giving with far more ease. It also makes the information stick more in your mind when you are less likely to forget it. Or at least that’s what I believe.