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Dale Carnegie

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job

Selections from How to Win Friends and Influence People and How To Stop Worrying and Start Living

Simon & Schuster, 1990

15 min read

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You can get any job done and like it, if you stay friendly, offer praise and don’t care whose name is put on your ideas.

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Recommendation

In this day of self-help mania, it’s hard to know where to start. Everywhere you turn there’s another book being released by a motivational speaker. It’s time to get back to basics, and the best way to do that is to go to the father of self-help himself - Dale Carnegie. This compilation of the best of his classics could be re-titled "Dale Carnegie’s Greatest Hits." It is packed with anecdotes of how famous and not-so-famous people through the ages have hit tough situations in life and overcome them. Although some of the language is dated - Carnegie wrote much the material in the 1930’s - the situations he portrays are not limited to any era. You will be encouraged to know that you, too, can be happy, popular and organized. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone who works with people in any capacity; it could drastically change how you approach your life and the people around you.

Summary

Your Job: A Source of Joy or Just Slogging Through?

Whether you are a corporate executive, a salesperson or an entrepreneur, you spend the majority of your life at your job. You have choices about how you approach this job: it can be drudgery or it can be pure joy. As you learn to uncover your ability to handle tough situations and to approach daily tasks with a new outlook, both your job and your life will become more fulfilling.

You Want to Be Content? Follow These Rules

Follow these seven rules and you’re on your way to obtaining happiness and peace:

Rule 1: Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not

To be comfortable in your own skin, you need to figure out who you are; what is your internal motivation, your clothing style, speaking style or writing style? Only one "you" exists on earth, make "you" unique.

Rule 2: Prevent angst by getting organized

Clear your desk of everything except what you’re working on now. You will be much calmer when you have order in your physical surroundings, because you’ll no longer have the overwhelming feeling that you have an endless stream of projects to finish. When you start a project, finish it ...

About the Author

Dale Carnegie was a legendary teacher, author and lecturer during the first half of the twentieth century. He leaves a legacy of a worldwide training program for businesspeople in all fields. He authored How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. More than 50 million copies of Mr. Carnegie’s books have been printed in 38 different languages.

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A. A. 7 years ago

Honestly, one is getting bored of the self-help books in such reading challenges one after the other. Being put together by the good folks of getAbstract, based in the happiest country of the world, I have been hoping for a cheery book to read in this challenge rather than such morbid books that seem to prove that we are inadequate the way we are.
- 7 years ago
  
  hello Ashish, thank you for your feedback. We are sorry to hear that you don’t like the summary choices, we will Keep your feedback in mind for the next challenge.
B. W. 7 years ago

Worth re-reading the timeless advice from Carnegie. Great summary and even better reminder!
M. M. 7 years ago

Another great reading! It is - again - a thing of balance, and to use de common sense to hear more from others rather than make them listen from you. Thank you for the golden rules the book shares that are solid gold! #StayOnTrack #getAbstract