Winning human heart!
Part I – Chapter 4: Sincerely Caring For Others
The New York Telephone Company once conducted a detailed study
of phone calls to find out which words were the most used words.
The results show that it is the first person pronoun “I”.
It was used 3,900 times in 500 phone calls.
When looking at a photo of a group of people including you,
who is the first person you look for?
If you believe that people pay attention to you,
please answer the following question:
“If unfortunately I died today,
how many people would come to visit and see me off?”
When we try to impress others just to get them interested in us,
we will never have many truly sincere friends.
Those who do not care about their fellow
man will have the greatest difficulties in life
and will cause the greatest harm to others
and then to themselves.
It is from these individuals that all human failures and disasters arise.
I once attended a short story writing course at New York University.
At that time, the director of a leading magazine said:
If you don’t care about people,
don’t expect to be a successful short story writer.
He says that just by reading a passage in any short story,
he can tell immediately whether the author loves his readers or not.
If the writer does not care,
does not respect the reader,
the reader will not like his story.
The same goes for reciprocal treatment.
I had the opportunity to chat with Howard Thurston,
a world-renowned magician,
during his last appearance on Broadway.
For 40 years, he has wowed more than 60 million people with his performances,
and he has earned a total of $2 million from his work.
I asked Thurston’s secret to success,
he said that education in school had nothing to do with his success.
As a young boy,
he ran away from home,
hopped on trains,
slept on the shore,
and begged from house to house.
He learned to read through billboards and road signs.
Does he have super skills in magic?
No, he said there were hundreds of books on magic
and dozens of better performers than him.
However, he has two things that other people don’t have:
– Firstly, he has the ability to highlight his personality beyond the limelight.
He is a master magician,
he understood human nature.
Everything he did, every gesture,
voice,
every look he looked at was carefully calculated in advance.
His every move counts to a fraction of a second.
– Second, and this is very important is that he has a real love for the audience.
“Many magicians look at the audience and say to themselves, ‘well done!
These are a bunch of provincial people who are easy to deceive,
I will fool them easily.”
But he, on the contrary,
“I am grateful to the people who come to see me perform,
they give me the opportunity
to make a living in a very interesting profession.
I will give them my best performances”.
He never stepped into the limelight
without saying to himself, “I love my audience,
I love you all.”
You may think that his way of speaking sounds silly and funny,
but it is actually a method successfully used
by one of the most famous magicians of all time.
This is also the secret of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Even the waiters loved him. James Amos,
one of Roosevelt’s servants,
wrote a book about him called “Theodore Roosevelt,
Idol of the Servant”.
In the book, there is a passage:
“Once my wife asked the President how the partridge is?
because she had never seen it.
At that time, he described the details to her.
Later, we had a phone call,
the other end of the line was the President.
He called and told my wife
that “there is a partridge in the yard right now,
just look out the window
and you will see.”
Such is his personality,
always friendly,
Every time he passed by our room,
even though he didn’t see my wife and I here,
he still called out loudly Annie
or James as greetings with friends.
How can the staff not love
How can people not love such a personality?
Roosevelt was also respected
for his very humble personality.
After leaving office,
he was once invited to the White House,
when President Talf and his wife were not there,
he went and greeted all the former employees
he met by their first names.
When he met the cook,
Alice, he asked: Does Alice still make tortillas?
She replied I still do but now only for the waiters.
He immediately said,
“Oh! Why can’t they enjoy it like that?
I’ll tell this to the President
when he comes back and happily accepts the tortilla
that Alice gave him afterwards.
On the way out, Mr. waved to all the gardeners he met.
Roosevelt’s appreciation for those
who had worked
and served him before touched us deeply.
Hoover, captain of the bodyguards
who worked for more than 40 years in Ha Trang,
emotionally recounted,
“It’s been 2 years since we had such a happy day.
No amount of money can exchange such feelings.”
The average person can still get the attention
and time and cooperation of famous people
by genuinely caring and admiring them.
Years ago, I held a course on how
to write fiction at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences.
We want famous authors to come
to Brooklyn and share their valuable experiences.
So we wrote to these famous authors,
expressing our appreciation
and admiration for their work
and looking forward
to receiving their advice and learning secrets of success.
Each letter was signed with nearly 150 practitioners.
While we shared that, we understand
that the authors are all very busy,
so it is not possible to prepare a presentation.
So we attached a list of writing method questions for them to answer.
And as a result,
all those celebrities came to Brooklyn to share with us.
By this same method,
I persuaded Shaw,
the Secretary of the Treasury in the Roosevelt administration,
and many other prominent figures to speak to the academies.
A worker in a factory,
an employee in an office
or a king on a throne,
it is loved by those who admire him.
There is a very simple principle:
If we want to have true friends,
then think and do something for them, giving them time,
energy and unselfish attention.
I have a habit of secretly asking my friends’ birthdays many years ago.
At the beginning of each year,
I note these birthdays in a pocket calendar.
When those days come,
I will send a letter or a gift to them,
and believe it or not,
their joy makes me feel like
I’m the only person on earth
who remembers their birthday.
If you want to make friends with other people,
greet them warmly and enthusiastically.
When someone calls you on the phone,
say “hello” in a voice that shows genuine interest.
Have you ever heard of a voice that can laugh?
Companies that train operators to greet callers greet callers with voices
that exude joy, concern,
and enthusiasm. Callers will feel genuine care.
Don’t forget this when you call
or answer the phone today.
Showing genuine concern for others will not only make you more friends,
but can also increase customer loyalty
to your company in an issue of the National Bank
of North America newspaper in New York.
The editorial office published a letter from a customer named
Madelyn to the director of this bank. The letter is as follows:
“I want you to know that I love the staff of your bank.
Everyone is polite, courteous and willing to help.
It’s nice to be greeted cheerfully
by a cashier after I’ve waited so long.
Last year my mother was in the hospital for many months,
and I used to do business with Margaret.
She cares about my whole family
and asks about my mother’s health.”
Do you think Madelyn customers can leave this bank?
Charles Walters,
an employee of one of New York’s largest banks was tasked
with preparing a confidential report on a corporation.
He only knew of one person holding the information he needed urgently.
When Walters was brought into the room
of the person holding this important information,
he heard the young secretary say:
Today, she has no stamps for you at all.
“I’m collecting stamps for my 12 year old son,”
he explained to Walters.
Walters presented his work and started asking questions.
The head of this department was vague,
answering in general without going to the point.
He didn’t want to talk and nothing seemed to convince him to speak.
“The interview was short and dry,”
Mr. Walters said as he recounted the story to my class.
“Honestly, I don’t know what to do.
Then I remembered what the secretary had told him,
it was stamps, 12 year old boy.
And it occurred to me that our bank’s foreign affairs department deals
with letters from all over the world,
so we have stamps from many countries around the world.
The next afternoon,
I visited the head of this department
and wrote a note to him in advance
that I had obtained some stamps for his son.
He shook my hand warmly as if he was trying
to win voters to find his way into Congress.
A smile spread across his face and goodwill was evident in his demeanor.
He said, looking at and stroking the stamps:
“My little George will love these stamps.
What a treasure!”
We spent half an hour talking about stamps
and looking at pictures of the boy.
Soon after, he spent more than an hour providing me
with all the information I needed,
even without my needing to suggest it,
and then he called in other employees to add more.
And yet, he also made a phone call to a few of his collaborators.
He provided me with a lot of new information,
facts,
pictures,
reports
and related correspondence.
In the words of reporters,
I got the hottest and hottest news.”
Here is another illustration.
For many years, Knaphle of Philadelphia,
tried to sell fuel to a large multi-level marketing organization,
but the company continued to buy fuel from an out of town supplier
and they delivered it right to its doorstep.
Knaphle, speaking in front of my class one evening,
Mr. Knaphle expressed his frustration
with the multi-level marketing company.
I suggested he try a different approach.
We held a debate with academia in the classroom about the growth
of multi-level marketing that is doing the country more harm than good.
At my suggestion,
Knaphle was in favor,
he endorsed and defended multi-level marketing organizations.
After that, he went directly to an administrator
of a multi-level marketing organization
that he once resented:
“I am not here to find a way to sell fuel.
I have come to ask you to do me a favor”.
Then he told about the debate.
“I came to him for help
because I couldn’t think of anyone else with the expertise
and knowledge to give me the advice I needed.
I would be very grateful for your help.
After listening to me for a minute,
he invited me to sit down and talk
to me at exactly 1 hour 47 minutes.
He called another administrator,
who had written a book on multi level marketing
who was doing drafting work for the National Multi Level Sales Association,
to hand me a copy of the debate on the issue.
He feels that multi level selling has partly brought real benefits to people.
He is proud of what he is doing
for hundreds of communities.
As he spoke, his eyes lit up,
and I must confess that he opened my eyes
to things I never dreamed of.
He changed my whole attitude and outlook.
When I left, he led me to the door,
hugged me by the shoulder,
and wished me success in the argument.
He even kindly asked me to come back
and let him know the results.
His last words were:
“Hope you come back,
I want to order your fuel”.
To me, that was almost a miracle.
He was willing to buy fuel for me without my suggestion or request.
Just by really caring about him and his work,
not making him care about me and my product.
In less than 2 hours,
I achieved a result I have been searching for in vain for the past 10 years.
It was not that Mr. Knaphle discovered a new truth.
One hundred years before the birth of Jesus,
the famous Roman poet,
Publius Syrus, observed:
“We are only interested in others
when they are interested in us.”
The way to show interest is similar
to the application of other principles in the world:
to be honest, not to lie.
It must benefit both the person expressing the interest
and the person receiving the attention.
The end result should always be mutually beneficial.
Martin Gilbeck, a student of mine in Long Island,
New York, told of a nurse who made a special impression on him
and had a profound impact on his life as follows:
“It was Thanksgiving day when I was 10 years old,
I was lying in a charity hospital in the city,
to undergo an important surgery the next day.
I knew I would have to endure the pain and be kept in custody,
locked in bed for months.
My father passed away,
we lived in a small room unfortunately,
that day,
my mother was sick again and could not come to visit me,
I feeling lonely,
disappointed,
and scared overwhelm me.
I know my mother is also home alone,
worried about me having no one around,
no one to eat with,
and even no one to eat,
or enough money to treat me
to a party on Thanksgiving.
Tears of pity flowed,
I laid my head on the pillow,
pulled the blanket to cover my heart,
cried alone in silent grief,
self-pity and pity.
Mom, my whole body ached like torture.
A nurse in training,
hearing my cries,
came to me.
She pulled the blanket off my face
and started to wipe my tears.
She shared with me how she felt lonely,
and confided that she too I’m sad
because I have to work
and can’t be with my family during this time of reunion.
Then, she invited me to lunch,
which was two trays of food
with the usual Thanksgiving dishes.
According to the plan,
at 4pm she could leave,
but she stayed with me until 11pm.
She played with me,
talked to me until I fell asleep.
Many other Thanksgivings have come and gone in my life,
but I will always remember that thanksgiving day,
I was engulfed in the cold of feeling lost,
lonely and scared but suddenly found warmth,
and tenderness from a complete stranger.
Since then, I have been given a miraculous strength
to be able to overcome all the pain
and sorrow that happened in my life.
Sincere concern for others works miracles.
That miracle is not only for others but also for yourself.
Always remember that you have two arms:
one to help yourself and one to help others.
“A man can succeed in almost anything
if he has an infinite enthusiasm” – Charles Watts.
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Principle 4: Sincerely care about others.
