How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job summary

It’s Friday evening, and you’re home from another exhausting workweek. Your back aches, your head hurts. All you want to do is go to bed. But then your friend calls and invites you to go clubbing. Straight away, you perk up, get changed, and head out for a night of fun. When you get home at 3:00 a.m., you’re not tired at all – you’re buzzing. You wonder where all that energy came from.

Often, it’s boredom that causes tiredness – not work. In the 1930s, psychology professor Dr. Joseph E. Barmack had a group of students take tests that he knew wouldn’t interest them. The students reported feeling drowsy, weary, and irritable. Some of them even had headaches and upset stomachs.

When King Edward VIII was a teenage prince, he learned an important lesson about human nature. At the time, he attended Dartmouth College – a naval academy in Devonshire – where his fellow cadets regularly kicked him. When the college’s commodore asked the cadets why they bullied the prince, they confessed that, when the prince would eventually ascend the throne, they wanted to boast that they’d kicked the king.

When people attack others, it’s often because they’re like those young cadets – they want to feel important. They resent people with better education or more success than they have. So, if you find yourself in the firing line, it might be because other people envy you.

All humans share a desire for food, sleep, health, sex, and money. But there’s one other powerful need that drives us all – the desire to feel important. This is what psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud meant when he asserted that people are motivated by a desire for greatness.

While not everyone aspires to be a powerful politician or the boss of a major corporation, we all long to be appreciated and valued. But unlike our other day-to-day needs – like getting enough rest or having enough food in the pantry – our need for importance often goes unmet. That’s why we’re driven to brag about our kids or buy a sports car. Even becoming president didn’t make George Washington immune to this need. He wanted his title to be “His Mightiness.”

When it comes to forming friendships, humans can learn a lot from dogs. Think of what happens when you meet a dog. He’ll look at you and wag his tail. He might even bound over to you and lick your hand. What’s happening is that he’s showing genuine interest in you, and that draws you to him.

People are no different. If you show sincere interest in someone, you’ll attract them to you like a magnet. This is because humans are more interested in themselves than anything else. So, by showing interest in someone, you’re appealing to their greatest concern.

Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most distinguished figures of the twentieth century. But despite his intelligence and power, he knew he wouldn’t be right 100 percent of the time. In fact, he humbly believed that being right 75 percent of the time would be an extraordinary achievement.

The average person isn’t a great leader like Roosevelt. And yet, most of us behave like we’re always right. We’re quick to tell others that they’re wrong too.

Socrates of Athens was one of the world’s greatest philosophers. His method of exploring an argument revolutionized the course of human thought. Instead of forcing his ideas on others, Socrates would ask his opponents a series of questions, phrased so that they would answer yes. Each question acted as a stepping stone, leading the opponents to a conclusion that they may never have originally agreed to. In this way, Socrates changed their point of view.

When you say no, your whole body goes on guard to protect itself from rejection. Your nervous, glandular, and muscular systems steel themselves, closing you off to other possibilities. A yes response, on the other hand, opens your attitude. That’s why skilled speakers always start any discussion by prompting a yes response from their audiences.

One day at the steel mill, Charles Schwab noticed some employees smoking. They were standing directly below a No Smoking sign, which irked him. But Schwab was a master of human nature. Instead of getting angry, he gave each employee a cigar and said he’d be grateful if they smoked them outside. It was clear that he knew they’d broken the rules. But handling the situation in a way that didn’t bruise the men’s egos won their respect and compliance.

There are plenty of misconceptions about delivering constructive criticism. Most people think that starting with a compliment is the right technique. For instance, a mother might say to her child, “Reese, I’m proud your grades have improved but you could still do better in algebra.”