Who is the author of How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job?

Dale Carnegie is the author of How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job.

Personal Development

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job Book Summary - How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job Book explained in key points

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How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job summary

Name: How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job
Rating: 4.6 (162 reviews)
Author: Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie

Increase your understanding of human nature to live more fully

4.6 (162 ratings)

27 mins

Brief summary

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job by Dale Carnegie provides practical advice for improving workplace relationships, reducing stress, and finding personal satisfaction. It offers timeless strategies to enhance both professional and personal well-being.

Topics

Success Inspiration Self-Help Mindful Work Meaningful Living

Table of Contents

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn how to live more fully by developing your understanding of human nature.

We all want to make the most of our precious lives, and to many people, that means having work we enjoy and relationships we value. But although this desire is so universal, many of us struggle to achieve it. Some people might like their jobs, but the daily grind makes them stressed. Others may have partners they love but might find it difficult to negotiate differences of opinion.

Even if our circumstances aren’t ideal, there’s always scope to improve our happiness levels. And the best way to do this is by understanding human nature. Once you know how you – and every other person – is hardwired, you can approach work and relationships more strategically to find happiness and meaning in each day.

In this blink, you’ll learn

how an old floppy sock can improve your mental health;
what’s really happening when people brag about their kids; and
the three-letter word that works magic when you’re trying to motivate others.

It’s not work that makes you tired, it’s your emotions.

Take a moment to think about how you feel at the end of a grueling workday. Do your muscles ache? Does your head pound? Have you completely run out of energy?

Now reflect on what you’ve been doing all day. Is your job physically demanding, or do you spend most of your time sitting at a desk?

If your job doesn’t involve hard labor, it’s easy to put work exhaustion down to mental fatigue. After all, your brain is doing some serious thinking for at least 40 hours a week. It may surprise you then to learn that your brain can work just as effectively after 12 hours as it can when you sit down at your desk with your first cup of coffee. So, why do you feel tired all the time?

The influential psychiatrist Dr. A.A. Brill believed that emotional factors are the primary cause of fatigue for desk workers. Anxiety and feeling unappreciated make you produce nervous tension. And that tension is what wears you out.

Think about what happens to you physically when you feel stressed at work. You might scowl, strain your eyes, and hunch your shoulders. But these actions don’t improve your performance. Instead, they squander your precious energy reserves, which is why you feel so tired at the end of the day.

Luckily, there’s an antidote – relaxation. Being tense is a habit – a bad one – but you can choose to make relaxation a habit instead, even one you practice at work.

Effective relaxation begins with the eyes. Our eyes require a significant amount of our body’s nervous energy. That’s why they can feel strained even if you have 20/20 vision.

Get into the habit of closing your eyes several times a day, and spend a full minute silently telling all the muscles that control your eyes to let go. Slowly, your muscles will start to obey and the tension will fall away. Once your eyes are relaxed, you can shift your focus to another part of your body, like your jaw or your shoulders. Picture your body as a floppy sock. Author Dale Carnegie even kept an old maroon sock on his desk to remind himself to relax.

Being tired doesn’t mean you’ve worked well, it means you’ve worked inefficiently. At the end of each day, evaluate your tiredness and identify whether it was work that wore you out, or how you worked that did. In the next blink, we’ll look more closely at where all this fatigue is coming from, and how to combat it.

Don’t confuse exhaustion with boredom.

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.

Change your attitude toward criticism.

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.

The secret to influencing others is appreciation.

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.”

Connect with others by showing an interest in them.

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.

You can’t change someone’s mind by telling them they’re wrong.

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.

Use positivity to win support.

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.

Change how you deliver criticism to get results.

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.”

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What is How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job about?

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job (1955) provides guidance about getting more out of your day-to-day life, by generating more energy into your workday and improving your personal relationships. It sheds a light on how human nature influences the way we behave, so you can improve your interpersonal skills and deepen your self-understanding.

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job Review

How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job by Dale Carnegie (1936) offers practical advice on finding happiness and fulfillment in both personal and professional spheres. Here's why this book is a valuable read:

Presenting timeless wisdom on personal development and workplace satisfaction, it provides actionable strategies for leading a more fulfilling life.
By emphasizing the importance of positivity and perspective, the book equips readers with tools to navigate challenges and embrace joy in their everyday experiences.
Through real-life stories and relatable scenarios, the book maintains a lively pace, ensuring that readers stay engaged and motivated throughout.

Who should read How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job?

The chronically weary
Managers who want to become more effective leaders
Students of human nature

About the Author

Dale Carnegie was an author, corporate trainer, and developer of self-improvement courses. Despite being born into poverty on a Missouri farm, he’s one of the best-selling self-help authors of all time and is known for enduring classics like How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. These titles are still wildly popular today, decades after their initial publication.

Categories with How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job

Personal Development Career & Success Motivation & Inspiration

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