How to Win Friends and Influence People

I come from a somewhat dysfunctional family, which may account for the fact that some of my social skills are somewhat less than perfect. This was pointed out to me once by one of my former car mechanics. We were in the midst of a particularly rousing row about the state of my car. My main complaint was that my car had been in his shop for two months and he still had no real prognosis of the problem or when it might be fixed. His main complaint about me was that I was talking to him in a somewhat less than professional manner.

So, he pulled me aside one day and said, “Do you have problems like this with other people in your life?”

“What problems?” I said.

“Problems getting along with other people?”

I paused and thought to myself, “What does this car mechanic know about me that I don’t know about myself?”

My car mechanic then went on to tell me about this book called, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The gist of the book, he said, was that people only really want two things in life—they want to be appreciated and to be listened to.

“So, are you telling me that the reason you don’t have my car fixed for me is because you feel I’m not listening to you and that I haven’t been appreciating you enough?” I said.

“Well, it could be one of the reasons,” he said.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I said.

“Maybe you should go home and read that book,” he said.

I did read the book and was so inspired I bought copies for most of my family members and my boyfriend at the time, G., who was a disgruntled government worker. The only reason G. hadn’t been fired from his job was that the government isn’t allowed to get rid of people on the basis of incompetence or simply being in a bad mood.

“Everybody hates me at my job,” G. would complain to me. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

“The whole problem,” I would tell G., “is that you spend all your time thinking about what other people are thinking about you. You don’t spend any time thinking about what they are actually thinking about.

“You see, it’s like when someone’s talking to you—you know kind of like now. How much time do you actually spend listening to what that person is saying to versus thinking about what you’re going to say once that person stops talking?”

G. didn’t say anything.

“According to this book, you spend about 80 percent of your time concentrating on what you’re going to say next and 20 percent only half way listening to what the other person is saying.

“The horrifying thing about that is realizing that when you’re talking to someone, that they’re for the most part not listening to a word you’re saying either. So, the point is that nobody is listening to anybody. So if you were to just stop thinking about what other people were thinking and actually listen to what they’re saying, you’d be in much better shape and people would like you a lot more.”

I sat silent for a moment, waiting for G. to respond, but he didn’t say anything. Either he wasn’t listening, or he didn’t understand—or both. That just proved my whole point about the breakdown in communication between most people and my lack of social skills.

I’d like to say that my talks with my car mechanic after were more productive. But, what happened in the end was that my car ended up getting towed to the junkyard and my mechanic went out of business.

(Readers can e-mail Lisa at lisal@thegrid.net.)