Lemon #17. What
wants
Wouldn’t you like to have a magic phrase that would stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create good will, and make the other person listen attentively?
Yes? All right. Here it is: «I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you, I’d undoubtedly feel just as you do.»
An answer like that will soften the most cantankerous old cuss alive. And you can say that and be 100 percent sincere, because if you were the other person, you would feel just as he or she does.
Three-fourths of the people you’ll ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them and they’ll love you.
Dr. Arthur I. Gates said: «Sympathy the human species universally craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same purpose adults show their bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details of surgical operations. ‘Self-pity’ for misfortunes real or imaginary is in some measure, practically a universal practice.»
So, be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.
Dale Carnegie @ How to win friends and influence people.
Jorge Moreno
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