Small Package

I January of 1984 I read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I’d heard about it for years and found it to be a terrific book. There are many lessons I learned that I will write about in other posts. However, on page 55 I read something that changed the course of my life. It was a quote from a Viennese psychologist names Alfred Alder.

“It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring”.

The more I thought about Alder’s statement the more I knew he was right. This two sentence quote summed up most of the human condition. The people I’d met in my life who caused trouble were only thinking about themselves. After a little self-examination I knew that more often than I liked to admit, that the quote applied to me.

I’ve had people tell me they thought the book was about manipulating others. However, what I found is that the main message is it’s not about you. The best way to win friends and influence people is to sincerely care about them. Until I read it I mostly viewed others as a means to get what I wanted. It was time for me to decide if I was going to keep heading down a path that I knew was destructive or make a change.

For the past thirty seven years a good part of my mental energy has been working on that change. I’ve spent countless hours trying to hack life. In the song Love is the Answer by England Dan and John Ford Coley there is the line, “If there’s a short cut I’d of found it, but there is no easy way around it.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QZjJU-mtFU

I searched hard for that shortcut, but it just wasn’t there.  I could trick people for a little while and make them think I cared about them to get what you wanted, but it didn’t last. On top of that I always knew deep inside I was just trying to fool myself. Eventually I came to the realization of what Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa and so many others have been saying throughout time, it’s not about you. A scene from Dr. Strange illustrates it very well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1UoqbIQpnU

Regardless how hard I try to be important or accomplished it will never fill me like getting outside myself will. Being self-absorbed and wrapped up in myself I will always make for a very small package. That is the simplest and most significant lesson of all.

May you have enough today, one moment at a time.