Pleasing Personality

I would direct your attention, now, to the first of the seven factors that enter into the development of an attractive personality. You have observed that all through this lesson I have gone into lengthy detail to show the material advantages of being agreeable to other people.

However, the biggest advantage of all lies, not in the possibility of monetary or material gain which this habit offers, but in the beautifying effect that it has upon the character of all who practice it.

Acquire the habit of making yourself agreeable and you profit both materially and mentally; for you will never be as happy in any other way as you will be when you know that you are making others happy.

Remove the chips from your shoulders and quit challenging men to engage you in useless arguments!

Remove the smoked glasses through which you see what you believe to be the "blueness" of life and behold the shining sunlight of friendliness in its stead. Throw away your hammer and quit knocking, for surely you must know that the big prizes of life go to the builders and not the destroyers.

The man who builds a house is an artist; the man who tears it down is a junkman.

If you are a person with a grievance the world will listen to your vitriolic "ravings," providing it does not "see you coming"; but, if you are a person with a message of friendliness and optimism, it will listen because it wishes to do so.

No person with a grievance can be also a person with an attractive personality!

The art of being agreeable - Just that one simple trait is the very foundation of all successful salesmanship. I drive my automobile five miles into the outskirts of the city to purchase gasoline, which I could procure within two blocks of my own garage.

Because the man who runs the filling station is an artist; he makes it his business to be agreeable. I go there, not because he has cheaper gasoline, but because I enjoy the vitalizing effect of his attractive personality!

Fiftieth Street and Broadway, in New York, not because I cannot find other good shoes at the same price, but for the reason that Mr. Cobb, the manager of that particular Regal Store, has an attractive personality. While he is fitting me with shoes, he makes it his business to talk to me on subjects, which he knows to be close to my heart.