Lynne Russell - How to Win Friends, Kick Ass and Influence People

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This book is dedicated to women everywhere who believe in relying on themselves first.

My love and everlasting gratitude to my father and mother for so many gifts. Thanks to Michael Solomon for his encouragement, Jeff Cohen for listening, and my agent, Craig Nelson, for his invaluable help and this great title. Thanks to the dear sisters whose names youll find inside, along with Kimberley, Jennifer, Trish, Linda, Shoshana, and Inci for sharing their secrets. Thanks also to Keith Flannigan, P.I., for being my friend and mentor, and my instructor, Marshall Pereira, for teaching me how to kick ass!

Glad you asked. I never bought into the traditional roles assigned to women. It just never happened. I remember when I was ten years old someone gave me a big picture book titled, You Could Be; and it was for girls. I learned I could be a nurse or a secretary, a mother or a flight attendant, a dental assistant or a teacher. When I was asked which one I would choose, I chose none of the above. Every one of those careers is a respected undertaking, but even at ten I knew that none of them was me; and I did not feel compelled to oblige adults by limiting myself to the choices I was handed. Eventually I went to nursing school because I like the concept of solving mysteries and I think the human body is the most fascinating mystery of all, and because I genuinely wanted to help other people; but I wasnt emotionally cut out for it. As for motherhood, I loved it when it happened, but I never was a little girl who wanted only to live in a house with a picket fence and be a wife and a mother when I grew up. It just seemed to me that that was something you also did while you did something else. So you can imagine what it was like for little boys who played house or doctor with me. We always were fighting over the stethoscope and who got to say, Honey, Im home.

I firmly believe that lots of girls felt as I did. Now, as adults, we still harbor a desire to go deeper into being our own person. For me, this has meant taking on other challenges when Im not on the CNN Headline News set.

Not that it wasnt challenging enough just getting to CNN. First came several years in radio back in the 70s, beginning with four years of spinning out the hits when the hits were still on vinyl; our ultra-small-size radio marketthe college town of Fort Collins, Coloradowas the last to get them from the record companies. Also the FCC required my radio station to reduce transmitter power to only 500 watts at sunset, so we were lucky if they could hear us across the street; but the newness of the experience, the freedom to create, and the cast of characters (employees right out of the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati ) made it all worthwhile. Then came seven years of hosting morning drive-time talk radio in Miami, which translated to rising well before the crack of dawn to referee political free-for-alls and convincing celebrities to drag their sleepy butts into the studio at 6:00 A.M . with the rest of us; otherwise they werent going to get to promote their new books/diets/fragrances. This left afternoons for lying on the beach and continuing the quest for the perfect pia colada. Unless, as often happened, we were in a panic for a last-minute guest for the next mornings broadcast; in such a case, I was back wandering the hippie haven of Coconut Grove with my little Sony tape recorder, looking for the Hare Krishnas. We knew they always were good for an hour of colorful interviews, with unintelligible chanting in the background. Talking with them in their natural habitat beat inviting them to the station; after theyd been there for a morning, the mens john smelled like strawberries for a week. We never could figure out if it was incense or aftershave.

And I did a brief DJ stint at an FM rock station in Jacksonville, Florida. My then husband (the second), the brilliant and notoriously mild-mannered rocknroll radio programmer Jim Dunlap, was my boss. And that went rather well until the day I found I had to drop a piece of music from my show to make the timing come out right, and I opted to eliminate a Bee Gees song. Jim heard it in his office, and I could hear him coming down the hall. Next thing I knew, he had put his fist through the control room door and had broken his hand. And I knew two things: He was not so mild-mannered, and the TV news offer Id just received was going to save our marriage. As it turned out, Jim and I were together for eighteen years until we agreed to go our separate ways; in all that time he never attacked another door. He did provide me with wonderful years of laughter and spontaneity, shared confidences, exposure to great rock music, limo rides with stars, and his endless DJ one-liners, which never failed to crack me up because of the way he delivered them.

My radio days were followed by that television news anchor job in Jacksonville and others in Honolulu, Hawaii, and San Antonio, Texas. By the time I got to CNN, I couldnt even remember all the call letters of all the stations where Id workednever mind the network affiliationswhich to this day always are changing.

Once I settled in at CNN, I found that although I loved my job, my devotion to journalism wasnt enough to make me feel fulfilled as an individual who was inquisitive about so many things. I needed to augment it with other interests. The ensuing few years have brought two black belts in the Korean-American street-fighting martial art of Choi Kwang Do, certification in open-water SCUBA diving, acting as bodyguard to folks who dont want to get their Armanis all wrinkled as they fend off friend and foe, deputy sheriff and certified Jail Officer, licensed private investigator, foreign-language student, and enthusiastic if clumsy ice hockey skater. The unconventional odyssey is continuing, despite the people who think Im nuts for giving in to this restless nature; but I think theyve got their feet in wet cement and theyd better get the hell moving before the stuff freezes them in place. Arent they even curious?

I wanted to write this book to share these thoughts with you, because I believe that every woman has it in her to lead a more fulfilling life, with the gifts and opportunities she is givenwhatever they are. I am the first to admit that many of the new areas Ive explored just sort of happened to me, rather than the other way around. And that, in itself, is a lesson on being open to opportunity. There are monthsyearswhen you are not open to new opportunities at all. Then suddenly you have more time, or are bored, or are just feeling rebellious and fed up with the way things are going fired up to break away and do something on your own. And you jump right in and try something new. The trick, for all of us, is to remember that the opportunities are there whether were in the mood or not. Think of it as a twelve-months-a-year clearance sale; you may not be in the mood to shop, but you really ought to just stop by and see whats there, in case you might be interested.

I hope that as you read this book you will be inspired to make as much of your days as you can, taking on any extra elements that give you a special thrill. I hope you will see that you must be true to yourself, asking yourself at every stage what you want to do with your life. Forget what you think you ought to do. What are you good at? What makes you happy? I hope you will gain the confidence to trust yourself and your intuition: the confidence to believe what you feel, even if there is no substantial, material evidence to support it. And I hope you will take to heart what Eleanor Roosevelt said about self-image. When I was twelve, my mother didnt go a day without quoting Eleanor. It drove me nuts; but this one is worth remembering: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. That one has stayed with me over the years. And as this geeky, scrawny twelve-year-old girl became a full-grown woman, I cared less and less what other people thought of me. Gradually, I embraced the delicious concept of not waiting another moment to partake, each day, of what life has to offer. And I developed.