Carnegie - How to Develop Self-Confidence

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Epub ISBN 9781446490792

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First Published in 1957 by Cedar
Published in 1998 by Vermilion, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
A Random House Group company.

Copyright the (American) National Board of Young Mens
Christian Association 1926

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780749305796

Drawing on Dale Carnegies years of experience as a business trainer, this practical book will help you to become a successful speaker. His invaulable advice includes ways to:

• Develop poise
• Gain self-confidence
• Improve your memory
• Make your meaning clear
• Begin and end a talk effectively
• Interest and charm your audience
• Improve your diction
• Win an argument without making enemies

Dale Carnegies methods have helped millions of people worldwide. Make sure you have the advantage, and make them work for you too.

HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING

HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE

THE QUICK AND EASY WAY TO EFFECTIVE SPEAKING

HOW TO ENJOY YOUR LIFE AND YOUR JOB

FOR MANY YEARS , Dale Carnegies name has been synonymous with winning friends and influencing people. How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the best sellers of all time in non-fiction and has brought him international popularity. But How to Win Friends and Influence People was not the first book written by Dale Carnegie.

In 1926 Dale Carnegie wrote a book entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business. This was a textbook on public speaking, and, until recently, was one of the official textbooks of the world-famous Dale Carnegie Course in Effective Speaking and Human Relations. It also served as a textbook for Y.M.C.A. public-speaking classes. The total sale of the hard-cover edition was something like a million copies. It was published in some twenty languages, and thousands of copies were sold in these foreign editions. It was not, however, a book of which the majority of the reading public was aware.

Some time ago, my American publisher, Association Press, approached me with the idea that this earliest of my late husbands books might have popular appeal if edited and published as a pocket book. They felt, as I did, that this book contained many valuable ideas for everyday living.

The Dale Carnegie Course has now spread its philosophy throughout the world and has reached a total of 500,000 graduates. The course helps people to achieve a more courageous, happier, and more fruitful life, by bringing put the latent qualities they possess.

This book, How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking, has been edited to appeal to the reading public. It contains many of the words of wisdom that have helped our students to achieve their goals. In re-reading the book carefully in the past few months, I realise how many wise rules it contains for overcoming fear and gaining self-confidence. Practical techniques and suggestions are added to those rules that will help everyone to meet people as individuals or as groups, and to talk with them effectively.

I do hope new readers will gain as much from this book as have students of the Dale Carnegie Course in the past thirty years.

The world-wide Dale Carnegie Organisation is presenting the famous Daie Carnegie Leadership Courses in many of the principal cities and large towns of Great Britain, Europe, the Commonwealth, and other countries. If you are interested in taking one of these courses, or would like to find out more about them, please address your request to:

Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc.,

1475 Franklin Avenue,

Garden City, New York 11530, U.S.A.

Dale Carnegie Training Courses,

7a Church Road,

Teddington

Middlesex.

MORE THAN FIVE hundred thousand men and women, since 1912, have been members of public-speaking courses using my methods. Many of them have written statements telling why they enrolled for this training and what they hoped to obtain from it. Naturally, the phraseology varied; but the central desire in these letters, the basic want in the vast majority, remained surprisingly the same:

When I am called upon to stand up and speak [person after person wrote] I become so self-conscious, so frightened, that I cant think clearly, cant concentrate, cant remember what I had intended to say. I want to gain self-confidence, poise, and the ability to think on my feet. I want to get my thoughts together in logical order and I want to be able to say my say clearly and convincingly before a business or club group or audience.

Thousands of their confessions sounded about like that.

To cite a concrete case: Years ago, a gentleman here called Mr. D. W. Ghent, joined my public-speaking course in Philadelphia. Shortly after the opening session, he invited me to lunch with him in the Manufacturers Club. He was a man of middle age and had always led an active life; was head of his own manufacturing establishment, a leader in church work and civic activities. While we were having lunch that day, he leaned across the table and said: I have been asked many times to talk before various gatherings, but I have never been able to do so. I get so fussed, my mind becomes an utter blank: so I have side-stepped it all my life. But I am chairman now of a board of college trustees. I must preside at their meetings. I simply have to do some talking. Do you think it will be possible for me to learn to speak at this late date in my life?

Do I think, Mr. Ghent? I replied. It is not a question of my thinking. I know you can, and I know you will if you will only practise and follow the directions and instructions.

He wanted to believe that, but it seemed too rosy, too optimistic. I am afraid you are just being kind, he answered, that you are merely trying to encourage me.

After he had completed his training, we lost touch with each other for a while. Later, we met and lunched together again at the Manufacturers Club. We sat in the same corner and occupied the same table that we had had on the first occasion. Reminding him of our former conversation, I asked him if I had been too sanguine then. He took a little red-backed notebook out of his pocket and showed me a list of talks and dates for which he was booked. And the ability to make these, he confessed, the pleasure I get in doing it, the additional service I can render to the communitythese are among the most gratifying things in my life.