Don’t criticise, condemn or complain

I can’t believe it’s taken me sooooo long to get my hands on “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie. I’ve only just started reading, but am loving it already!

I finished Chapter 1 last night, which was titled “If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive”, which was basically saying “Don’t criticise, condemn or complain”.

Hmmm….

One part of this chapter particularly moved me. It was a father writing to his son, who he was watching sleep peacefully. He was talking of the way he spoke to his son, about how impatient he had been with him, how short he was with him, and the remorse he felt over how he had been interacting with his son that day and in the past too.

What he realised, was that he was “condemning” his son for not being exactly like him.

I thought about how I interact with my children, and while I have a great relationship with both of my girls, I realised that I’m nowhere near as patient as I could be with them. Sadly, I’ve not realised until now, how much this can affect them.

So… starting NOW I choose to watch how I interact with my beautiful daughters. All too soon they’ll be growing up and living their own lives, and life’s too short not to make the most of every moment!

Changing our bad habits starts with becoming aware of aspects of ourselves that we could improve on. That’s what the very first chapter of this book did for me. WOW!