Carnegy

Three basic principals for our live that we don’t follow religiously:

• don’t criticize, condemn or complain;

• give honest and sincere appreciation;

• arouse in the other person an eager want.

When you read those principals you would think: “easy, we all do it”, but if you analyze your behavior and your friends behavior you’ll find that to follow those principal are far from “easy”. Do we pay attention to what we do and say? In most of cases we don’t. Most of my friends don’t think how they are perceived by others and why, or if they could chance something or if they need to enhance certain good qualities.

Criticism is on top of everything, we growing up with it. If to go back to our childhood, we’ll find that every single day in school we criticized someone, we all did: nerds criticized flamboyant/bad students and vice versa, then teacher criticize bad students and condemn good one if they went the wrong path. Continues chain of criticism from the day we were born, so to a no surprise we keep this habit with us forever.

“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.” One of the most obvious examples is our parents. I moved to New York against my parents will, as I decided that this is the city where I could find myself and where my career potential could be discovered, where as a woman I don’t feel pressure about age, weight, dependency on a “strong shoulder” and so on. The city that matches my ambitions, the city where my thinking big is not perceived as a weird behavior. My father gives me a hard time over the phone every time we talk, as he sees me at home, living in a nice spacious house nearby, driving a nice car, having a nice job, meeting relatives for a family dinner once in a while, getting married, having a baby and a little grandson that he could play with, going for a family trip and so on. Instead, I am single in NYC, without a good job, with debts for schools, living in a super tiny apartment for ridiculous money, without American citizenship, without insurance, without any family, lonely soul in the city with a dream, idea, goal, believe that I will make it and some certain hard steps I need to overcome. Here we go: one side is a quality life at father’s home and the other is a crappy existence in NYC. What would a logical person choose? I guess the first option. But, do I understand my father? I do. Does he understand me? No. He condemns me for not listening him and for wrong actions that lead to a crappy life in a foreign country without civil rights! Do I agree with him? No, I resent the criticism and find a billion of reason why I do what I do and why he will be proud of me later. Did he change anything? Unfortunately or fortunately no, no lasting changes, just resentment. What am l looking for? “as much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation”. Exactly, I thirst for