Success and Happiness

Two things we all want in life: Success and Happiness

However my idea of Success may be different from yours, and different from anyone else’s. But there is one big factor all of us must accept and learn to deal with if we want to be successful or happy. The Big Factor applies to everyone whether you are a lawyer, doctor, businessman, salesman, parent, clerk, housewife or whoever you are.

The common denominator to all success and happiness is other people.

If you learn to deal with other people you will have covered about 85 percent of the way towards success in any business, occupation or profession, and about 99 percent of the way towards achieving personal happiness.

Merely learning how to get along with people is no guarantee of either success or happiness. The “weak and ineffectual” in life have learned a way to get along with people to avoid trouble. The timid, retiring, doormat type of person has learned one way to “get along with people” i.e. to simply let them walk over him.

On the other extreme, the tyrannical, dictator-like type of person also has worked out a way to “get along with people”: he simply beats down all opposition, makes a doormat of them, and proceeds to walk over tem.

Each of us already has his/her own private system all worked out on how to get along with people. Even the neurotic has his own special way of doing this, and psychologists say that neurosis itself can be defined as a pattern of responses which the neurotic has worked out for getting along with people.

What counts is a way to get along with people, or deal with people, that will bring us personal satisfaction and at the same time not trample on the egos of those we deal with. Human relations is the science of dealing with people in such a way that our own egos and their egos remain intact. And this is the only method of getting along with people that ever brings any real success or any real satisfaction.