Thank you Dale Carnegie: Envy is indeed ignorance

I have never been a follower of gurus or subscribed to any isms in my life. I have always maintained that the only ism I subscribe is optimism. However during my teenage days, the one person whose teachings I tried to put into practice was Dale Carnegie. His books –How to Win Friends and Influence People & How to Stop Worrying and Start Living had well a profound influence on me. Especially, I was so much influenced by How to Win Friends and Influence People that my college friend Shankar described me as a “follower of Dale Carnegie”.

Basically as I understood it, Carnegie advocated that we genuinely try to see things from other person’s point of view and made it absolutely clear that he was not advocating a bag of tricks. He was a strong advocate of praise as opposed to flattery. If truth be told, some of his methods largely worked. I did make a few good acquaintances by following the simple principle of praising people regarding their genuinely good qualities. Also, I was considerably emboldened by reading How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. I not only stopped worrying but became over confident. This was reflected in my 12th standard examination results.

Gradually, as other experiences in life shaped me, I realized that Dale Carnegie’s views were not always practical. While they had their merits, it could not serve as a compass for my life. For instance, ‘How to Win Friends & Influence People’ seems to suggest that it is possible to friendly at all times. Life has taught all of us that, human nature is as much about conflict as friendship. Later when I read that Dale Carnegie had committed suicide, I lost all faith in his work. How could a man who wrote ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’ commit suicide?

As time passed, I realized that just as Dale Carnegie was not right about everything, he was not wrong about everything either. I must confess that, I am forever indebted to a small part of what I read in ‘How to Stop Worrying----’. He quoted an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay on ‘Self Reliance’ which went as follows: There comes a time in every man’s education when he realizes that envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide.

I do not claim to be a saint who has not been touched by the green eyed monster. I have however been largely free of envy in my life. This comes form the simple realization that envy is indeed ignorance. I shall forever be grateful to Dale Carnegie for this valuable lesson.