Talk About Your Own Mistakes While Unsmoking

There are many great books to read in terms of personal development. While I was making a search on Amazon's best-sellers about personal development, I saw the book by Dale Carnegie: How To Win Friends And Influence People. Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 15 million copies. Dale Carnegie's first book is a timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. As relevant as ever before, Dale Carnegie's principles endure, and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age.

Within the book I am faced with an interesting unsmoke story. This true-story may open the way for many people in order to unsmoke the loved ones. Here it is:

Talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person.

Admitting one’s own mistakes – even when one hasn’t corrected them – can help convince somebody to change his behaviour. This was illustrated more recently by Clarence Zerhusen of Timonium, Maryland, when he discovered his fifteen-year-old son was experimenting with cigarettes.

‘Naturally, I didn’t want David to smoke,’ Mr. Zerhusen told us, ‘but his mother and I smoked cigarettes; we were giving him a bad example all the time. I explained to Dave how I started smoking at about his age and how the nicotine had gotten the best of me and now it was nearly impossible for me to stop. I reminded him how irritating my cough was and how he had been after me to give up cigarettes not many years before.

I didn’t exhort him to stop or make threats or warn him about their dangers. All I did was point out how I was hooked on cigarettes and what it had meant to me.

‘He thought about it for a while and decided he wouldn’t smoke until he had graduated from high school. As the years went by David never did start smoking and has no intention of ever doing so.

‘As a result of that conversation I made the decision to stop smoking cigarettes myself, and with the support of my family, I have succeeded.’