Dale Carnegie was a successful and famous writer and lecturer on self-development who also developed popular courses to improve public speaking, interpersonal skills and salesmanship. He is the author of many well-received books including “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” and “Lincoln the Unknown”.

Dale Carnegie rose from a humble farm background in Missouri to become successful and renowned all over the world. He advised that you can change other people’s attitude and behavior towards you by reacting positively towards them. In this article, we look at six valuable lessons we can glean from Dale Carnegie’s life and body of work.

Dale Carnegie’s Keys To Success

1. Take a Chance

Do not settle for mediocrity or set your sights too low. You might be selling yourself short by opting to be too safe. To soar above the masses and an average life you should look and aim farther and back up your ambition with sincere hard work.

Treat life as a game and do not take it too seriously. Push the envelope to progress as much as possible with your God-given talents.

2. Be Enthusiastic

Dull people do not have the enthusiasm or energy to excel in their endeavors. You should have the enthusiasm to get up cheerfully in the morning and maintain the feel-good spirit all day long. To do this, you can adopt a “Do what you love, love what you do” attitude. This will help you give your best to all tasks and your daily job. If you are feeling low, just act enthusiastic and you will find the trait so infectious that you will actually become enthusiastic pretty soon.

“If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.” – Dale Carnegie

3. Love Your Work

You should learn to love your work which is the basic prerequisite to do a good job every day and excel in your career. If you love your daily job, work will become play and you will love every minute of the day. Plus, you will not feel like taking a holiday as you are thoroughly enjoying yourself doing your daily tasks.

So take up a profession that you like and try to make a career in it. You will feel that getting paid at the end of the month is an additional bonus to the daily joy you get from doing your job.

4. Learn from Your Mistakes

We are mortals and hence bound to make mistakes. The trick is not to get disheartened by them but to learn useful lessons that can ensure you do not repeat them. Failure can be a stepping stone to success if we are open-minded about it and learn our lessons. Do not get stressed by mistakes and failure. Use them as an opportunity to analyze, learn and improve.

Nobody becomes a champion overnight and it is the brave man who can withstand the blows of fate and respond positively who emerges the winner in the long run.

5. Do Not Fear “Fear”

Many people are simply too scared to succeed in life. Don’t be one among them, but imagine the worst case scenario and then make plans to accept and improve it if it actually occurs that is.

Face your fears head on with the heart of a lion, soak in the pressure and continue to do a great job every day. You will begin to understand that fear is just a trick of the mind so learn to ignore it with time.

“Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.” – Dale Carnegie

6. Learn to Prioritize

Effective time management is one of the keys to success. Try to complete the important and hard tasks first at the beginning of the day when you are fresh and raring to go. The easier and less important ones can be completed at leisure later on. Use your common sense and intelligence to differentiate between the profitable and mundane tasks and prepare an appropriate time-table to complete them all within the scheduled time.

Dale Carnegie teaches us that we should never compromise with excellence in all our endeavours. Make excellence a habit in every task you do. Focus on quality and give your best to your allotted job. And if things look bleak, do not become weary or discouraged, but soldier on bravely without giving up. Like the Nike slogan advises “Just do it” without ado and get the work done in time with quality effort.

We hope the above lessons of success learnt from Dale Carnegie motivates you to make the best of what you have and do the best you can every day to improve your career and quality of life.